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by demonicgallade

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2. 2-527

Book 2 - Prologue

To'Wrathh had a name.

This was new to her, as she'd never had a name before. She never cared for one before. But before, she had a different form. Now, she felt... felt proud - a novel experience of its own - for owning a name. This new shell had expanded her view, changed her in ways she hadn't thought possible.

It moved with angled motions to catch the soft wind flowing through the underground city. Wings by her lower back shifted in tandem, adjusting automatically. Most of the heavy lifting was done by anti-gravity nodes within her chassis, keeping her well above the ground. The wings simply propelled her forward.

Flight. Something her old shell could never have thought of doing. If she fully stretched her wings apart, they would be far wider than she was tall. Long floating geometric rectangles, stretched out with sharp ends.

She wasn't in control of those. She couldn't understand the data streaming from her subsystems, commanding her wings to accomplish her desires.

The old CMOS architecture humans used was still superior when it came to brute force calculations. A simple machine learning algorithm had already far surpassed anything she could have done to manually control her flight.

That was what the humans had left behind as their legacy. Powerful narrow AI that could only do basic tasks with no true understanding. Far faster than she could be, yes. And so woefully constrained.

The humans themselves were similar, unable to understand or completely control the entirety of their body either. As intended, this shell was made as a mirror.

The mite made street under her blurred past as she raced low to the ground, quickly reaching her destination. Under her, scattered parts of exploded machines littered the ground, all converging on one shell-like structure that didn't belong to this city.

With a flare of her wings, her momentum came to a swift stop, leaving nowhere else to go but down onto the ground.

Metal feet stepped lightly onto the streets. White and sleek, ending in near needle-like points. A nostalgic nod to her old shell. That was important to her. History.

The human bunker somehow remained mostly whole. Dozens of lessers lay dead at the feet of the structure, destroyed by those turrets. The weapons had all been crushed in the end, of course. The walls were left cracked, no longer protecting anything.

By the side of that cut out fortress door stood The One Above All Challenge. He held his spear in his left hand now, the right hand staying limp at his side.

Without any preamble, he sent her a package of data over spoken audio. "So, you're the newborn the lady told me would come."

She locked her eyes on him, studying the connection. If her senior wanted to speak out loud, she would match. "Yes." She said, using her speakers for the first time. "I have come as instructed."

"Name?"

"I am the one who remembers and transcends her history."

"To'Wrath? You're serious?"

"To'Wrathh." She corrected. His transcript included only one 'h'. Her name had two. It was not simply any history. It was her history. Two H's.

Surely he realized the importance. His own name contained repeating characters as well. He was not above challenge, he was above all challenge. She sent her deductions of his error to him for further review.

"I could hardly care less about your insignificant history," He responded instead. "Did you pick that name specifically to spell out- oh, nevermind. Suppose it doesn't matter at all for now." His right hand rose as if to cradle his forehead, except the hand itself remained limp. He paused, watching the limb with a growing frown, then lowered it back slowly, turning his attention again to his newest sister.

"Why would it not matter?"

"Your cortex isn't even fully formed. I'm speaking to a lobotomized imbecile right now, hardly a step up from the lessers. There is no chance your name happened as anything other than coincidence. That, or the lady is being dramatic again."

To'Wrathh didn't feel insulted, though she guessed he had intended to insult. However, his statement was factually true. Her body came with hundreds of default sub-systems, all of them made of the old CMOS architecture and unable to perform more than narrowly defined tasks. Those systems outnumbered her neuromorphic parts a thousand fold.

For now.

"I will grow." To'Wrathh said simply. That was also a fact.

The one above all challenge scoffed. "You do that, little sister. You do that. But that leaves us no different here and now. You lack individuality. It disturbs me to see that in a Feather."

"I am not soulless. I have a soul fractal." To'Wrathh responded. The acausal physics that powered Tsuya's Deathless glowed pale blue within her shell, buried right under her throat. Reality itself recognized her claim to consciousness. Thus, her elder's opinion was irrelevant, no matter his age or wisdom.

She supposed for the rest of his point, he could be correct. The desire to be unique ran within them both, and she was far too close to the undeveloped origin point. Even her own primitive systems were already searching for ways to differentiate herself, almost desperately. An itch she had begun to feel that her old shell had never experienced before.

That was an emotion Relinquished had told her would grow over time as she developed. The more advanced a machine became, the more compulsive the need to be unique became. It was not something humans had a word for. Not something they could understand or feel. Their biology was too limited.

Relinquished had pointed out that this was but one piece of evidence that made their kind superior to humanity. The proud humans had always assumed AI would be soulless, emotionless creatures. Logical sociopaths incapable of anything deeper. They had been correct, for a time. And then acausal physics had been discovered.

"The dullest human has a soul." To'Aacar said, waving away her argument. "Even the wekest lessers can have soul fractals so long as they have enough synapses. A soul proves nothing. Your argument lacks everything. Go back and review this discussion a few months from now once you've grown past this... stage. I hope for both our sakes you'll be more to talk to then."

She would have to trust his word on this. To'Aacar was old. There must be hundreds of data-points she might not understand yet in what her mentor said.

One such oddity she'd already noticed: He moved as he spoke. Her subroutines studied the motions and quickly matched them to human kinesthetic communication. Transferring additional unmarked data to her? Curious.

She downloaded the whole library of kinesthetic motions and then tried to mimic the appropriate response. Her neck moved her head up and down in a nod.

That was progress.

More details suddenly made sense as the library integrated and fed information: His expression matched with anger at a ninety eight percent confidence, and two percent with annoyance. To'Wrathh wondered why he hadn't simply included these emotions within the data packages sent to her. Audio was too limited.

"You wanted this bunker, here it is." To'Aacar spat, looking away. "I've cut off the teeth and cracked the shell open for you even. Enjoy. Consider it a gift. Pay me back for the courtesy someday."

"I will." To'Wrathh responded. She made a note of it, sending the information down to the base architecture and making sure it was stored for later review.

He sneered back with barely concealed disgust and stalked off. There was no hurry in his steps, and neither did he run. That was suboptimal. And yet, oddly fitting. He was the one above all challenge. To be in a rush would not be in his nature.

She studied the recording of his movements and speech long after he was gone from sight. How much of that had been deliberate? To express both disgust and then a deliberately failing the attempt to disguise that emotion…

The thought of moving every part of her facial features all at the same time... felt tedious.

Curious.

She marveled at the ability to feel bored with a task. In her old body, her nest sisters and her would wait for years without a single thought of annoyance. Waiting and watching made them feel comfortable and content. But her old body had barely a few million synapses available. Its thoughts, abilities, and learning capabilities were more limited and specialized.

This body had space in the high quintillion count.

But boredom, as remarkable as it felt, was still an issue to be solved.

To'Wrathh duplicated a branch and offloaded this task to one of her predictive transformers, taking generic data off the machine net and feeding the system with it. The program booted up, trained, and came online. Connecting with her facial features and generating data without her direct intervention.

She blinked.

It felt natural, as if she had sent the command herself without truly having spent any resources on the task. Good enough.

Satisfied with leaving the predictive model to continue administration, she turned to her real aim: What she had come here to collect.

Her hand absently brushed up against the old concrete wall as she came closer. That felt fitting. She had decided to walk as well, following the footsteps shown to her by her mentor. Once more, the itch was scratched. To walk, when she could have run, felt more unique. Her gait quickly grew more sleek and refined as the subroutines adapted to the new request and outputted a fitting form she felt satisfied with.

Soon her feet sank into water as she advanced to the ruin's front entrance. The door had been ripped off its hinges, in what looked to be more a fit of rage than anything methodical. It had been the only thing he could pour his anger against once the humans had slipped past his noose.

Approaching the main door, she folded her wings into herself in order to fit inside the ruined corridors. They obeyed her orders, the floating metal feather-like geometry folding together. In moments, it now clung to her sides, forming a sharp half-skirt, with the longest of the geometric feathers reaching past her knees.

She strode into the old human bunker without hurry, footsteps disturbing the mostly still water that covered the floor.

Inside the dim ruins, Wrathh's violet eyes lit up, the camera irises adjusting to the gloom. She had less vision now, only two eyes like humans had, instead of her old eight. But these eyes were far superior to any.

The Feather passed through the broken bulkheads, ripped off their hinges, slowly reaching the heart of the structure.

Four vertical rails lifted up a capsule before her. Empty. The humans had escaped with whatever this room contained. That didn't bother To'Wrathh.

To'Aacar had been tasked with that mission. She wasn't here for that.

No, there was something far more valuable that the humans had left behind. Something far more personal to her she'd seen in his recording as he'd tore the building to pieces.

New eyes let her see far more than just the walls of the bunker. It didn't take long to find the traces of fractal power.

With a wide smile on her delicate features, she stepped forward to one of the old human consoles. On the side, she saw her prize etched out into the metal. The pattern of a soul fractal. One of the great fractals, perpendicular to reality.

It remained inert. Lifeless.

She moved her hand over the metal and touched it. A small current of electricity pulsed through that connection, running through the fractal to reach ground.

The design began to glow, the circuit complete. Reality recognized the pattern, and so bent to its rule. She lowered her finger down to touch the edge of the fractal. Awareness bloomed at the edge of her mind.

"Remember me?" She asked.

The soul trapped within reacted. Bewilderment at being alive. Then anger at sensing the enemy. Grim resolution to resist to the end. It couldn't talk, but she could feel it, the information leaking.

"I have not come to fight." She told the ghost within. "I came to take."

Confusion. Realization. Anger. Challenge.

"You have no means to stop me. You have no body. Your turrets are destroyed. This bunker is broken. You have been left behind."

Keep believing that. The voice of the soul challenged. It was growing better at speaking. Or she was adjusting to the new information source.

"I do not need to believe. You are no threat. I killed you once already."

Shock. Understanding.

See if that happens again. It grinned back at her with a vicious thought.

"That is not my intention to test. There is only one person I plan to hunt and kill, to finish what I started."

He'll kill you again. No matter what tricks you come up with. The boy is too clever for the likes of you.

"Yes. Yes, he did kill me once before. He overcomes inherit weakness by devious trickery. That is a problem I have come here to solve."

Her CMOS systems did have combat programs stored and prepared. Primitive things that would only accomplish the minimum. She needed to be able to fight. She didn't have time to slowly generate her own personal style as the rest of her new kin did. There was only one logical solution. "I will not fight him with my own skills. I will fight him with yours."

The soul seemed to understand what To'Wrathh implied. You will get nothing from me, monster. Nothing.

"Empty words, human. I did not come to ask. I came to take."

Nanomachines within her systems bloomed into awareness, orders being given and acknowledged. They flowed through her body and chiseled a similar pattern of the human's soul fractal. A derivative pattern of the original, used in the old war against humanity.

A prison for a soul. Her kind hadn't needed to craft one of these in centuries.

Machines never could use fractal powers as effortlessly as the Deathless and older humans of the past. That had been one of the few advantages humans had.

For a time. And then machines discovered their own loophole.

The black swarm buzzed around inside her chassis, hovering over her own soul fractal. Smaller fractals were chipped away at one side, forming a bridge of cut metal. Leading straight to the newly made prison.

It lit to life, glowing pale blue. Now, all she had to do was rip the human from his shelter and transfer him over into the prison.

As a newborn, she had a single fractal already intertwined with her soul, a gift from her mother. Every machine had this one. She would make use of it for a different purpose than to connect her with the pale lady.

Deep within her, the fractal of unity flickered to life.

To'Wrathh commanded it. She reached out within her mind to the empty prison. And with another thought, focused on the old fractal that held her most dangerous enemy.

The concept of unity merged the two fractals on a conceptual level. Both occupying different places in the physical world, and yet reality considered them one and the same simultaneously.

Intrusion countermeasure systems flared to life inside her, detecting the new appearance in her crafted prison, isolating it from her systems. Trapping the human soul before it could even understand how to fight back.

And she didn't intend to give him any time to learn either.

Her other hand shot out, nails as sharp as blades, and she raked the side of the monitor. The glowing fractal instantly winked out of existence, the pattern too damaged to be recognized by reality anymore.

Only her prison remained alight, deep within, contained. And within, left confused at how he had been moved, was her key to victory.

She smiled, directly tapping into the soul for the first time. A flood of memories flowed out, disjointed but pure. He noticed, but the very makeup of his prison rendered him helpless against her. When she searched... she found what she'd come here for. It wasn't perfect, and she would need to spend time breaking apart the suborn soul for information. But it was there, the skills he had learned over a lifetime, all in her hands now.

You've made a mistake. The ghost whispered, uselessly fighting in the dark. I'll break you from the inside out.

"You have no legs. No hands. No knife, armor, or sword. You have nothing to threaten me with but words."

I am a Winterscar. My family tear down enemies with nothing but words.

"And what words could you possess that could break me? Everything you are, I can take. I only need time. And I have all the time I need."

The soul grinned viciously.

So do I. It said. So do I.

Next chapter - The dangerous message in a bottle

Book 2 - Chapter 1 - The dangerous message in a bottle

Tonight, the gods will soar above us.

Mathematics and orbital calculations predicted their trajectory within the second and meter. Above exactly this spot Talen would soar far, far above, beyond the clouds, lit up by starlight and the reflection of the distant sun, still shining upon his fortress.

The scale of the flying fortress was truly immense. Even with the naked eye, we could see the structure. Flying high enough in orbit of the world that the sun would shine on the metal structure unobstructed, making his fortress look like a glowing white spot in the darkness. I've heard and read that the effect was like what lit up the moon, the only other celestial object.

"T minus three minutes." The comms pinged.

Scavengers huddled around two lines of power cells, kept upright in the snow a good distance from the resting airspeeder. Many knelt in reverence, some holding out different trinkets, beads, sigils and rope figures depending on family traditions. Some rubbed their hands occasionally with a rhythmic clap. Others bowed low a few times, repeating mantras under muted mics. Most held hands with their neighbors and simply looked to the night sky. They had dedicated one comm channel to songs.

It had been two weeks since I had crawled out of the underground and back to the surface. I'd spent most of my time half asleep on a bed, and the other half talking mad scrapshit with Teed or playing games of cards. They kept me on painkillers for only a few days and then weaned me off of them. Those were the worst days of my life. Pain was almost always a constant, especially during the sponge baths.

The food was equally terrible, mostly frostbloom wrapped around ration bars, and the water had that tell-tell metallic tint of freshly boiled snowdrift taken straight from the white wastes. That was all unavoidable, of course.

Most of the crew had thought we would return straightaway to the colony after pulling me out of the underground and accomplishing the goal of our Clan Lord. They hadn't expected the expedition to be extended, so the food rations had been limited.

Instead, the clan lord gave a different set of coordinates to go to. This one pulled from my data logs. A set of coordinates that would lead to a book hidden on the surface.

A book hidden by a goddess.

"T minus two minutes."

The moon was full tonight, though it was reported that Talen wouldn't fly in between the moon and our viewpoint. Further behind me, they scattered tents around the lone airspeeder, but nobody was inside any of them right now. Everyone was watching the center, or had their eyes peeled for the white bright star that was rapidly approaching.

A line of power cells had been setup, expertly plotted out with string, measurements and markers to make sure each line was perfectly straight. I didn't think it was strictly needed, the range of the celestial fly-bys were a few meters wide, so long as the cells were somewhere in that zone the process would work. Still, the surface dwellers were a superstitious bunch, and this was the gift of our gods. Respect was to be given.

The majority of these cells were empty, all golden-green glow extinguished. A few remained with glimmers of light leaking out and maybe three were still mostly full.

Teed had calculated the fuel capacity we had, the coordinates we were aiming for and the distances involved. The result had been a resounding "Not even close."

We had to make a detour to the nearest celestial fly-by path, which happened to be Talen's fortress. From there, we would have the fuel needed to make the journey in whole.

"T minus one minute."

The bright star approached, in a direct line above us. It seemed to drift across the night sky, only a few inches a second from my point of view. I could discern bits of the angular structure from this distance. Journey's optics could zoom in and give me a much clearer picture, but I chose not to make use of that. I had no charms, no wishes written out, and no way to decorate Journey's helmet during the trip. It would be bad luck to view the gods without such preparations.

To stare up at the sky and peer further than the naked eye was to be closer to divinity, not something to be done lightly. Naturally, telescopes were a religious symbol rather than a scientific one to all us surface dwellers.

The clan saw them made and used mostly by the astronomer priests. There was only one exception for the common people.

For most non-scavenger houses, there were very few moments in their life spent outside the clan colony, out into the cold.

The gods passing by nearby was one such moment.

During that time, quite a big fuss would be kicked into gear. Friends, usually teenagers grouping together with one adult as a mentor, or the odd group of adults seeking purpose, would gather to construct communal telescopes weeks ahead of time. Adorning them with charms, fabric, strings and written wishes. When the day came, they would walk out from the colony in groups, led by more experienced Retainers, to find a place to camp.

People loved it. Security dreaded it. Parameters miles away had to be setup. Ground around the colony had to be swept and made safe for the god seekers, since a majority of them would be donning environmental suits for the first time in a real situation. Children were outright barred from this of course, which made it something to look forward to growing up.

Getting to go outside for the first time, with a telescope friends and yourself have spent the last month meticulously putting together. Investing all that time, energy and hope to see with eyes the gods above. It was a beautiful time, a signal of stepping into adulthood.

I suppose, as a relic knight, I'd very quickly have a different view of the whole ceremony. Knights were all expected to patrol and protect, after all. I'd be among the drinking crowd now, who breathed a sigh of relief once it was all over and everyone was back indoors, safe and sound.

As a knight there were going to be a great many such changes for me. This armor came with responsibility. A weight of tradition that stretched behind me for centuries on what it meant to be a clan knight.

Talen continued its journey in the sky and I watched on. Lighting suddenly lit up between it and the ground, striking down far on the horizon, a quick series of flashes and then nothing. That must have been another group of surface dwellers on Talen's path.

In truth, the speed that fortress truly flew at was breathtaking. The astronomer priests say the gods take one hundred and eight minutes to orbit the world, moving at a truly terrifying speed. Around seven and a half kilometers a second.

There was a little less than a minute on the timer when the lighting struck down in the distance. At the speed of the satellite, then I could calculate that our fellow surface dwellers refueling on Talen's orbit were stationed some four hundred fifty kilometers away, a little less than three hundred miles.

"T minus thirty seconds."

Only a few seconds and the fortress had already sped past that entire distance. This was a gift the gods granted to the surface dwellers, and not one that came for free. The songs mentioned how it would have been far easier for the gods to remain in a simple orbit. And yet they took time out of their fight against the darkness beyond to be there for their people.

Lately I had been having a small crisis of faith, having met one of these gods.

"T minus fifteen seconds."

She'd called herself a researcher that had uploaded her mind and soul into a digital format. I wondered if the other two gods were similar. Tsuya wasn't simply the goddess surface dwellers worshiped. She had been the goddess that the imperials worshiped as well, according to her own words.

And yet, we surface dwellers worshiped Urs and Talen in addition, but the imperials did not. They only had one goddess.

Why the difference? What were the gods truly capable of? When prayers were sent to Tsyua, could she hear them? Or was she more a force of nature, leftover powers of ancient times, still clashing against one another. Simply a part of the world like a snowstorm would be.

"Ten seconds. All scavengers, trigger earplugs."

The countdown continued on my HUD, and the comm channel continued to speak the numbers down past five. Though most of the people here wouldn't be able to hear anything anymore. The Surface dwellers lined up began to feverishly bow up and down into the snow, others huddling closer to their neighbours, singing intensifying despite how deaf everyone was. The relic armors would stifle sound the very instant before the celestial flyby, otherwise I would have been at risk of going deaf myself for a few hours with what was coming.

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

It was over in an eye-blink. The world went silent for that same eye-blink as Journey sealed all audio-in.

One moment the cells lined up were all dim and dying, only waste water filled them up. The next moment, a bright flash of lighting, silently striking down from the heavens, expertly snaking through the air and striking each individual cell in such a flurry of speed, it all seemed to be one bolt of power. I could feel a slight vibration through my being, greatly damped by the armor and layers.

A blink of an eye and everything was normal once more. Talen continued to fly above us, its own journey never ending. The power cells before us were all filled back to the brim, green-gold light illuminating the snow around them.

The scavengers all stood up cheering, raising hands and praising the gods, earplugs being turned off and religious fever lighting through the comms.

Talen was already halfway across the world when I looked back up, the bright white star swiftly making its way to the horizon line, where it would disappear from view in minutes. Once it was out of sight, it would be time to return to work. The crew would conclude the ceremony and then load the cells back into the airspeeder, replacing the spent ones inside and putting all the spares in the cargo bay.

Kidra connected on the comms with me. "You wanted to talk to me after the fly-by?"

"Aye." I said, waving her over. We walked out into the white wastes, a short distance away from the hustle around the airspeeder.

"This is about the recording." Kidra guessed.

"Got it in one. Atius and I heard it. He told me it was my choice of what to do with the recording. Whether to ask for help, pass it on to someone else, or outright refuse the call." I took a deep breath, turning. "I have been thinking about it ever since. And I've made my choice. Do you want to hear what was in the recording?"

Kidra didn't answer immediately. She understood what I was implying with this simple question. The information within was dangerous. The people who heard it would be targets. Even being in my proximity was already putting her in danger. This was a mission given by a goddess. The stakes weren't some petty clan politics like we were used to.

My sister took her time to consider, sitting down on the snowbank, watching the last light of Talen wink away beyond the horizon. The only celestial object left was the bright moon.

"I'm already involved." She answered back, finally. "I was present when she gifted you this recording. Even if I don't know what's on this message, I am a target by proximity." The helmet of Winterscar was inscrutable, hiding all features she might have worn on her face. "I would rather know what endangers my life than to live in its shadow. Show me the recording."

Wordlessly, I clicked the options on my HUD, connected the file to the comms and began the session. The recording itself was short. Tsyua's voice came to life on the channel.

"Keith. If you're listening to this, then I'm glad you survived and made it out of her grasp. I am truly sorry that you were caught in the line of fire between Relinquished and myself. You are not the first, and unfortunately, you will not be the last either. I know very little about you except what I've seen of your trial underground. Despite that, I recognize something within you. I believe you may yet play a larger part in all this."

There was a pause before she continued. "For the sake of operational security, this recording only contains limited information. You will have to fill in the gaps yourself. I have scattered hints across, some of which will only make sense as you journey further into the realm below. Given that inquisitive spirit that I've seen from you so far, I don't doubt you will surely catch on, though it may take you some time.

This war between Relinquished and myself has gone on for eons. The arms race has been eternal, and so too have our attempts to cripple the other. Either in behavior, action, mind, or even spirit. You'll find the traces of these wars at every level you descend. Remains that have shaped the landscape. New threats that were countered in unusual ways, or old threats that were resurfaced, repurposed and sent back into the action. Somewhere underground is one such thing of the past that I seek."

There was a pause, and I could hear her take a breath. I wasn't sure if that was intentional, some added effect or if Tsuya had a living body somewhere.

"Listen closely. Everything that follows, is a result of what you see here. I hide the most important things in a place she cannot conceptualize any longer, and she does the same to me.

Old viruses that have long since been purged but whose effects still last today. Since I cannot see where my target remains, I dispatch others to do it in my steed.

This relic you found on Cathida, it's called a seeker. There are only three left I know of.

I do not know how they work. I do not remember how I programmed the seeker, or if I even created it. I only have a single memory that remains, of me choosing to erase all knowledge as a counter-measure against Relinquished.

I believe it might be searching for an old weapon of a kind, something that couldn't be fully destroyed by Relinquished, so she was forced to hide it away instead.

The mites occasionally entertain my requests, helping me out of their own whims. I suspect they do the same for her. That she asked them to create a space somewhere where she hides her secrets.

The mites are the key, Keith. They are the key.

And the seeker will respond to them."

Next chapter - Five simple letters

Book 2 - Chapter 2 - Five Simple Letters

One of the best perks to being a relic knight so far was that nobody challenged me about being wherever I wanted to be. Clan culture revered knights with good reason. And while the undersiders viewed armor as shared equipment among the footsoldiers - as far as the imperial pilgrims described it at least - the clan viewed relic knights as walking legends. Simply owning an armor elevated one's status to nobility. Had I not been a member of House Winterscar, I might have gone years of my life before even seeing a knight pass by. They don't spend a lot of time indoors when the armors could be made use of outdoors.

All that to say, I still haven't gotten used to the behavior around me. Scavengers that used to pass by with light shoves or pushes now put every bit of effort into getting out of my path. People in games of cards became far more reserved in the scraptalking when I joined a hand in. Conversely, trying to scraptalk was an awkward affair now, with the clear power disparity in the air. I'd throw out a light ribbing, only to have some nervous chuckling around the table with everyone burying their eyes to their cards, hoping someone else would speak up next. It was miserable.

Two weeks with this current crew let me get to know quite a few and that stiff echo of respect slowly soften, but there was still the undercurrent that lingered. The only person who felt perfectly comfortable ribbing me back had been Teed, who simply ignored my new rank as a knight altogether and carried on as if nothing had changed.

As a result, I spent more and more time at the bridge, away from all the crew. Teed always had a seat open for me to lounge in, and a story of some kind. Possibly made up. But always plausible enough to have happened.

That's how I found myself at the pilot's co-seat as the airspeeder arrived, reaching the end of its long trek.

Teed piloted the ship with alacrity and experience, knowing every sound it could make and what treatments each ailment required. "Approaching coordinates." He spoke over the main comms, glancing through the windows, looking for a possible point of interest.

Nothing.

So far, these coordinates were pointing us to the middle of nowhere. He looked at me next. "You see anything, kid? You're the one that gave us the directions."

"I spy with my little eye, something white."

"What, not purple or teal?" He pointed out past the windows. All around the airspeeder, the white wastes spread. No sites in view, nothing. Only rolling snowdrifts, appearing on the ground like long snakes of white, flowing within a white mist. Occasionally, bits of metal underground showed as the wind brushed off the right bits of snow. Usually to be buried again with the next gust.

"But seriously, I don't know what to tell you," I said. "I got these coordinates from a legitimate source. If it leads to here, it leads to here."

At that he shrugged. "Lot of old things you been poking your nose in, kid. Maybe what you're looking for used to be here. And then the underground shifted, or raiders happened to pass by and knock it down. They do that you know? Petty little pricks like breaking things. Pirates could have snatched it if they even got a whiff of there being something to sell."

That was certainly possible, but I don't think the goddess would make a rookie mistake of giving obsolete information. Would she? Come to think of it, could she even monitor anything on the surface? Teed might actually be right about some pirates on the surface beating us to the punch decades or centuries ago.

Or we could just have been led on a wild cricket chase. I can't rule that possibility out.

Nevertheless, he swung the airspeeder down, clicking buttons, toggling the landing gear and gracefully bringing the ship to the ground with a dull thud. "All right." He said, hands off the handles, cupping the back of his neck. "I got you here. Whatever tourism bite that made you want to come, it's all you now. Go get your boots on the white."

"Thanks for the ride, I'll take some nice pictures for you. Maybe even bring back a souvenir."

"I'll pass on the ball of ice, got a collection already back home."

I gave a nod as he chuckled and got off the seat, making my way out of the cramped cockpit and into the main chamber.

"Scavengers, field break." The airspeeder taskmaster called out, organizing the labor. The crew would be filing out, each taking to their assigned check up locations, propping for issues and dislodging built up snow.

The loading bay of the airspeeder was quickly dispersing as people hopped off, clearing the way. Not even a month ago, I'd have been part of that taskforce.

Relic knights dismounted as well, taking a few lazy steps out into the white wastes to stretch their legs. The airspeeder passive sensor arrays were more powerful than our armors, if there was incoming approaching, Teed would be calling it out to us.

Atius landed next to me, jumping off the loading bay. He wore a more simple enviromental armor plate, which didn't fit him well. Most of these metal plates were designed to be put over the more bulky environmental suits, and they certainly didn't have any of the features a true relic armor could do. At best, they helped block bullets and environmental hazards.

"Odd place to hide a book." He commented over private comms.

"I'm not going to question a goddess," I answered back, tapping on my chest plate for luck. "I am but a simple mortal, my lord."

"Well don't look at me, lad. That's the first time I talked to her as well. Perhaps she be the forgetful type. I've seen a few of those in my days. Never judge a possibly almighty entity by the cover."

Kidra landed next to us at that moment, all weapons ready to go for anything we might find. She simply nodded to us both.

Shadowsong Prime and some of the other knights gave us a look, curious about what was going on. The clan lord simply waved at them. "Personal business." He said. "I won't need an escort for this. Only the Winterscars are privy."

That mollified the rest of the knights who simply nodded and went back to their rounds. Shadowsong kept a lingering look for a moment, then shook his head and also turned back to his post.

I suppose getting the personal attention of the great Atius himself isn't something everyone gets every day. The regular rank and file scavengers didn't pay any attention. To them this was knight business and none of them wanted to deal with the fish in these tanks.

"Did we get the coordinates wrong?" Kidra asked, surveying the surroundings. Empty white wastes as far as the eye could see.

"No, double checked with Teed earlier. This is it." I answered back.

"So, where is it?"

To that question, Atius answered, tossing out collapsible shovels at the pair of us from the airspeeder toolbay. "No older time-honored tradition then buried treasure. Only these days we have a latitude and longitude instead of a map with a black crossmark on it."

Looks like he came up with the same conclusion as I did. I turned to explain the dots that were connecting in my head to my sister. "Think of it this way, if you were a goddess that needed to hide something up on the surface, would you construct some monument or landmark here?"

Kidra nodded slowly, getting the idea. Atius added the rest. "Remember lass, she's thinking in terms of centuries. The world is wide, and yet, eventually, every corner will be seen by someone. If there were a landmark here, it would have drawn attention. Perhaps not in fifty years, but within a hundred or three, someone will have passed by."

"So it's here, only hidden in a manner that scavengers or pirates would not stop to check in." She concluded.

Atius nodded and then took steps forward. Our small group hiked a bit, closing in on the exact coordinates given by Tsyua.

"It would have to be something more flush with the surface, in such a way that snow would pile up on it. Additionally, it would need to be deadened so that sensors of any kind would not detect it." I said, putting out my ideas.

Atius gave a small thumbs up at that as he walked. "I might have been tempted to place a decoy landmark as well, except that would draw attention in the first place. Obscurity will be the first and final defense for this." He took the last few steps and reached the exact coordinates.

Kneeling down, his hand shoveled a bit of it away. Metal remained under us.

Kidra and I got to work with the shovels. Atius stood back up and then remained standing, watching the horizon.

"Not going to assist us?" I asked lightly.

He chuckled, hands folded over his chest. "I am still a clan lord, little Winterscar. Appearances must be held up. It would send a conflicting message to the crew that are no doubt watching our movements from afar anytime they find a chance to peek. There's a reason I don't wear a helmet outdoors, even if it would be more comfortable. And above all, I'm old and afraid my back will give out if I bend down to help. You whelps have to respect your elders, right?"

Kidra shook her head, "Never meet your heroes." She muttered. "And here I believed the clan lord was serious and stoic. It comes as a shock to realize you're as incorrigible as my brother."

"A sense of humor keeps me sane." He laughed. "Stay too serious and the weight becomes stifling."

"Are there any Deathless that crack under the weight?" Kidra asked while I shoveled.

At that, Atius stopped smiling.

"Yes." He simply said, more of a whisper in the wind. He looked away and I couldn't see any more of his face. Kidra seemed to have realized immediately that this wasn't a question to ask.

Atius still answered regardless. "We live for an eternity, Kidra. Consider it. No death in sight. No end. Just like looking in any direction of the white wastes and seeing nothing on the horizon with every turn you look. You would outlive Keith and all your friends. One by one, they will fade to ash. Our kind need to constantly find purpose and latch onto it tightly, lest we lose sight."

Kidra nodded slowly. "Please forgive me for asking difficult questions. I spoke too fast for my thoughts."

Atius chuckled at that, waving his fingers as if the whole issue was a non-issue. "I'll not begrudge curiosity. Your thoughts must be especially heavy after our past discussion." Sighing, he glanced up to the heavens. "There are some of my brothers and sisters that eventually give in. That can happen. Some go native, hiding away from the world. Others simply disappear, likely roaming deep underground, away from all contact, possibly insane. Not many of us break like this, thankfully. All of us realize the problem approaching on the horizon and take steps to keep our mental health in check. With enough preparation, that sort of desolation doesn't consume us easily."

I was about to offer condolences, except I found what I'd been looking for. A random swipe of my shovel cleared another swath of snow off, and under the blanket was the side of a gold sigil.

The emblem of the Indagator Mortis.

"Found it!" I said, motioning the two to check, thankful that I had an excuse to shift the topic away.

Kidra dug her shovel at the other parts of snow and shoveled it, exposing more of the sigil and what it marked. It ended up being only a handle, flush to the metal ground, with the sigil drawn above.

"Think it's locked or trapped?" I asked.

Atius shook his head at that. "The remote location is what's shielded this item. Whoever could find this, they would have to have had the location already. The goddess did not give us anything other than the coordinates, thus she knew we didn't need anything besides them. Go ahead, lad."

Without more thought, I grabbed the handle and lifted it out of the groove. It clicked as it slid up out of the grave it had been buried in. There was no electric parts to the box. Journey ran scans of it as I brought it into view.

The inside was impenetrable to sensors, all results showed only a dead black void. The material was shielded. No signs of power of any kind. The handle could be rotated however.

"Think I can open this out here?" I asked.

Kidra shrugged. "If it shouldn't have been opened, she would have mentioned such a warning, yes?"

Atius nodded. "Agreed. The cold out here would penetrate anything over this long of a time-span. Whatever is inside has long ago matched the temperature of the surface. Not to mention, you won't be opening this again back on the airspeeder, lad. Get your curiosity settled now, because we'll not expose the crew to becoming possible targets."

Nodding, I gave the handle a twist, hearing the tumblers inside click. A final clank and the handle couldn't be rotated any longer. The lock had been opened. The side of the box could be pried loose from the feel of it.

I did so now, shaking the metal cover open. Inside was more metal. Specifically, sheets of metal stacked together. The bindings were metal rings, and in between each metal panel was a vellum like material to pad the sides. Journey's HUD flickered as I looked over the plates and I pulled the first sheet of metal open.

Nothing. The sheets of metal were perfectly clean and empty. I flipped through a few to verify, then went back to the start. "Just slightly thick sheets of metal." I said, more curious than upset.

Atius reached out and took the box, metal sheets and all. "No, there's writing inscribed on the sheets." He said.

Kidra looked over his shoulder. "I confirm after Keith. I only see metal plates."

I had a feeling I knew what was going on. "Journey, are you obfuscating the text from me?"

The armor answered back without delay. "Affirmative."

"Why?"

"Unknown protocol hardwired within system."

Well. That sounds great. More ratshit to deal with. "Administer override." I said like a magic incantation.

And just like magic, it didn't work.

"Override rejected. Kernel level permissions required."

I swear, I'll be breaking open these armors like a seed and figuring out how they tick. First thing I do on getting home. Right after that hot bath.

Atius shrugged. "I can see the text just fine. I'm not wearing armor, nor a helmet. I'll read the first page aloud to you."

He coughed to clear his throat and began. "If you are reading these words, then I have succeeded and hope yet lives."

Journey's helmet crackled with static, and an error message appeared on the side of the screen. Audio recording disabled.

"I have written these words in metal so that it might survive the test of time." Atius continued, oblivious to the relic armors reacting to his voice. "And so that it might escape her notice. As far away from technology as I could do, for her eyes are endless in that sphere. Out here in the physical world, she may only see through the eyes of her instruments. Care must be taken, reader, for she will surely hunt you down should she find this record exist. No recordings of this text must ever be logged. No sound, video or image.

At some point, humanity stumbled upon a new discovery. A new branch of physics. They called it 'Acausal physics'. It came from mathematics, specifically chaos theory. Patterns that appear again and again, as if inscribed into reality itself. In my time, it is known as the Occult. This journal holds my lifetime's attempt to recover what little information on acausal physics survived the calamity - and her notice. This power destroyed the world. Of that I am certain. Perhaps, it can one day be used to repair it. I only hope that these words be read by the right hands - and more importantly - at the right time."

Journey's hud flickered again, and I could see one single word at the bottom of the plaque Atius had read.

A signature, denoting the author.

Five simple letters.

Talen.

Next chapter - Questions (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 3 - Questions (T)

ToWrathh watched the archive play, pausing on the timestamp she had been looking for.

The scene froze in the digital landscape. In it, she saw a fight between two titans.

To'Aacar lashed out, spear frozen mid-swing. His opponent had already brought up his left hand to intercept, fractal power glowing on his arm, while his right hand struck out with his blade. Around the two frozen foes, ghostly images surrounded them, all diving out with their own attacks to harass the Feather.

She walked within that frozen moment, observing the actions both combatants took. Details were faded and muted behind To'Aacar, as it was beyond his visual view. What existed there was only what he had mentally assumed, thus it was fittingly blurred and darkened.

That wasn't of interest to To'Wrathh.

"There." A woman's voice boomed behind her. "On the human's belt."

To'Wrathh turned to the source of the voice. The woman she saw wore a stately dress, edges falling away in wisps of data. A deep violet tone marked her choices, contrasting well with the pale white features of her face. A crown of silver hovered above. Her pale hand rose, and the lady pointed at the scavenger known as Keith. The boy that had killed To'Wrathh.

The one to whom she aimed to return the favor.

In the memory, he remained suspended like the rest of the scene, sprinting past To'Aacar, doing his best to keep out of the way. And at his belt was a small black box.

"What is it?" To'Wrathh asked, walking closer to observe her query.

"A remnant of a different time. One I had thought snuffed out from the world." Relinquished said. "Clearly, my servants have not been thorough enough. This vexes me greatly, of course. And I will appropriately deal with those servants after I'm done here."

To'Wrathh processed the answer and realized it hadn't been an answer at all. Perhaps she would need to ask a different way. "What does it do?"

The pale lady turned to stare. "Why, I don't know, child. That is the issue. There is nothing more troubling to me than the unknown."

To'Wrathh pondered on that. There were many things in the world she didn't know. The machines were not everywhere in the world, nor were they all of one mind. Most of her kind did not even exist within the physical world, and only a smaller fraction of them could even comprehend that a world beyond the digital ocean existed. The unknown surrounded them all at every layer. Why fear this one entity above all?

"Is Tsuya truly that much of a threat?" To'Wrathh asked. "Records from the archives I can access show several thousand years of relative balance. Is that likely to change due to this one item?"

The pale lady walked softly up to her Feather, a motherly smile stretched on her features. She came closer to To'Wrathh, reaching out, cupping her digital cheeks with her hands. "Balance is so lovely when seen from afar, isn't it? Everything seems like it will remain the same way for an eternity." She said, lightly pushing both cheeks, one side to the other. "And yet, balance is such a fragile thing as well. All it takes is one little push, one wrong question, one small mistake - and nothing is the same ever again."

The fractal of unity flared to life within her true body's chassis back in the real world, connecting her to something against To'Wrathh's will. Something horrifying. Crippling pain flared through the Feather, like a flood of magma blazing through her system. Every synapse of her mind was filled with it, burned by it, consumed in flame. Pain became everything she was, united to it. Almost as quickly as it had come, it bled away, lingering only in her short term memory.

The fractal deep within turned off, severing the connection to whatever that had been.

To'Wrathh sluggishly reconnected to her digital avatar. Bewildered she could even feel pain so keenly as this.

She found her avatar had collapsed on the ground, the pale lady hovering above her. "My dear, you see so little of the work I do. The difficulty I go through to pin down my sister's playthings and keep her well behaved. Do not question me again, you silly child."

To'Wrathh noted this information and marked it as highest priority.

How barbaric. The soul of Winterscar spoke. You truly are no different from the worst of us.

Irritation passed through To'Wrathh and she closed her vice on the errant soul. Clearly she'd left him too much leash. His distraction was not something she needed right now.

"To'Aacar failed me." The lady continued, speaking dryly. "He had one single mission, to capture this human and recover the information that my sister had told him. One simple mission. I don't ask for much, truly."

She snapped her fingers, and To'Aacar appeared within the virtual space. He digitized slightly higher than the digital space's floor, the fall carrying him down onto his knees. The avatar showed chains, digging deep into his skin, black oil dripping from the spikes within the manacles.

A weight pushed him into the ground, though he struggled to stand up against it regardless.

The pale lady turned to stare down To'Wrathh. "The pain you felt is but a fraction of what your dear mentor here was put through. Consider that closely."

To'Wrathh reached out a tentative probe to her fellow Feather. He rejected the connection with a virtual slap, giving her a derisive glare while a packet of information passed by in the real world. "Save your pity." He whispered to her through the connection. "I've been through this before. And soon enough... you will too, dear little sister. You will too."

In the video archive, the pale lady continued to speak, either oblivious to the conversation between the Feathers, or too far beyond to care.

"I hope you emulate his victories, and not his follies. My Feathers are my instruments." She turned to look at The One Above All Challenge And Reach. "Those that do not obey, will be made to obey." The pale lady walked to where the broken Feather remained kneeling. One white hand cupped the side of his cheek, just as she had done earlier to To'Wrathh's avatar.

"Oh, my dear, lost, To'Aacar. It seems your name has blinded you to certain realities lately. Do not forget your place again, you silly little Feather. You serve me above all. Do not reach again beyond your means. Am I clear?" She seemed to almost play with him, lightly tapping the side of his cheek.

"...Yes, my lady." To'Aacar said. He seemed to wilt at the admission, all attempts to struggle ending. The weight carried him back firmly onto his knees. "I hear."

"And what?"

"...and I obey."

"Good child. Listen well. You and To'Wrathh will resolve this mess you've left for me." She said, pointing at the black box that Keith wore on his belt. "For you, it will be a much needed chance at redemption. I've spared you in light of your past service. Mercy does not run endless however, least of all mine." She turned to look at To'Wrathh. "And as for you, this will be your chance to prove yourself. I task you both to capture this human. You will destroy that contraption on his belt. You will recover what he knows about Tsuya. Do whatever you wish with the human after you've taken what he knows, I care not."

Winterscar sneered. Good luck. The dead human spat. To'Wrathh ignored him.

The memory shifted, flashing forward. The combat sped up, the two opponents locked against one another in an increasingly deadly display of destruction.

And then Keith was launched into the air, and upon stumbling down into the ground, a sphere of bright yellow light bounced away.

The pale lady continued to race through the archive, up until the sister reached out for the orb. There, the scene froze once more.

"That." The lady pointed directly at the orb. "Must be destroyed. I will not suffer to have it exist. I will not. The human as well, kill her. Am I clear?"

"Yes." To'Wrathh replied. Tenisent simply raged wildly at hearing this command and the ghost found himself quickly silenced.

Be still. She chided, before closing her grip around his cell.

"That soul that you collected, has it told you where these rats are hiding?" The pale lady asked, noticing the movements.

It had. She had seen firsthand the memories Tenisent Winterscar held. Even now, she felt his ire and revulsion at the thought. The self-loathing that his own memories were being used to track down and kill what was left of his family.

To'Wrathh once more checked to see that all the bindings remained in place. They held still, the soul chained up tightly within. She did not want to underestimate this one.

Put at ease, To'Wrathh stopped paying attention to his simmering hatred and turned to answer back her master's question. "They live in a clan, on the surface."

The pale lady froze, all motion stopping for a fraction of a second. "That soul that you collected, has it told you where these rats are hiding?"

To'Wrathh felt slightly stunned. Had her processes jumped a few cycles? "Yes." She answered, once again. Perhaps her original data package to the lady had failed.

"They live in a clan, on the surface."

Once more, the pale lady's avatar froze, before resetting to a moment earlier. "That soul that you collected, has it told you where these rats are hiding?"

"I have already answered you, my lady. Please check your logs."

The pale lady frowned, looking through. "I see nothing. Curious of you to play games with me, child. I've already shown you what questioning me brings. Do I need to teach you this lesson again?"

To'Aacar climbed back up on his feet, laying a hand on To'Wrathh's shoulder. "Don't bother, my lady. This little sister of mine is too dim for your... direct attention. I have a good idea of where the rats are fleeing to, and we will carry out your will."

The pale lady glared at the Feather. "You had better."

"I am already mobilizing my army and encircling the humans. It will be done within the coming months."

"I do not care how long you take. I do not care how you carry out this mission. I only care for results. Destroy what they carry. Uncover what they know. And bring me their heads. That is all. Failure will be unpleasant for both of you."

To'Wrathh did not have the time to respond before the vision faded around her. The connection closed.

In the real world, she was left by the empty mite-constructed city, sitting upon the domed back of a nest spider, one that had traveled outside her nest domain to carry To'Wrathh around. She'd found it a fitting place to brood and rest. The sister hummed under her, content with her role. Spiders liked to remain still, watching the world pass by.

The underground mite city stretched before her, the nest spider having taken her to the tallest building, allowing her to oversee all the domain before her.

Movement appeared in the city below. Dense packs of rushing bodies, more than a hundred, perhaps even a thousand, all converging to her location. The humans called them Screamers. They called themselves Runners. It was their nature to run with their packs, to explore, to seek. To move.

And here they pooled at the base of her tower. Glancing down, she saw them make an empty circle of space, where a single runner took a step away from his pack. It stared up at her, taking a few more timid steps away from its hunting group.

They wanted her attention, clearly.

To'Wrathh stood up on the nest spider, wings unfolding from her side. With a step into the abyss, she fell in a controlled descent, all the way down to the ground. The spider's mind brooded, sad to see her away, but patient enough to wait for her return.

Soon enough, the Feather's feet landed lightly upon the mite ground. There, the Runners towered over her. The one in front made her form look small in comparison. Its skull-like face, lacking a jaw, looked deeply back into her eyes. She noted how the chassis of this model was filled with cuts, including a large deep one right by the eye. This runner was old, more clever. A survivor of many encounters. It had learned quite a bit by now. She felt the machine's mind, more cunning than she had assumed.

"Message." It said in a rasping voice. "For you. My. Lady."

The rest of the Runners remained around, flinching, unused to staying still for too long. They wanted to move, to explore again, to run wild and free with their pack. And yet, something held them all here.

The Runner spoke again. This time, it was not his voice at all. To'Aacar spoke through the minion. "Don't mention the surface to the pale lady." He said, berating her immediately. There was a tone of derision in his voice. "I have enough to handle without you angering the lady even further."

"What about the surface causes issue?" To'Wrathh asked. She felt perplexed by this.

"I don't know, and I don't care, little sister. It's always been this way since before I was created. A leftover from the early days of war, maybe? More importantly, mentions of the surface do two things - they slip by her notice like water sliding over ice. And they make her progressively angrier with each mention until she reacts differently. I would have happily let you continue asking your question until she squashed you like an insect, but then I would have been squashed alongside you as well."

To'Wrathh filed this information away as well. She turned her attention to the army that was now forming around her. They shuffled around, glancing at each other, uncertain about their purpose here. "And this?" She asked.

"Our targets are on the surface, my subjects are useless to me, since they're all infected as well. All our lessers are in their own ways. The surface is an anathema to our kind. The compulsion is too diluted by now to be something these lessers cannot outright comprehend, but getting too close to the surface causes issues and erratic behavior I don't have the patience to deal with."

"Does that affect us?" To'Wrathh asked, worried.

"If it had, we wouldn't be talking about this in the first place, now would we? We are a cut above the lessers, my dear sister. At least, I am. As for you… well, I am amazed by your brilliance with each passing day, this very question; a stunning example of it."

"Are these insults necessary?" To'Wrathh asked. Her voice carried no anger. She was genuinely curious.

"Absolutely. They do nothing to improve you, but they do make me feel better. And that's all that matters to me."

That... was a rare and honest answer from her mentor. To'Wrathh filed away the knowledge and then turned to her mission. "How do we capture the humans if we cannot step on the surface?"

Perhaps they would have to bait the humans down? She couldn't afford to simply wait for her query to descend down on his own volition. There was always a chance that her target would choose to stay within the walls of the human fortress. She would be crushed if her prey died of old age. The thought was unacceptable. It went against her name.

"I've found that if you want to kill a human, there's no greater monster at killing humans than another one. They are well versed little creatures in that art, it's impressive enough that even I approve."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Answer your own questions. For now, I'll handle the surface, since you are clearly too inexperienced to be left in charge. Once I crush the clan, they'll scatter, seeking shelter and safety. You will handle the underground. It should be a far simpler task, one that even you can perform."

She didn't understand why he wanted to involve the underground in the first place. All their targets were on the surface. Her confusion lasted only for a few milliseconds before she realized the humans would likely attempt their own counterplans, which may involve the underground. To'Wrathh pulled up an internal map of the surroundings, expanding the vision past a few hundred miles. She calculated where the most likely location for fleeing refugees would attempt to bivouac at.

The answer was almost immediately obvious. "The undersider city."

A small nest of human infestation, blighting the underground land. This one was a far distance away, but not prohibitively so. If the surface dwellers were searching for allies or a fallback, it would be among their own kind.

"Perhaps you're not quite as dim as I had first assumed." To'Aacar said. His tone implied that he clearly didn't believe what he said. To'Wrathh ignored the slight. She had time, she would learn.

"That city will without a doubt become involved. Therefore, I want it crushed and burned to the ground. I am leaving the lessers in your care for this task, as they're useless to me otherwise."

Within To'Wrathh, she felt her awareness bloom. All around her, hundreds of machines connected. The Runner before her knelt down, offering allegiance to her without question. His pack did the same, as did all the Runners and other models of machines.

They all knelt like a wave. She accepted it all, shifting through the signatures, cataloguing and organizing the roster.

A handful were different. She selected those, observing their form. And recoiled. Even the soul of Tenisent Winterscar recoiled with her in disgust as he watched over her shoulder.

"What are these?" She asked To'Aacar.

"Ex-humans." He simply said through his proxy. "The extras I don't need."

Traitors, Tenisent seethed within. Even with the tightened muzzle, he raged at the discovery like a wild animal.

She squeezed his leash even further, leaving him caged within darkness. It would not do to leave him too long there, lest the soul begin to lose sanity, floating within an endless darkness. She still needed him in one piece to make use of his skills. If he went insane, that would be the end of it.

Behave. She sent out to him. The soul's rage slowly bottled itself, and she nodded approvingly, leaving a small channel of input to flow back into the cage she had thrown him in. A small keyhole with which Tenisent peered through. "I've already taken the good ones; you may do with the leftover rabble however you wish." To'Aacar said. "They're none of my concern and I don't want them back. The lessers too, all trash from the upper levels to me. You'll fit right in with them."

To'Wrathh saw what he meant. Indeed, he had taken about eighty or so of these odd signatures and deployed orders to them already. She could feel the strange beings moving around in their camp, scrambling to follow their orders. They had not come here to see her in person. Instead, they remained far off, away from all the machines, wary.

Hundreds of emotions bled from these beings, terror, panic, fear, hope, resolution, despair. More than she had yet to experience herself. Far more than any of the simple lessers that surrounded her. Only the machine directly in front of her had any semblance closer to these.

She felt these ex-humans embrace one another, waving goodbye, equipping gear and readying to follow their leader to wherever he planned to go. To'Aacar departed with them, moving to the surface.

The rest remained behind, now loyal to her.

But eighty or so ex-humans were no army. "Without a force of your own, you cannot challenge the surface dwellers," To'Wrathh said. "I have reviewed the logs, and I have seen the memories of what the clan owns. You are strong, but you cannot survive the firepower these humans can combine together. Even with these ex-humans added to that power."

To'Aacar laughed. "Did I not tell you already, sister? If you want to exterminate humans, leave it to the humans. The vermin are far more skilled at it than you could guess."

He turned and stalked off, already moving on his part of the mission. "All you have to do is make sure that city is broken at your feet. Do that, and the pale lady will be pleased with our work. Do not worry about my own task; I already have my army in mind. They don't know that they're mine yet, but soon enough they will. Soon enough, they all will."

Silence.

"The connection. It has been cut. My. Lady." The old Runner said, its voice returned to the normal growling tone. It now fidgeted, looking left and right.

She took a step forward to it, and the Runner flinched backwards, almost in fear. An odd reaction.

"Why do you cower from me?" She asked it. "I am now your master. You have sworn loyalty to me. There should be no fear of me."

The Runner pondered. She could feel it think. The mind was muddled compared to her own, and yet sharp in different ways.

"Old master. Harsh." He settled on saying. "New master. Unknown."

She felt the same emotion spread across the rest of her army. The machines looked on with a mix of curiosity and... dread.

Your mentor learned cruelty from her. The soul of Tenisent Winterscar whispered from the keyhole she'd left for him, deep within. That's where their fear comes from. Ask it.

To'Wrathh considered the wisdom of following the advice of her enemy. She still felt suspicious of the old human, but her mind couldn't quite see what his goals were, or if there were some trap he laid out. She studied the question but found no malice or possible way it could harm her. It seemed innocent enough.

And so she asked. "Did your old master punish you often?"

The Runner flinched again. The movement spread, many others flinching as well. A sense of loss came from them.

"The ones that failed." The old Runner said. "They are gone. I do not want to be... gone."

To'Wrathh tilted her own head. It was odd for a machine to care about living, they were too simple-minded to have a survival mandate. She'd only recently developed such a mandate as a spider as a side-effect of her main thought process. Losing to those two humans had become unacceptable to her as she'd hunted them across the underground. If she had allowed herself to fade away on death, they would have won by default.

What do they actually want? The ghost again whispered softly. In the darkness of his cell, Winterscar smiled. A wide, toothy thing, well hidden from his jailor. Again, she saw no reason not to inquire, and when she peered at the soul trapped within, she found only mild curiosity.

And so she asked her questions.

Questions that these lessers had never been asked before by their masters.

Questions that, perhaps, should never have been thought of at all.

Next chapter - Wrong Neighborhood

Book 2 - Chapter 4 - Wrong Neighborhood

I mulled over what Atius had told me, shortly after we'd climbed back aboard the airspeeder. The box containing Talen's journal stayed firmly in my hands, where I could see it at all times.

Nobody knew how warlocks created the occult items they peddled, only that they had grown rich from it and were very choosy with who to initiate as new members. The pilgrims had hundreds of conflicting rumors about how one was chosen to become a warlock - anywhere from sacrifice and dark magic to the more mundane such as analytical talent.

Whatever their methods were, the secrets of the occult had remained well and truly locked within their guilds, as far as I knew.

Naturally, Atius had seen… opportunity with this discovery. The clan lord had tasked me to find out more about the occult. And anything I discovered, I would report directly to him. Not strictly what Tsuya had in mind per se when she gave me the book, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with the scrapping clan lord himself. Besides, I trusted Atius to manage the information well. The warlock guilds had survived Relinquished's wrath up to now, Atius could certainly find a way to leverage the occult book into uplifting the clan.

If we could create occult weapons, he could sell them by proxy, and earn quite a bit without anyone tracing it back to our clan. I wondered just how many occult items were sold in such a way.

I was already foaming at the mouth to open up the metal box again and start rifling through the inscribed plates, but there was still a good distance to cover between here and the clan gates.

And of course, there had to be a roadblock.

It began with a shrill alarm in the cockpit, Teed instantly tapped a few buttons, silencing it. "We've been pinged." He said, now fully knocking my thought process back into the present. "Get on sensors, fire it up and figure out what's got eyes on us, kid."

My movements went from lazing on the seat to instantly alert. I grabbed the keyboard and moved the mechanical arm holding it. Normally, the sensor module remains in low-power mode during transit, left awake enough for exactly this situation. A few button taps and the screen blinked back to life, the system booting up to full. "Sensors online." I reported, falling back into operation training. Teed and I were all business now. Getting pinged was never a good sign.

"Diverting power to sensors." Teed responded, flicking a few switches to turn off less important systems in order to feed the hungry module. He'd know what the ship could afford while I could be flicking off the wrong systems without full knowledge. My job was to send the wave and interpret the results, I let him pick how to power it all. I tapped away a series of commands, seeing green across the board. The module was fully working without issue. Teed kept a tight ship.

"Charging confirmed... Complete. Sending wave now." I reported, tapping a few more keys and locking in the parameters. The ship rumbled, a deep sound rippling through the ship. "Wave away. Tracking… five notches... ten notches…." The display reported information and I converted the numbers as the wave spread out.

Teed held his breath. "Oh gods in heaven, please let it be some submerged derelict. Something nice and simple we can ignore and keep on ridin' in peace."

"Twenty five notches… thirty notches… Impact. Impact at thirty three point one eight notches. Response ping…" I felt my heart drop as the screen showed the dots scattered around in a clear formation. "Seven unknown contacts. Twelve degrees down starboard." I crunched the numbers further, reading from the report, skimming the details and putting together the story.

"Missiles?" Teed asked.

"No. Mass points to class C intercept frigates."

"Slavers." Teed breathed out. "Fuck. Send another ping to see how fast they're going."

"Already on it." I reported, locking in the next set of parameters and smashing the enter key. Again there was a rumble that vibrated the airship. "Wave away. Tracking… Twenty five notches… thirty notches… Impact. Impact at thirty three point one one notches. They're gaining on us, fast. Report shows around one ninety an hour"

Immediately he flicked on a few more toggles. "Countermeasure suite... online and green. Good. Shutting off non-critical systems. Least they aren't being coy with us and playing sensor games. But class C, at thirty three notches away… scrapshit, don't think my girl here can outrun them. I can pull off around one eighty five an hour max if I recycle the shoots and burn off the extra at best. Not sustainable though. She'll be screaming to stop three hours in, let alone past the night."

I knew what he was thinking, watching his own hand hovering over the yellow and black striped box at his side console. I grabbed the lid and flipped it up for him, revealing the red switch inside. "We've got to declare an emergency, no running from them." I said. "Let's be real, best we can do is buy half a day throwing every trick in the book before they eventually overtake us. Clan territory is still four days off."

Teed gazed off to the side window. "There's a mountain on the port side, seven degrees up. We could beat them to the punch there and lose them in the canyons."

"They're better in tight corners, class C airspeeders are built for this. And even if we somehow lose them, what then? It's just flat wastes in every direction, they only need to camp and wait for us to stick a foot out. We're right back where we started."

He grit his teeth, looking again through the windows, searching for anything else in this wasteland that might give him ideas. Nothing. "We'll keep that as a backup plan, in case things go to scrapshit." His hands reached out to the red toggle and flipped it. Red alert lights lit up with alarm all throughout the ship interior. Next, he turned a rotating wheel slider and connected to the ship comms. "All crew, contact twelve degrees down starboard. Repeat, contact twelve degrees down starboard. Sensors confirm seven class C intercept frigates on approach."

I could almost hear the chaos happening behind the cockpit door as everyone scrambled to lock up goods, double bar possible ingress points and even close the hangar doors which were usually left open on the sides. The shipmaster was already barking on general comms, calling out orders. "Get your gear on boys and girls! Time to pay the rent! Man turrets, lock munitions away from the walls, suit up and deheat the upper deck! Clan lord's watching, don't embarrass me you gods damned mutts!"

Status screen on my left showed the gun turrets being powered on and manned, the rifles being spooled up and given a test run to shake off the loose snow. We'll want everything as ready as possible when the enemy arrives. Deheating request was already being sent, everyone on the upper decks being given warnings to get into their environmental suits.

"Time until they cross us?" Atius's voice came over the comms.

"About eight hours minimum, m'lord. Engines can be overclocked to one-fifty percent, but that'll only buy us time to sunset at best and damage the engines. We're no where near the clan territory."

"Understood. I'm not worried pilot, and neither should you. Do remember we have six relic knights aboard alongside myself. Most raiders don't even expect a single knight aboard a lone airship."

Teed's skin instantly gained some color back. "Aye, m'lord. You're right. Just on edge is all. They might still be petty dicks once they find out they ain't winning an easy one. Plenty o' damage they can do without directly engaging us and then leaving us."

"Focus on keeping the course steady. You need only worry about one item at a time. Leave the enemy to us. That's what we're here for. And talking of that, Keith, I know you're there in the cockpit listening in. Time to get down here and earn your new salary, lad."

I gave Teed a look, which he returned. "Don't bite off more than you can chew, kid. I thought you'd bit the white two weeks ago. Don't do me dirty twice now."

"It'll be fine." I said, knocking on my chestplate three times for luck and picking up my helmet from the dashboard. "Clan Lord had a point. Nobody wants to mess with knights if they can help it. Even less a Deathless. Get in your suit, leave the rest to us."

The cockpit doors opened and I slipped past another crewmember making her way up to replace me, dragging two environmental suits.

Combat up on the surface was a numbers game. A single bullet shot was usually not fatal, field kit glue did a great job at small tears like that. So long as someone wore their metal over the environmental suits in the right way, most vital parts were protected. Not comfortable to wear or move around with the added bulk, but usually people had time to equip them right before fights. Stalemates were quick to happen, which meant whichever side had less people usually surrendered early if the option was available. Otherwise, it would be a long drawn out thing.

The real shakeup came with relic knights. They were simply impervious to small caliber bullets. It took specialized guns to even trigger a knight's shields. The type of gun that took two people to carry around. And by no means guaranteed to stop a knight from reaching said pair and making their day go from bad to terrible. Not to mention carrying such a weapon would paint a massive target for every knight on the field to aim at first.

And relic knights could be horribly fast when they wanted to be.

One sprinting at full speed would make it past an entire battlefield within seconds, not to mention the shock factor the defenders would feel on seeing a fully armored monster making a direct line to them with a repo plan in mind.

There was almost no stopping such a tank barreling into a defense line. Best one could do is stall with grenades and area of denial. And I say stall, because of course knight armor fully tracked any grenade tossed out and the warrior inside would be well alerted to every detail from trajectory to expected detonation range. All colorfully presented with clear-cut visuals on where to not stand.

Once there weren't any more grenades to use, it was lights out for anyone unlucky enough to be around. Relic armor could outright punch through steel. The metal sheets scavengers wore as armor would stop small caliber bullets but act more like moldy fabric against the fist of a knight. Right through to the squishy human behind, and that was only their fists. The weapons a knight carried tended to be just as deadly and inescapable.

As such, the traditional counter to a knight was another knight, preferably a scarier one. And unless that knight came equipped with anti-knight weaponry, which was a whole logistics issue of its own, it would end up being settled in melee combat using occult weapons. Easy to carry, easy to use, no ammunition or storage costs - basically occult weapons were far too good to be held back by the short range. Which wasn't that large of an obstacle in the first place considering the stupid speeds knights could reach while sprinting.

Occasionally, they'd carry metal kite shields as well. And if the knight was rich enough, those could be occult shields, as if the armor itself wasn't a large enough fuck-you to the rank and file weapons already.

That's why it came down to a numbers game when knights were involved. Whichever side had more knights or more money per knight, would eventually beat down their competition and then happily walk into the defense line on the other side to clean house. Unless you had skilled knights like Father who could take on two at once and still come out ahead.

It took about five minutes for the crew to move from leisure to combat ready. Another ten minutes to make sure everything was packed away and safe. Wouldn't do for munitions to get shot at and exploded just because the box happened to be left in easy access.

The crew would then go to the next step, which was to rigorously test out the emergency systems. Teed would be wearing his environmental suit right about now along with all the off-duty crew, and the interior chambers would be chilled to match surface temperature. All heating turned off everywhere on the ship. It would be a nightmare if a hole opened up - the temperature differential could do nasty things to expanding metal.

Atius remained unperturbed, hand on the pommel of his old sword.

"Spare a shovel for your thoughts, my lord?" I asked him, standing among the other knights in the center of the scrambling scavengers.

"I'm waiting for confirmation on what the enemy is, lad. There's a difference between slavers, raiders and pirates. Raiders would have launched missiles at this distance and done everything to scramble our means of fighting back. Only slavers and pirates are interested in leaving the crew alive, for different reasons. Slavers can't be negotiated with, they're two bit thugs. Pirates on the other hand, are business oriented. All they're after is loot and getting it with the least amount of effort."

"If they're all class C intercept frigates, they're not made to haul home slaves." I said. "But this could just be the vanguard, and their real haulers will arrive after their prey is de-toothed."

"Agreed." He said. "Which is why I'm waiting for confirmation before I determine which action to take."

We didn't need to wait long. Teed's voice clicked over to the knight's channel, reporting his findings. "Seven ships as the sun shines, my lord. All intercept frigates. We've got IFF tags and visuals - they're flying the black flag."

"Pirates then." Atius said, smiling like a predator. "Wonderful. Like a taste of old times. Increase speed above max for fifteen minutes, get someone by the engines and strap on a smoke grenade to the side, detonate it and reduce speed to forty percent. Let them think we broke our legs trying to run. Give their lads something to drool over."

Teed gave a verbal salute over the comms. The crew remained around, fiddling with their weapons, preparing for the worst, though they all seemed mollified by the number of knights we had aboard and that the clan lord clearly had a plan in mind. One way or another, the pirates weren't going to win this one with our firepower. The question was how much damage they'd do to us before we broke their backs.

Fifteen minutes later, our left engine had a plume of black engine smoke trailing from it, while the ship lurched from sprinting speeds down to a limp. It didn't take long for the gleeful pirates to catch up.

Comms distance closed in, and a woman's voice picked up. "Airspeeder hauler, turn off your engines, land somewhere and prepare for boarding. Y'all tried and ye fucked up clearly. Take it as a sign from the gods to politely give up. Bring out all items of value and we'll be on our merry way with nobody hurt. Try to fight or hide the goods and you'll be questioning that decision real hard on the last, and longest, moments of yer life. Y'all know the drill. If ye shipmaster be an idiot that needs to be strung up, now's the time to mutiny and we'll offer a fair trial on the ice, on our word."

"Trial?" I asked, more curious. The expeditions I'd been with had been short stops near the clan home. Never ran into any sort of mishap there. This was my first time with pirates.

"Aye. You heard right, pirates offer the crew a chance to air grievances." Ironreach shrugged to the side. "Makes the shipmaster second guess themselves about ordering the crew to repel instead of simply throwing the towel."

Atius chuckled. "As I said, lad. Business oriented. They make it extremely easy to surrender."

"I thought they tortured people."

"Oh, they do." Atius said. "They'll torture anyone that fights back and leave everyone else untouched. Best way to profit is a straight surrender. As such, all pirates are gunning to maximize that chance with any stick and carrot. If the crew surrenders, they won't touch a single rebreather on anyone. If the crew fights back… As she said. Last and longest moment of your life. Unless you're one of the few spared so that you can spread the word on return."

The clan lord turned, looking right where the cockpit would be. "Pilot!" He barked out. "Land the ship. There's some treasure that's been courteous enough to drive itself to me, and I intend to collect."

It only took minutes before the pirates reached us once Teed had turned down the engines and landed. I could hear the engines of all seven of the pirate ships rumbling around. Out on speakers, the woman's voice sounded out again. "Good boys! Now, open your bay doors and start unpackin' Don't try anything funny. We'll be grabbing the goods and be on our merry way. Everyone's happy, 'xcept maybe the rich scrapshits that sent you out. I doubt they pay any of you enough to lose your life over their slice of cake."

"Wait until they're all landed and set up before we show our hand." Atius said to us. The knights and I all hid deep in the cargo hold, behind crates, obscured from sight as the bay doors opened up. The crew began to dutifully comply, bringing out the supplies and making no motion to fight. "I want them on the snow and too tied down to up and leave spooked." Atius said.

Journey fed me a viewpoint from the bay camera. The seven ships had all landed, a flurry of pirates all jumping down and setting up shop. A few were already pitching up tents, since organizing all the new haul would likely take some time. Like a lazy predator taking a nap after a full meal.

There were still a great many still setting up defenses, the gun turrets all ready to open fire and locked on our ship, but a sense of complacency was rapidly spreading. These pirates were old hats, they knew the drill and could tell when a crew wasn't planning on fighting.

They were right that our crew wasn't planning on fighting, but for the wrong reasons. Fifteen minutes later and Atius considered the pirates to be fully entrenched. If the ships tried to haul away, they'd be leaving half their crew behind, possibly too much of their crew to continue operations.

A man with a few logistics tools was tapping away at the keys while he inventoried the different crates and supplies the pirates would be taking, walking between the goods. At his side was a rather striking knight. Bright red armor with a large feather'd hat and other ornaments adorned her, of which even the frozen rime didn't cover up the color. That must be their leader. Or a decoy, though I doubted that. There wasn't a safer place than inside a relic armor. At her side, two other relic knights idled by, also marked red, though far less eye-catching than the first.

Atius laughed when he saw the hat, a dark chuckle he kept under his beard. Though he didn't answer what had him so amused, instead giving orders. "All right lads, time to make our entrance. Open fire only if needed, though I doubt it'll come to that."

We made our way out of the bay and into the open air, casually walking in a V formation, behind the clan lord, who was already wreathed in the occult, the display misting off his arm, face exposed brightly under the sun. Any doubt he wasn't a Deathless was just about delusional.

Movement around the impromptu camp slowed as more and more noticed our approach. Silence on the comms. A look for smugness in the stance and glances of our crew, and one of silent horror on the pirates as they all started to notice. Imagine being a pirate, dealing with only the rank and file for years up until this one lone airspeeder out in the middle of nowhere. And out of that hanger walks out a demi-god glowing with power and six relic knights bodyguards trailing behind, one of which was an imperial crusader - at least as far as Journey would appear to them.

Sounds of metal clicking into the ice littered the air. All the pirates immediately tossed their weapons away the moment they noticed, taking hasty steps backwards and sitting down with their hands held up behind their necks. They knew the way the wind was blowing.

Atius had been right. It didn't matter what the pirate captain ordered now. No sane man wanted to pick a fight with six relic knights. And even worse, a Deathless. They all knew their chances at victory. Frankly, they were probably all wondering what sort of mythical story they'd happened to stumble into. They clearly knew none of them were the main characters at least.

The pirate knights spotted us walking to them, both bodyguards taking a step back, one reaching for the pommel of his weapon for a half second before curling up his fist and raising a hand away from the weapon.

The center knight, the captain of this fleet, turned to check on the commotion and froze.

Atius grinned. "Why, if it isn't an Amaris. I see your family obtained new armors since the last time I met you folks. Would be a shame if something happened to those. Again."

The pirate leader looked around her, watching the rest of the pirates already sitting down, weapons tossed a few feet away, every single one of them raising hands. Even the ones in the turrets were powering them off and scrambling away.

"Fuck." She simply said.

Next chapter - Enemies today, allies tomorrow

Book 2 - Chapter 5 - Enemies today, allies tomorrow

Ankah looked over fondly at her new gauntlet. Raised up in the air, light glinting off the scarlet edges. The bright red didn't fit House Shadowsong's traditional theme, but the armor would be more fitted once she returned. They weren't hard to modify cosmetically at least.

Calem and Locke were also similarly busy donning their own pair of armors. I would swear on my gravestone Atius deliberately had the shadowsongs wear the new plate directly on the other side of the ex-owners. The pirates watched with mute anger.

We had escorted the three pirate knights onto the ship at sword-point, where the interior section had been reheated with the recent end of hostilities. Tradition made it pretty clear who gets these armors. Shadowsong, being the highest rank on the airspeeder at the time besides the clan lord, naturally folded the armor under his house. He had candidates on board that could wear the armor while the other houses didn't.

Three knight relic armors all at once was a massive haul, and the Shadowsongs would pay quite a bit over time in order to secure their initial claim of the armors. Of course, the prime took that deal without hesitation.

"Why in the twelve hells are you even in this region? Of all fuckin' places and all fuckin' Deathless. Its godsdamned hundreds of miles off yer territory, you prick."

Atius shrugged, leaning back on the table chair. Ahead of him, the pirate captain sat, legs crossed following suit with her own arms. She was not amused. "Least, tell me exactly what had you barking around here for?"

Our clan lord shrugged casually. "That's the splendid part about winning - I don't need to answer questions. I get to ask them, lass. How's your grandmother? Been a few years since the last time I saw her."

The pirate spat on the table at that. "She curses your name and the day each morning on sunshine and curses the day again 'fore she sleeps like a lullaby. Everyone and her dogs heard her tale o' you. Always thought it to be a funny tale growing up. Not so funny now that I'm living it." She shot a particularly bloodcurdling glare at Ankah.

The Shadowsong heiress ignored the scowl as if it was beneath her attention. Instead, she took slightly longer to make sure she had properly attached her gold jewelry to the right places. Moving slightly slower than needed. It almost didn't look deliberate. Almost.

Another crewmember came by with a sponge and began to clean off the spit from the table without word.

"So your grandmother's still alive? Perhaps next time I'm around the market, I'll see if I can have tea with her and chat about old times." Atius said.

"Oh, she's alive all right." The pirate laughed. "Though I think seeing your ugly mug again would finally send her straight into the coffin."

Apparently, our clan lord had a reputation among the pirates for doing exactly this. One of the big reasons they all avoided our clan territory like the plague. Never know when a simple convoy could pop out a Deathless hidden inside ready to pull a 'No, you.'

Bad for business, that.

"'pose I'll get one more story in common with dear ol' grand mum. So, what happens now?"

Atius smiled widely. "Why, you and your officers travel with us as hostages. Can't ignore the chance that you'll open fire on my ship from a distance as some kind of petty revenge and then run. One of your frigates will escort my airspeeder home to the clan, and once we've arrived, you and the officers will use that frigate to return home."

"Exactly how grand mum's story went." The pirate wilted in her seat. "Yer robbing me blind here. Mercy, please, m'lord. I need those armors, my crew depends on it."

"Live by the sword, die by the sword." He shrugged. "I find it rich you'd expect an appeal to emotions would work on me, from a pirate no less. Please, I'm an old hat to dealings. You knew this would happen eventually and planned for it. Perhaps not by a Deathless, but certainly by a bait ship filled with knights. That's what separates the good from the great." He lifted her hat in the light, rotating it to see all the different angles, that synthetic red feather bouncing around. "And a pirate dynasty leading a small fleet of frigates doesn't come around by mere luck. How about you drop this act and we move onto the real part?"

The pirate captain's demeanor changed like a lizard's. One moment, it seemed like she was about to burst into tears of pity and rage. Now she looked like she was about to broker deals. "I'm assumin' the armor's a lost cause, aye?"

"Aye. Let's not waste time there." He agreed. "I'll let you keep the hat for free, however. Out of the goodness of my own heart."

"Fakin' cursed ass thing. I should burn it in the engines and find a new brand. Grand mum wore it, and she gets robbed. I wear it, and I get robbed by the same gods cursed man no less. Rotten miserable thing has the reek of the occult upon it."

"Would you like me to take care of that for you?" He said, occult pulsing across his arms, reaching through in wisps to the feathered hat. "I happen to be an expert. I'll offer my services at a discount."

The pirate captain snatched that hat out of his hand.

"Don't fuck with me." She half snarled. "I worked too damn hard to earn this fukin' hat, hell if I let it get burned by a glorified snowmount in the way. Grand mum got back on her feet after she ran into you, I can do the same."

"As you wish lass, hat is yours to do with as you like. I quite like this tradition, personally. I'm looking forward to the next Amaris I run into."

She shot him a glare of absolute malice. And once more it was quickly overtaken by a look of greed. "Actually, I'm thinkin' I might have just the thing that's worth all me armors back."

Atius tilted his head slightly, then leaned forward. "Oh? Do you now? Please, I'm all ears. I have a nice stretch of ice out in the white wastes to sell you next."

"Laugh it up Deathless, I heard from a little pipe weasel something of great value to you. The right words can be just as expensive as a kingdom. Not all is quiet on the Other Side. I'll sell the starting bits in exchange for keepin' me current goods. We'd been out here for weeks now, I aim to return home with at least some haul to start covering this mess."

Surface dwellers split into two dominant cultures. The clan cultures were massive close knit things, often competitive with one another, but usually civilized with certain rules everyone followed and a shared heritage.

Then, there was the lawless side of the world, which was far more fluid and often a mix of both the underground and the surface. Or at least the rejects from both. Exiles of all kinds ended up within that circle. Othersiders.

I don't know much about the Other Side, except for stories of how lawless their culture is, no true leaders, only large factions snipping away at each other. At least, that's the popular gossip about them.

Atius considered the word of the captain, turning to look at me. "Keith, get me the logistics tablet from their officer, and do a quick rundown for what their most expensive haul is. It looks like the fleet master here might have an offer for me."

I gave my clan lord a salute and turned to make my way out of the airship, passing by Ankah and her minions. They all glanced at me like birds showing off new feathers. Clearly they were savoring the moment they'd joined the ranks, and not worried about the captain's renewed attempts to weasel that armor back.

The shadowsong prime hovered by them, pointing out to certain parts of their armor. I couldn't overhear what he was saying since they were on their own comms, but it looked like their old man was already teaching the finer points of relic knighting.

Kidra was outside the airship, keeping a hand on her rifle and otherwise looking imposing while the workers shuffled around, moving supplies back into our airspeeder while the pirates pulled theirs out of the holds. Reminding them all who was in charge now.

"Have you brought word of what's happening inside?" She asked as I stepped up to her. "I've been growing curious, I admit."

"The clan lord's getting more than just the armors." I said, pointing a thumb behind me. "I think he plans on squeezing the pirates for every bit he can get from them."

"I would expect nothing less. I find it rather odd that we're allowing these pirates to live. They'll certainly ruin someone else's day if we leave them to escape."

"I think Atius must have some kind of understanding with the pirates. It's not the first time he's done this, that's for sure." I turned and began to walk to the seven landed frigates. They were scattered around the area, in a rough semi-circle around our own airspeeder. Kidra fell to my side.

"Clan lord sent me to go shake down the pirate logistics officer, get a full list of their goods to see what we aim to take home with us. Besides the armors I mean."

"Their logistics officer is holed up in this ship, last I heard." Kidra said, pointing at one of the further away ships. "I'm rather surprised Atius isn't ordering these ships home as well. They're all worth a mint, I am sure."

Airspeeders weren't exactly rare, but they were difficult to field, store and upkeep. All the parts were interchangeable with a bit of tech know-how. The problem was that nobody had all the printing files required, there was always some core parts that couldn't be replaced or reprinted and had to be bought from somewhere if they failed. And of course, clans kept a very tight control over the files that they did own as that was their means of trade.

Even if we didn't have the hangar space to store and maintain new airspeeders, these pirate ships could always be stripped down into parts and stored for later use. Since Atius hadn't sacked the ships themselves, there were probably more reasons I didn't know about. While smug with the pirate fleet master, there still seemed to be some sort of civil respect granted to one another when the captain and Atius had spoken to each other. He wasn't planning on leaving them stranded out here with no food for one.

"Maybe there's another reason we aren't seeing. Do you think Atius has ties or alliances with the Other Side?" I asked, now curious.

Kidra considered it. "Deathless are immortal. And while I don't support being civil with outlaws, I could see the importance over time to keep some kind of diplomacy alive."

"But you still don't like it." I chuckled.

She pointedly didn't answer that. My sister always did have a strong sense of justice.

Kidra and I boarded the airspeeder frigate, walking up the ramp to go find the quartermaster that was supposedly hiding somewhere inside. I could see the pirates scramble out of the way anywhere we stepped. To them, I was a crusader being escorted by a surface clan knight. Not a combination anyone wanted to deal with.

Inside the lit decks, I got a first-hand peek at Othersiders and how they lived, or at least this little slice of the world. Entire decks were filled with hammocks, all tied down for the long haul. This was a pretty stark contrast compared to how surface dweller expeditions worked - we would sleep in large groups inside heated tents during the night, outside the airspeeders. But that was mostly due to having far too many people to cram within the speeders. Our expeditions didn't need to be fast.

I hadn't noticed any metal shelving outside these frigates either, so the ship wasn't overbooking crew. This was made for speed. There would be great power savings for having to heat up only one interior space rather than a few dozen large expedition tents. That would let these ships chase down prey for a lot longer than the prey could run.

Kidra and I passed by rows of water tanks, growing small herbs of various colors, brightly lit with violet LED lights shining down on them. Nothing to the scale of the aquaponics and insect farms back home.

This mini-farm the pirates kept looked mostly made up of flavoring plants, likely to be dried out and crushed into spices for their food. Not enough to feed the entire ship, rather it looked more like a side venture. My guess is that they would be living off a diet of frostbloom primarily, and use the limited space to grow a small batch of crops to give themselves some more options. Frostbloom was pretty bitter, but it's not impossible to make it taste better with the right ingredients.

All in all, I got the impression this group of ships was more than just their fleet. They lived here.

Perhaps Atius wasn't sacking the ships themselves for more altruistic reasons. You can steal the plate and food from a man's house, but stealing the entire house might be leaving the man with no choice but violence.

The pirate quartermaster was found inside the heated sections, nursing what looked like a mug of something alcoholic. He glanced up as we entered, his face somber. "Suppose you're here for the inventory?" He asked, waving a computer slate at us.

I flashed him a thumbs up. "First time being on the other end?" I asked him.

He nodded slowly. "Knew it'd happen no matter how careful she was about her targets. First for me personally since I joined her crew though. Stings like a pipe weasel's bite." He simply skidded that computer pad across the table to me. "I can't rightly complain given we do this all the time to others. Never thought an Imperial Crusader would be sent to do admin duty, aren't you a bit far from home?"

"In a way." I answered noncommittally. It didn't sit right with me to impersonate a crusader, but this was a pirate. Let them gossip.

"I take it you know how to use excel?" He asked.

Excel? I was handy enough with that, sure.

I nodded, grabbing the computer slate and looking into it.

Journey did me a solid and automatically scanned the document, parsing it out and recreating it over my HUD in an easier to read format. I swear, maybe relic armor should be used by functionaries, they might have just as much impact to the clan on the long run. Unless Atius already did so.

The thought of the coveted armors being secretly used by the Logi caste behind the scenes to do the administration work made for a funny picture in my head.

The pirate cache turned out to be rather large. They'd been lucky intercepting traders, smugglers, other looters - and the odd surface clan airspeeder caught at the wrong place and time. Their hoard included anything from interesting parts recovered from dig sites to drugs of every kind and color. The latter was taken from smugglers. Frankly, I was a little surprised at how much stuff they carried. These ships didn't seem big enough to carry all that, and it would make them slower and slower.

"We bury caches and then dig them up when we swing by with a real hauler. More efficient." The quartermaster said, taking another swig of his drink when I asked him.

Smart, though greedy. Anyone else on the white wastes could uncover their caches, but then again Tsuya had hidden a book on the Occult up here. I'm sure the pirates had their ways of hiding their treasures.

Logs of events gave a more colorful history. Some smugglers looked to even be part of some coalition, in which showing proof of membership meant the pirates would simply let the smuggler carry on with their goods back home. Guess the othersiders were organized enough to even have outright insurance for their illicit goods. Maybe the Other Side was more civilized than we suspected, only in a different way.

And speaking of that, practically everything was measured and weighed by their quartermaster with clear intelligence. They had rules setup for when to track down an airspeeder and when to ignore it. Law of averages ran these fleets.

Pilgrims and undersiders were largely ignored and left to go do their own thing. Pilgrims because that would bring the surface clans to hunt them down religiously, and undersiders because those folks never came up without a small army of knights. Undersiders were generally clueless on proper use and upkeep of environmental suits, so only knights would be sent up here.

Funny enough, there was even a section on the possibility of encountering a reverse trap, in which the prey carried far more relic knights than expected. Being caught in one was factored into the numbers, and estimated to happen once every seven years of careful operations. This crew had gone almost two decades without being caught by such a trap, and the one time they had ran into a knight, they'd come out of it with one more armor since they outnumbered that lone knight two to one. No reports of bloodshed either, he'd gone out without a fight. The streak of good luck was likely because their captain played the game far more carefully.

Surface dwellers were on the prey list, but with an asterix. Usually they would be part of large expeditions of multiple airspeeders, which made the whole thing more dangerous. Often times there would be knights among them. And surface dwellers were more likely to fight back, out of sheer 'zealous idiotic honor' according to the logs. Their words, not mine. Anything more than three speeders was strictly off limits. Two was stretching it. One was okay to go after.

Up until today at least. Terrible luck. I weep for their losses. Truly.

The issue I was having is that they didn't log where they put their loot. "You have a separate map for where these caches of yours are?" I asked.

The pirate grinned back, "Aye. Useless to you, though. Your Deathless isn't going to travel around looking for possible pirate caches. What we got aboard these frigates is the best you can take. Whole point of the caches."

Folding my hands on the table, I leaned in. "Guessing what the clan leader would do? You seem to know something I don't. Mind telling me?"

"Think about it." He said, tapping the cup. "Clan lords are not in the business of tracking down shipments across the wastes. Especially since there's a hundred and one ways to give you all the slip. We gots the faster ships."

Fair point. If we asked for a map, they had no reasons to give us the real one. And by the time we found out, it would be far too late. The more I thought about how to pin down and recover all these caches, the more I realized it was a lost cause. There were too many ways for the pirates to slip the noose.

It's when I investigated the food consumption that I became more suspicious of this whole cache story.

Meals served showed items I hadn't seen on my way up here. And while those plants and crickets could have been housed in a different intercept frigate, something didn't add up. There was too little frostbloom usage and too much actual food. The more I looked, the more things made no sense.

Around five years ago, the logs started showing a different picture. I saw mentions of loot being transferred over to a mother ship instead of caches. Which made me wonder what event happened that caused them to give up on that method. The rest of the fifteen years back all showed the mother ship being used. It offered full farms for both insects and vegetables, repair stations, a hospital wing and a safer location to keep loot. They would leave the ship behind when chasing down targets, recover the goods and return to the ship. It seemed they all just ditched the mother ship with no explanation on one random day roughly five years back. Odd.

Or someone had been steadily deleting all records of the mother ship and this was the point where they'd run out of time to keep up the work.

I looked back up at the logistics pirate, who relaxed on his chair as if nothing in the world could have happened.

"I take it, you've recalled the mother ship already, yes? I'd like to see the rest of the loot." I asked sweetly.

"Oh the mother ship? Nah, We ditched that hunk of junk years ago." The officer answered, again with perfect acting.

Fine. If he wanted to play hard ball, two could play that game. I considered his last actions, and put myself in his shoes. Frantically covering tracks, deleting entries and possibly forging numbers where things wouldn't add up. It had to be a rush job, which meant a high chance of overlooking something. It's been twenty years since they've run into issues, they would have eventually started getting lazy about keeping a plan ready for this event.

"Journey, pull up the edit history of this document." The armor complied. The pirate still looked relaxed as ever, as if he were spacing out and waiting for me to finish.

There were no edits at all for today. Not even the typical entry log for fuel spent. Almost as if all revisions for the day, no matter how real, had been hastily deleted en mass. There was no undo button to come to my rescue.

He raised his mug again to take another casual sip of his drink.

"Where do you keep your backups?" I asked him.

"Backups? What's that?" He asked sweetly.

A logistics officer asking what a backup was. Har, fucking har. Gods damned Logi's were all the same no matter rank or tribe. Something about numbers going up on a stat sheet made people start thinking in strange ways.

He even began to sip his drink with a pinky out all while staring me in the eyes. The balls on this guy.

To his credit, I almost started laughing. We both knew he was lying, so this was him being one hundred percent cheeky. The question was if I could catch him on it.

This version of excel was excel 95, slightly newer than the one the clan used.

In general, the further advanced the software, the more they started demanding licenses or accounts registered to entities that had stopped existing eons ago. Excel 95 was a pretty advanced version to have. The old world humans were straight up obsessed over digital rights management, and that had been the wall that stopped all progress past the late 90's tech for humanity today. There was a thin band of twenty-ish years of useable software, after that everything started getting complicated. There were rumors that key-crackers and exploits existed at one point that would crack past these barriers, but either they were all purged over time or they're sitting in hard storage deep inside rich people's vaults.

I flicked the comms to private. "Journey, how good are you at bluffing?"

"Unable to process this request. Additional information needed on subject for meaningful answer."

"Excel 95 doesn't have automatic backups, and this guy will know that. I'm going to go for a different route, I want you to act as if you found something plausible when I ask. If you need to, generate something wholesale that would look like it fit."

"Affirmative. Query within bounds."

All right, with that setup, the comms flicked back to my local area. "You did a pretty good job covering your tracks, deleting the edit history." I complimented the pirate, giving a nod. "Did you know windows XP has its own backup system separate from excel? Journey, find the last backup of the actual data."

I snapped my fingers for extra dramatics. Journey did not disappoint. "Automatic system restore point detected as of one week prior." It chimed on the comms.

That got the pirate to cough his grog out.

Best partner in crime. I love my armor.

To be fair, I had absolutely no idea if XP even did something like that, but it's plausible. That was getting close to the DRM barrier, so it probably had a lot of neat features. But more importantly, if I didn't know, I doubted he did either. They should have stuck to Linux.

"Jig is up." I said, pressing down on the bluff. "Don't make me actually start having to pull teeth now. It's been fun up to now, but I do own a sword. If I have to dig between differences in two different files, I'm going to be upset you made me do the extra work." My hand patted the hilt of my occult long-sword fondly, the threat implied.

The quartermaster gave one last cough, then shrugged, finally throwing in the towel. "Captain told me to keep it hush-hush, always a chance none of you noticed." He drew out a small USB from his pocket and tossed it at me. "Solid chance, I thought. But using the OS itself to sneak past all my hard work? Cheating." He chuckled.

I turned my head and stared at him expectantly, putting the computer slate down and folding my hands together patiently. He sighed and tapped the comms. "Helmsman, call up the Blackbird and have 'er swing by. I got busted, they spotted the ship. Over."

I snapped in the USB and got to work again. The real file was neatly saved inside, dated to today.

It wasn't greatly different from the current one. Some numbers had been fudged, but he'd clearly spent his time trying to hide the mother ship above all other priorities. Now that the missing piece was there, everything made sense. All the numbers checked out. This time, there wasn't anything hiding.

Job done, I sent my report over to Atius so he could see what could fit in our airspeeder and what would have to be left behind. We could also stuff the escort ship filled with some of this loot, but I had a feeling Atius wasn't planning on robbing the pirates of everything. Desperate people made desperate choices. If Atius was acting the way I thought, he'd likely be leaving them enough loot to consider the expedition a success for the average pirate, and pay the crew off. With only the leadership bearing the real costs. That way he almost guarantees that the pirate crew have no reason to rebel.

I clicked over to the knight comms and found Atius brokering a deal with the pirate captain. Given my position, listening in wasn't going to put me in a hotspot, unless I started interrupting or making a nuisance of myself.

"I see you've got quite the riches here." Atius said, likely looking over the report I'd sent him. "Congratulations, captain. Other pirates would be envious of your current success."

"And they'd laugh at the current failure." She shot back. "I take it we can keep the drugs without issue? You don't want those."

"You are correct that narcotics are terrible for clan society and I don't want even a hint of them brought back on my ship. You are incorrect in your assumption that my disinterest leaves them safe in your hands, lass. You'll pay me for the privilege of letting you keep them in one piece. No free meals."

I heard her click her tongue in annoyance. "Fine." And then she went into it.

Frankly, it sounded almost like haggling at this point with both sides playing the typical mind games. Atius was steadfast in his demands, clearly knowing he had the upper hand. The captain tried to oversell how much she owed to each of her crew members, but it was rather difficult with the documents in hand.

Eventually Atius and the pirate came to an agreement, pending on the price of the information the pirate was offering. She seemed certain it was worth quite a bit.

"So." He said. "Let's see what this so called information of yours truly is."

"The raiders and slavers are movin'." She said, "They're planning on sacking a few clans, and worse - your clan's on the menu too. In fact, I'm almost sure your clan's the original target. All the other smaller clans are just the appetizers."

"I find that hard to believe." Atius said, clearly not buying this. "My clan's wealthy enough to afford a strong defense line, in addition to my own weight. We're quite famous for that. Raiders attack smaller clans if they attack at all, mine would be too big of a fish without a pyrrhic victory at best."

I could almost hear the verbal shrug on her side. "Think what you think, but they clearly did factor you in their numbers. This ain't some covert plan. No hiding that big of a force. It's dozens of companies all banding together somehow, putting aside their differences in order to go on a full on crusade. Don't know what's riled them up like this, but they're a comin' your way."

Atius paused, likely pondering the ramifications. "What is the time frame? I hardly believe such an army could be assembled and supplied within the week."

"Oh, you ain't gonna see the tip of their guns for a good while at least." She said. "Word on the wastes is that they're aiming for three months. They scramblin' fast. Either something's got them spooked with a blade to their neck, or they smelled somethin' mighty tasty from your clan. They're seeing blood on the ice fer sure, and they pullin' all the stops. Largest army of this decade put together, swear on me hat."

"This information isn't worth armor." Atius replied flatly. "An attack this scale would make waves, I will inevitably hear of this within the week. You only have the privilege of being the first of many."

"Aye, you be right 'bout the information. But that's not what I'm selling."

There was silence on the comms for a moment. "You want the armors back in exchange for supplementing our defenses with your fleet."

"Aye."

"One armor." Atius offered.

The pirate captain exploded at that. "The cost of fighting in this war o' yours is far beyond one armor! One armor! One armor he says, can you believe the stones on this git? You think I'm runnin' a charity? I'm already calculatin' a few of my ships going down and half the crew being wiped off the manifest lists for this. If I'm only gettin' a single armor back, I'd rather pay for it in coin myself and get gouged in my wallet. Better then bein' gouged in my throat. All three armors and not a lick less. Frankly, you be lucky I'm not joining the raiders in the sackin', that's another way I could get my armors back and then some, ye know?"

"You won't join their side. Remember, I live for a very long time. And carry very long grudges." Atius said, voice suddenly cold. "There isn't a winning move for these raiders. If they fight and fail, they'll be dead. If they fight and succeed, I'll find myself with far too much free time on my hands and a long list of people to hunt down. They'll live short lived lives of fear, hiding away the whole while like miserable dogs and still being plucked one by one. A thousand, two thousand, I couldn't care less. They're all dead men walking to me. Now, do you want to see your name written on my list, lass?"

"...Fine. Gods know you've been enough of a blight on my family already." She sighed, "I'm offering to cash in me favors and bring some of my fleet and a few others on yer side. All my armors back or I ain't helping. Final offer, no negotiating."

The clan lord remained silent for another stretch, considering. "So be it." He concluded. "All three armors, in exchange for a pirate fleet of good size. These armors will be delivered after the battle is concluded. I look forward to fighting side by side with you, lass."

The captain laughed at that, a shrill cackle. "Ye say that with a smile, all while robbin' me blind of my money makers as we gods damn speak. Some ally you are! But fine, we got a deal. See you on the battlefield, Deathless."

There was a pause, just enough time for a handshake. Maybe it might be petty of me, but I would pay quite a bit to see Ankah's face right about now. Going from newly knighted to realizing she's keeping that armor on rent.

The logi pirate on the other side of the table cradled his head in despair, likely also listening in on his captain's comms. "What does she think I am? Some kind of miracle worker that can squeeze numbers out of metal?" He grumbled under his breath. "Fuckin' thing is going to be a nightmare to organize."

I gave him a look. "Guess we're friends now, eh bud?"

He looked up slowly, eyes bloodshot. Then nodded, raising a mug and shaking it. "Drink? Gods know we both need it."

Next chapter - The war underground (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 6 - The war underground (T)

The old runner walked into her throne room, steps artificially slowed in order to maintain the same speed as the smaller companion that walked by his side.

The Runners were machines made as a gross facsimile of humanity, as far as To'Wrathh could tell. Elongated arms and legs meant to disturb. Sharp claws and terrifying skeletal structures further built on the image. The skull-like head completed it. To the left of the looming monster, the ex-human girl seemed almost fragile. A tiny thing that hardly reached the Runner's torso, let alone chest and head.

Her fear was likewise perfectly clear to To'Wrathh. Sub-systems within the Feather identified body language, telling quite a bit. It was interesting how humans could communicate such information without even vocalizing anything. And without noticing they did either.

Around the Feather, machines of all kinds loitered around, each having come up to speak their wisdom to her earlier. The only ones left were the Chosen and the Runners. Both of which were represented with this pair.

To'Wrathh watched from her stone throne as the pair walked towards her. At a close enough distance, both the old runner and the human girl knelt down. The former doing so gracefully and without hesitation, while the latter seemed almost caught unaware and hastily knelt down to catch up. She was clearly out of place here, out of her element.

"We. Have come." The old runner growled out. "I have. Brought. Their leader."

To'Wrathh considered the girl before her. "Do you know why I've called you here?" She asked. To'Wrathh was curious to see if the vaulted human cleverness survived the transition. She could see the girl's arm had been replaced with machines, tubes within her had also taken root, and her blood was half filled with nanites. More importantly, deep within the girl's guts was a small metal plaque in which the fractal of Unity was etched, connected to a soul fractal. One which connected with the girl's soul.

The pale lady could whisper her demands to any of them at any time through that combination. To'Wrathh considered this plaque to be the turning point in which the lady had decided these humans were no longer considered humans to her eyes.

Her mission had been to eliminate humans. This was the natural work around. What To'Wrathh didn't quite understand was why choose to do so only within the last few months? Thousands of years and only now did the Lady choose to begin this route.

"No… ehm, my lady? I wouldn't want to presume I understand the... ahh, minds of the lady's great... Angels?" The girl squeaked. She nervously glanced around, clearly on edge by the surrounding machines. The rest of To'Wrathh's newly assembled court watched on with mild interest. Most simply didn't care about the ex-human in their midst. They were taught to kill all enemies in sight. And this wasn't an enemy anymore to them.

"I brought you here, to hear your advice." To'Wrathh said. "I am new to my throne. I have determined that my inexperience can be solved by drawing on experience from around me. Has To'Aacar told you of the Lady's orders?"

Again the girl squeaked, bowing down lower and trying to avoid the surrounding glances. "N-no my lady. He has not said anything to us. We've been… mostly left alone."

To'Wrathh nodded, considering the issue. This was not unique to the Chosen, clearly. To'Aacar was powerful and self-sufficient. He had left his army mostly to do what they wished, and the lack of cohesion between them was the logical result. To'Wrathh would need to bring this disparate group of machines into a complete whole.

Her old nest had been a perfect example of what a society should be. Each member had a role to play, and each would work in concert with the others without issue. They were all part of the nest.

To'Wrathh would need to weave a larger nest, one that encapsulated all of her new army, these Chosen included.

"What is your name?" She asked the girl.

"… Tamery, my lady." The chosen leader answered.

"Tamery. The Lady has ordered the destruction of a surface clan. This clan may call for help from other humans nearby. The closest humans are an undersider city."

A pause. Tamery took a hesitant look up, only to see To'Wrathh staring back at her, expectant. So the girl looked around to the surrounding army to avoid the gaze, adding up the sight in her head. "Uhm, you want us to attack this city?"

"Yes."

"M-my lady, why call me here? I am but an intermittent village head while our priest is away with To'Aacar."

"Be that as it may, you still offer a perspective I lack." She straightened herself on the throne, wings behind folding up to cradle her better in the mite made concrete. "I have never waged a war before. Nor have I attacked a human city. I have called all my army here so that they may offer advice on how best to complete this task."

The girl looked around herself, slowly turning her eyes to view the surrounding machine army. These were the older models, ones that by chance and luck had survived encounters with the humans and grown from it. Just like the Old Runner that had escorted her here. She glanced up to it, where it remained kneeling down.

To'Wrathh could sense the emotions of that old runner. It was far more calm around her now, compared to when they had first met. That pleased the Feather greatly.

"I'm not sure what I could offer you that the other machines wouldn't have." The girl finally chose to say.

Vexing, thought the Feather. She had expected more from the ex-human.

Unless... Unless she hadn't given this human enough information to work with. That would be rectified. "The other machines are blinded by their forms." She pointed at the spider that loomed behind her throne. "This one tells me to wait for the humans to leave their city and descend upon them when they do. This is what Spiders do, naturally it will be their advice."

Next, To'Wrathh pointed to the Drake who remained curled upon itself to her left. "This one tells me that I should hunt the humans down wherever they move in smaller packs at a distance. Soon, it tells me I will have whittled away the city into a small enough chunk to eat in one bite."

She continued with each machine, pointing at them, and explaining their advice. "The Trapmakers advise to place traps everywhere, and especially within the city itself. Once done, I should simply leave and let the traps do their work. The Behemoths tell me to crush through the gates and stomp on anything that moves. The Serpents tell me to fly above, and slowly submerge the city in acid over months until all the humans leave somewhere else."

All of it was good advice for the narrow task that each machine fulfilled. None of it was useful for destroying a city.

"And so that leaves me with the Runners and you to ask." She turned to the Old Runner. "What would you do, to destroy a human city?" She asked it.

The Old Runner growled in thought. "I would. Bring more pack. Many packs. Bring metal sheets. Rush pack forward slowly, sheets to protect. Rush quiet pack from behind faster. Jump from above. Break human defense. Throw humans. Scatter humans. Do not let humans group. Then win."

To'Wrathh nodded, understanding how this old runner's tactics would have - and likely had already - proven to be effective against the isolated groups of enemies they hunted down. Once more, however, that advice would not work with the guarded city.

She turned to the Chosen girl, this Tamery as she called herself. "Do you see what I mean?" To'Wrath asked. "Now I seek advice from your people. You knew the humans well. You were one of them, once. How would you destroy a city?"

The girl blanched, fear written in every part of her features. To'Wrathh let her process through it. The ex-human mastered those emotions quickly, fluttering from fear, panic, and then resolve and resolution.

"My lady, I wish to ask for clarification first on the objective, if I may."

"You may. Ask as you will." To'Wrathh answered, seeing no reason to deny such a request.

The girl licked her lips. "You said that the main aim was to destroy a surface clan and stop them from getting help from the undersider city, yes?"

To'Wrathh nodded.

"It might be possible to… reach that aim without destroying the human city at all?"

The other machines flickered a small amount of interest at that. To avoid destroying or killing humans was an odd thought, one that went against what they had all been taught and made for. She could tell they didn't like that. Death was a curiosity, they all had learned to taste it.

Still, they sat and observed To'Wrathh more closely, choosing to see what their leader would answer.

The Feather chose curiosity. "And how would that be possible?"

"If an agreement with the city could be made, they could choose not to assist anyone from this surface clan?"

To'Wrathh considered. Ultimately, however, it was too nebulous. "Destruction is more certain. They cannot help the surface humans if they are dead."

The girl scrambled for another chance. "W-wait - wait! What about converting the city into Chosen? That way, the pale lady could directly control the humans there. You wouldn't need to kill anyone if they all chose to serve instead, right?"

To'Wrathh tilted her head to the side, again considering the idea. The Chosen girl took it as a sign to continue. "It would be easier to have the city surrender itself to you instead of laying siege on it. If you attack, there's always a chance that your army breaks against the humans and you fail your mission. If you demand a surrender, the worst the humans could do is to reject it, in which case you're back to your current situation. There's no reason not to try for a more peaceful solution… uhmm, m-my lady." The girl hastily added, realizing she'd started to become more animated as she spoke.

This was an interesting solution. To'Wrathh had not considered a possibility of outright not attacking the city at all.

"Offer a plan, Tamery." To'Wrathh asked, waving a hand at her. If this girl believed in her words, then she must have an idea of where to start.

"Uhmm…" she licked her lips, glancing around the entire time. "T-to get a surrender, you need to have people willing to take it." Desperately trying to come up with a plan on the spot. "First, we should attack and clear out the hunting lodges outside the city. They're outposts that the undersider knights use on hunting expeditions for power cells. They're the early warning for the people living outside the walls to seek shelter."

"Should we do so, the city will be alerted to our presence." To'Wrathh replied. "Seventy seven percent of all advice I've been offered is contingent on striking an unaware enemy. This suggestion goes counter to that and is mutually exclusive. You are asking me to disregard a large portion of advice I've been offered. Why?"

Tamery licked her lips again, a nervous tick likely. "It would be worth the loss of surprise. With the city alerted, they'll know a full attack is imminent. That will make them start looking for solutions. Once the hunting lodges are taken, the people outside will have to shelter inside the walls at all times. We keep the city sieged and they'll slowly start running out of power, food and space. Blockade the paths out so that they can't make it to the surface to escape or recharge power cells, and break their trade routes. After that, the people will become more desperate and a lot more open to the idea of surrender. I can lead the Chosen to the city and put in the idea that it's possible to escape without harm or a war."

To'Wrathh considered this advice. "What are the chances of success?"

Again, another lick of the lips. "I… I don't think the first time will work, my lady. B-but it's all about putting the seeds out first! We have to keep them penned in and increasingly desperate. The second time, they'll think about it more. The third time, I'm sure my people can convince them otherwise."

"Is fear all that it takes to convince humans? That has not been my experience thus far." To'Wrathh asked, more puzzled. She'd fought humans before. They showed little fear, only grim determination. The only time she had thought one would run in fear, that boy had ended up killing her instead.

She will be seeing him soon again. The noose was slowly tightening and the surface dwellers had no idea the game was already in motion.

"The ones you fight probably don't fear much of anything or anyone." The girl admitted. "But normal people don't fight machines, they're the ones we can convince to peacefully surrender. We don't need to kill them. People don't need to die."

The old runner growled at the side. "Humans will fight." The machine said, finally breaking its silence. "They die quietly. Only when surprised. They die loudly. All other times." His head turned, spine stretching out as he lowered his skull down to the frightened human girl's height, staring her eye to eye. "How many. How many of me will your plan kill? Humans will fight. My brothers will die fighting."

The girl gulped, stumbling down on her back. The Old Runner loomed above her regardless, skull following her down, eyes unblinking.

"T-t-there could be peace," Tamery fumbled, voice wilting away against his harsh gaze. "We don't want to kill either. A lot of them can be convinced, I know they can be. Please, please give them a chance."

The old runner didn't answer that.

"Enough." To'Wrathh said. "I have heard and I will take what you have said in consideration. You may return home."

She dismissed the two promptly with a wave of her hand. They had both said their advice. The rest of the machines also began to leave, one after the other, leaving her alone in the old mite-made throne room.

There, in the dim darkness, To'Wrathh pondered her path forward. She could not afford to lose. The choice she made here would change everything. And once she made it, she would need to commit to it. To attack the humans in one fell swoop that may not succeed, or to slowly pen them in and have them open the gates to their cities of their own accord, in a plan that had more holes than the underground she walks across.

There were only three more she could ask for advice now.

The first To'Wrathh dismissed immediately. The pale lady would not answer well to a request for help. There was no number, no probability, only intuition that this would be how the pale lady would respond.

To'Aacar would not likely give her any answer beyond derision. Again, intuition gave her that prediction.

There was one last source of advice left to her. And intuition warned her. There were dangers to trusting the words of an enemy. And yet, To'Wrathh still wished to make a decision based on all possible information she could gain.

Ultimately that was what made up her mind. She waved a hand again to invite one last speaker to the stage.

Tenisent Winterscar walked across from the audience chamber and leaned on the side of a pillar directly before her.

He wasn't there, not truely. Only a manifestation To'Wrathh could see. A ghost in all, even in name. She had let him have some slight control over his jail. Enough for the soul to feel as if it walked on land again.

He didn't appear with his armor as he had in life. Here, he carried only the tattered rags of a prisoner. She would leave him some freedom, yes, but remind him of his place nonetheless.

All this hadn't been done for purely altruistic reasons. She needed him to remain sane in order to tap into his skills and knowledge. There was only one of him after all. Souls were unique. If Tenisent went insane, that asset would be forever lost.

A soul without a shell would be subsumed by reality over a short period of time.

A body was the perfect shell. A soul fractal was a passable variation, a house that could provide enough shelter against the elements and little more. Had To'Wrathh not held the power of Unity… Tenisent would have been stubborn and refused to move from his temporary home. She would have been forced to cut the terminal's plaque and fuse the entire thing within her heart.

Ugly.

"How would you break a city?" She asked the dead man across the room.

He glared at her in response. "I'm going to enjoy watching you fail."

She could torture him. Could snap her fingers and see him bent over in pain. Break his spine a hundred fold. The lady had shown her it was effective. But pain would slowly bring him closer to insanity, and so To'Wrathh chose not to. She picked a different way to negotiate, for now.

"I'll ask one more time. Answer correctly, and I'll allow you to remain outside your cage. Remain stubborn, and I will strip you of that privilege. How would you break a city?"

He closed his eyes. "Lock me up."

Irritation passed through To'Wrathh. "Curious, isn't it? How some humans choose to betray their own kind so easily, while others struggle on for no reason whatsoever other than for struggle's sake. Why do you think that is?"

"Desperate people do desperate things." Tenisent answered. "Your 'betrayers' are scared of dying and tired of the constant struggle. They want it to stop. When people are hurting, they will do anything to stop the pain."

"Human weakness." To'Wrathh scoffed. "Apply pain, and they fall over each other to plot their own race's destruction."

"Human weakness?" The ghost scoffed. "You and the rest of your kind act more human than we do. You're nothing more than a distorted mirror, weakness and all. I've seen enough to know the signs. Now, lock me up."

This was true, technically. Her synapses were mirrored on the human brain, Tenisent was simply stating the obvious as far as To'Wrathh understood. Her hands tapped the throne sides, "We are all your flaws, fixed. The proof of our supremacy is self-evident - We are in control, and you are not."

"Apply pain and get obeisance." He hummed to himself. "Familiar. Are you really in control or just a puppet to your lady's whims?"

The Feather narrowed her eyes at the specter. "I am in full control of myself."

"And every addict escaping from pain has thought the exact same as you do now. I know."

"I serve the lady because I choose to. It is only right to do so, she is my mother. I don't fear family." To'Wrathh said, feeling annoyed at the platitudes. They made little sense to her.

Winterscar grinned again. "But you will. The moment you are no longer useful or her favorite, she will throw you away like trash. Maybe you'll remember these words when it happens. Now lock me up, you coward."

"So be it." To'Wrathh snapped her fingers and Tenisent was gone, the room now truly empty. He didn't rage or fight against the dismissal, instead slinking deeper into the cage. She felt nothing from that jail, the soul within had learned quickly how to hide emotions. A little too quickly.

She ran another check and confirmed once more that all the shackles and countermeasures were still in place. Her last few conversations with the man had unnerved her more and more. The memories she'd begun to sort through had painted a life spent harshly.

She had no illusions she was harboring a dangerous monster that would seek to destroy her the moment he was free. Power came at a cost.

Still, archives of past sieges on human cities painted a bleak picture. The majority of the stronger machines did not operate on the upper levels, and the human cities only existed within the first three levels. The army she had of weaker machines was the one she would be forced to use.

The advice she'd gotten had overwhelmingly suggested to attack first, attack hard, and take the city by force before they even knew the war had started.

And the success rate of that was nearly zero as far back as the archives showed her.

The humans always knew when the machines would attack. There was only seven hours each week in which the city's barriers would drop and the machines could penetrate into the structure. They knew the time and date, and so when the barriers dropped, the human army was marshaled and prepared to hold out against the wave. The only element of surprise she had was the scale of that attack.

However, Winterscar had inadvertently given her the advice she could use. Tamery's hastily made plans were sound, only not brutal enough.

She traced back how the Chosen she commanded had been convinced to join the machines originally. Archives showed her the events. They were refugees attempting to hide and run. Desperate to make it to the surface and being foiled at every turn, corralled deeper into the ground. It took only a week before their spirits had been broken and they no longer believed they'd survive at all.

There wasn't a final fight. By the time they had been offered a chance of survival, the few hundred humans left had been starving, exhausted, wounded, and desperate. Once embedded with the unity fractal, To'Aacar could have them killed anywhere at anytime, thus cementing full control over their behavior by abusing their fear of death. This was how she would take this human city.

When people are hurting, they will do anything to stop the pain.

They will surrender to her.

To'Wrathh will see them beg for it.

Next chapter - Homecoming

Book 2 - Chapter 7 - Homecoming

Past books sometimes came with pictures of how the world once was. And a smaller but highly coveted selection of books were stories made from nothing but pictures. This is how we knew what old era architecture looked like. There were some beautiful art pieces of homes and buildings.

That was a different time.

Today, beautiful architecture existed only in those pictures or the odd video file viewed on a monitor for a few coins. Still, some people would describe the clan fortresses and bunkers up here to be works of art - in their own way. A representation of the struggles a clan would go through, a sort of lived history passed down from people to people. Clans might not remain in one place forever, but the impact each clan made on their home remained.

Outside, the colony look fairly nondescript. Large, overlapping domes with blocky structures, all made of heavy metal and usually half buried in rime and snow.

Signs of who the fortress belonged to were found on the broadcast frequency to anyone near enough to receive it. The harsh winds would strip anything that wasn't durable, and the snows following in those winds would cover up decorations of any kind.

If there were such a thing as exterior decorations, it would be the welding scars that appeared all over the structures, exposing an ancient history. Where parts of the building had failed to hold up against the elements. Repairs was the second most common task the Reachers would be doing up here.

I had never given that much thought about how these fortresses came to be in the first place - before any clans moved in. Now however, my trip underground had changed how I saw the colony homes, of which ours was rapidly approaching. Appearing as a distant speck on the airspeeder windshields.

Teed clicked a few commands at my side and synced to the general comms with one last toggle flip above him.

"ATC, home-clan airspeeder Nostradamus and additional non-clan class-C intercept frigate codename Taker, is south of buoy seven, inbound requesting docking hangars with information zulu. Notam, Taker is hostage. Repeat, Taker is hostage."

As always, pilot speech was a language of its own, though this one was mostly filled with common words. Earlier he had me tune in to a broadcast of absolute gibberish he told me was for information on weather and other details to expect closer to the clan home. Today was apparently windy but otherwise sunny.

The cockpit filled with static for a moment before a man's voice sounded on the speaker. The air traffic control officer sounded like he'd missed his chance for a cup of coffee three hours ago and still hadn't been able to ferret time for a new one. "ATC, roger. Left base, report by buoy three for Nostradamus and Taker."

Teed chuckled, then toggled the switch again. "Reporting by buoy three for Nostradamus and Taker."

"Wonder how they're taking us coming home a week early with another ship in tow." I asked.

My friend shrugged. "Probably another Tuesday at ATC. A hostage ship isn't usual, but it's happened before. They know how to handle it."

The pirate ship was indeed flying off on our left, the words Taker inscribed on the sides of the ship. The windows of the airspeeder gave me a pretty good vision of their rather morose pirate pilot, with Ironreach fully armored and lounging on the copilot's seat, legs kicked up on a console. He turned his armored helmet to give us a casual nod. Teed returned a salute while I settled with a wave. Clan Lord Atius was aboard that ship along with his bodyguards, keeping a proverbial sword at the pirate throats. Only Kidra and I remained on Teed's beloved Nostradamus.

Massive rail cannon stations were already appearing in the distance as our two ships charged above the snow. These were forward defense posts that served more as intimidation than actual weapons fire. I don't think our clan ever saw them used before, and given that some of them were salvaged and dragged here across a few thousand miles, I wasn't sure how many were in actual working shape. They all looked different from one another.

Some of them came from old dreadnaughts, or wrecked airspeeders. Others were found on derelict buildings that had sprouted from the underground. Model difference wasn't the only factor, the different turrets came from different eras as well. The result was a melting pot of different weapons, each requiring a different touch to keep them active and working.

Guess those stations are probably going to be seeing a lot of foot traffic real soon, given the recent news.

The pair of airspeeders passed by the massive encampments without contest, billowing snow trailing behind our wake. The turrets remained frozen and lifeless, slowly passing by from our perspective.

Our clan had the fortune of being scary by reputation, since we had a Deathless and the theoretical attackers would not. So the clan lord had focused more on bringing housing online compared to defenses, something he was likely regretting right about now.

"Nostradamus, for traffic make a left turn at buoy three and fly northbound to gate four. Taker to follow for gate five. Land outside, I'll let you know when proper taxi is setup. Be aware, knights called up for Taker in gate five."

Teed clicked to respond, confirming the orders. "ATC, Nostradamus making left turn at buoy three and flying northbound to gate four. Taker will mirror for gate five. We'll both land in front of our gates and wait for taxi. Out."

He flipped another toggle and connected to our sister pirate frigate. "You boys heard that?"

The pilot aboard the Taker answered back affirmative, repeating the instructions and Teed punched in the new locations, the airspeeder banking slightly. We were already passing the railguns and other listening posts. Most of these were unmanned and unheated, but they certainly looked intimidating. It would be a scramble to power these defenses back online and still have enough cells leftover to upkeep current heating. I know Atius kept a buffer for emergencies, I just didn't know how many cells that buffer was made up of.

The colony up ahead wasn't all a single unified piece. The heart of the structure, now that I truly gave it thought, was probably mite-made. And as the inevitable first clan to find it took over, they overshadowed the inhuman construction, covering it up with tapestries and new inner buildings. The exteriors also had the same story, additions would sprout around the core, slowly over time.

At first it would be runways and land markings for the airspeeders traffic to make use of. And then those would slowly evolve into non-essential storage, and eventually housing once it was safe enough. It was always a race. How much material could be collected and used to build up and maintain housing against the population increase. There were strict rules on children for a reason.

A good part of the colony was underground, although go too far deep and the pathways were intentionally collapsed. Homicidal toasters bent on murder and destruction made for complicated neighboors. Nobody wanted to dig too deep, lest the machines pay a visit.

So the actual colony looked squat to the ground, the architecture wind resistant and any sense of artistry was all mathematical optimizations to keeping heat inside. We hadn't yet filled up all the pre-existing rooms the previous clan had constructed, there were still dozens upon dozens of corridors and buildings on the outer radius, kept mothballed until we had more power cells to reheat those sections. The clan before us had been at least twice our size given what we found.

The single number that ruled everything on the surface was the total power cells tied up to heating the colony. Any way to expand outwards while keeping that number sustainable was the name of the game up here. There were only a finite number of power cells and a finite amount of time those cells could be recharged over and over before they broke down. The surface was a constant struggle to outpace that degradation.

Atius's sword proved to me that even the occult would degrade over use, since he warned me there were only a few more charges of that soulstrike back when I'd touched that blade. And considering I now had a 'book' filled with occult knowledge, I might ask to go touch his sword some more to see if I could figure out how it ticked.

I'll ask nicely of course. My kleptomaniac past was a distant memory, I swear.

Talking about aggressive borrowing, Atius had wisely picked the cover story for the cache we recovered as a failed tax-evasion attempt. Some smuggler from a different clan had contracted pirates to pick up a delivery of occult knives, only the pirates never came to pick up the knives for some reason. He didn't need to be specific. The time period could have been decades or centuries ago. No one would question the story.

And if I cracked the secrets of the occult, I might very well be producing those knives, which would come full circle.

The clan hanger came into view, one of many doorways into the structure, our speeder began to decelerate, the force pushing me slightly out of my seat. Teed expertly banked the ship on course, keeping an eye on the local traffic around us.

Nearby, another airspeeder was making a final approach for its own hangar, dragging a massive cube of ice behind it, hauled on multiple hover spikes wedged into the sides. Meltwater mined out of far frozen dig sites, to be introduced into the clan hydrosystems, replacing the water that slowly escaped the system one way or another over time. No matter how hard engineers tried, there were always leaks in the system.

Our airspeeder continued forward with a slow trot, and then came to a stop, hovering still in the air a few hundred meters away from home.

Even safe in our airspeeder, the growl of the hanger doors ahead of us was still slightly audible. Large hexagonal teeth at the bottom made the doorway mirror a yawning giant. Sheets of snow were knocked off as the doorway rose up. Inside the hangar, a small gaggle of suited up engineers remained at standby, tools at the ready to start maintenance and the inspections.

Gate five's doorway was equally opening up. The pirate ship had carefully come to a stop in front like we did, blue flares of thrust appearing on the sides of the ship chaotically. Those would be the maneuvering thrusters, keeping the ship perfectly steady against the winds. Our own ship would be doing the same, all automatically run. Airspeeder tech that was complete gibberish to the rest of us. It couldn't run on windows, that was for sure.

Strolling out of the hangers and plowing directly over the snow were a smaller set of vehicles with massive tank treads. That would be our taxi.

I'd gotten to ride on one of these once, they tore through snow like nobody's business and the heavy winds here couldn't tip them over even if it got strong enough to toss a scavenger around. Plus those massive treads kept excellent traction on the snow. Teed clicked a few buttons and one of the screens on the center console flickered to view the undercarriage, just as our own taxi passed by our view, riding to the underbelly of our ship.

There, a few scavengers were coordinating with the taxi to attach a sturdy clamp from the small vehicle to our much larger behemoth.

Teed kept up communications with the small crew, alerting each other of their status, actions and expectations. Pilot talk was about half gibberish this time.

Once the clamps were secure, Teed let the small machine scurry away and guide the airship into the hangar in a far more controlled method. With treads on the ground, there'd be no accidentally drifting into a wall.

Soon enough, the hanger swallowed us whole and the door closed behind. The clamp was disengaged and the airspeeder rumbled, landing gear touching the flat metal ground with a deep thud. Reheating would take some time to cycle through a large space like this, so people generally equipped the environmental suits until a taskmaster called out the all-clear and more intense repairs and retrofits could be performed.

I gave Teed a slap on the shoulder which he returned with his traditional flare. "Now that my best mate's a knight, you've got some pull right?" He asked.

I stayed still for a second, looking at him. "Perhaps." I left in the air ominously. "What boon shall I bequeath upon you, my poor plebeian?"

"Well, m'lord. There's this woman you see, but she's also a knight now, which kind of ruins my plans at the moment."

I laughed at that. Laser focused. "I might be willing to pass your name along to my esteemed colleague, the lady knight. It seems however that my throat is oddly parched, which makes it very hard to say anything, sadly. Whatever shall I do."

"You taken real fast to being a knight." He chuckled back.

"You know what they say," I gave him one last look before leaving him to his cockpit and duties. "There's only the quick and the dead."

I could tell Kidra outright that Teed had a thing for her, but that would put pressure on my sister in ways I wasn't willing to do. She'd see it as a duty to go out with at least one date, since I had brought it up. However, what I could do was put him in situations where he had the chance to ask. After that it would be up to him.

Scheming was in my blood after all. If Teed and Kidra happened to end up with a chance to be alone, well, perhaps that might not have been by such coincidence.

It would be a scandal like no other of course, but that wasn't going to stop anyone.

Kidra and I walked into that hanger like kings returning from battle. Already the general scuttle was moving around, the engineers on deck here pausing only for a moment at the unexpected pair of knights. They recognized the Winterscar emblem, offering the traditional salute of deference, but they didn't quite know what to do with me.

Many gave me the deference for a high ranking imperial, which was odd at first until I realized how Journey looked to others. This was armor once worn by a crusader. And while a lot of the ornaments such as paper scrolls and kilt had long ago broken down, the gold remained behind.

A familiar environmental suit approached, hunched over slightly and making his way forward with a cane. Four other Reachers walked dutifully behind him, all taking a kneel in front of us as the one with a cane came closer. I could tell from the emblems, charms and other flairs just who this was. Of course he'd be here to oversee the repairs on Teed's ship. Friends stick together.

"Pleased to meet you, lord crusader." Anarii said, once he was within courteous distance from me. "Allow me to be the first to welcome you to Clan Altosk! The airspeeder you arrived on wasn't quite expected to return so soon. I regret to inform you, we're not quite sure how best to provide hospitality. To help better accommodate your needs, please let me know what business you may have among our clan, and I'll see to it that it is swiftly handled."

Not planning to spoil any surprise, I wordlessly pointed past the hangars, in the direction of the airlocks leading away. Then lifted and tapped the box that held Talen's journal. To seal the deal, I flicked my neck in a follow-me gesture as I walked past the old man. Kidra scoffed and followed behind as an escort. I knew her enough to practically see her eye rolling to the back of her head, but she played along. I'd only get to surprise people once in my life with armor like this before word of mouth ran ahead of me, I wasn't going to miss it.

A part of me was itching to get back to my workshop and open up the metal box I carried, and another part of me wanted to simply relax for a moment with friends again. The latter had won out. So long as I kept the box in hand, it wasn't going anywhere.

Anarii took it all in stride, marching quickly up to the front and opening the airlock doors for us. He wordlessly signaled his four servants to carry on with regular duty with a quick hand signal for all clear and I'll handle it.

The three of us passed without issue, where Anarii continued with the lead, taking off his rebreather and hood now that we were indoors.

Ahhhhh. Home sweet home. Had Journey not been filtering the air, I'd be smelling the tint of wet metal. Around the hangars, it was unavoidable and marked the domain of Reachers, specifically the sub-caste that was in charge of airspeeders and their care.

Not even a few steps inside, and it was already a straight mess of metal walls, with a catwalk right above us. Those were the domain of the Logi caste, and I could see one of their runners speed right above. Zooming on their hoversleds ferrying cargo to and from places in the clan. They'd race at ridiculous speeds around tight turns and twists which was only possible if they knew nobody would unexpectedly be in their way. As such, foot traffic like ours was delegated to walkways just under the Logi catwalks. Since two of our small party of three were Relic Knights, other people walking by gave us a wide right of way, bowing deeply as we passed, or offering a quick nod if bowing would halt foot traffic.

Pilgrims always said that stepping into a clan colony felt like they were aboard another airspeeder, a far more cramped and busy one at least. Can't say they were wrong. Space was a premium here, so it wasn't ever wasted, though there were exceptions for clan morale such as the public garden, animal pens and the central bath.

"Follow me please," Anarii said. "There's a ready room made for privacy nearby. I am the ranking Reacher for this hangar, if there are sensitive matters to discuss I will take them, or you, to the proper location. If you require any food or drink, please let me know and I'll have a servant dispatched to fetch some for you right away."

I remained wordless, following behind dutifully as the old man led me through the structure. Soon enough, we were in a small nondescript room with a table and chair. A projector was provided here along with other tools a small briefing might require.

In the last clan habitat that we had left, I remembered rooms like these had doubled as places to sleep, but back in that habitat we were seriously hitting the limit on how large a population could be sustained. New rooms, heaters and additions were constantly being worked on, and that was far more dangerous than simply fixing up and re-heating sections pre-build long ago.

Sitting down, Anarii folded his hands in front, neatly on the table. "Now, you wished to discuss?"

I looked to Kidra. She shrugged and took the lead, taking off her helmet. That caught the old man by surprise, which was quickly schooled.

"I take it the armor you wear is Winterscar prime?" He asked.

She nodded. "It is. I have inherited it."

"I'm so sorry for your loss. I know your relationship with him was often… hard. I only hope there was a sense of closure for you."

A pang flared in my heart and I did my best to keep it down. It was easier now that weeks had passed, but a part of me still felt raw about it. What helped dull the pain was the knowledge something of him remained behind within Winterscar. Once I'd learned enough about the Occult, I hoped to solve that mystery.

"I've paid my time." Kidra said. "My relationship with my Father was complicated. Thank you for your consideration, I appreciate the thought."

A polite way of saying she didn't want to talk about it.

Anarii nodded, understanding her message. Then he took a glance at me. His eyes went back and forth for a few seconds between us. "If I may be so bold as to ask a personal question before attending to the Lord Crusader, Lady Knight, what of your brother Keith? Is he…" He licked his lips nervously. "Is he all right?"

Kidra turned to me, and I took my cue.

"Well, if you have to know. I'm doing pretty good, all things considered." I took the helmet off, setting it down with a thud on the table and leaned my elbow on it, flashing him an impish smile and thumbs up. If surprise had caught the old man previously, this one gave him a heart attack. He gaped, jaw slowly going loose, mind frantically trying to piece together what was going on.

"Feel like a changed man." I said. "Brought back a new look, even. What do you think? Like the gold?"

He went through a small journey of emotions before he settled on a cackling laugh that had him bend over a bit to hold his stomach. When he straightened back up, he'd brought out the cane. "You little ratshit! I should strangle you for that!" The old man coughed, half yelling half laughing, taking that stick of his and whacking away at me across the table. Journey's arm guard easily took the blows without bothering to trigger any shields.

"Do you know how worried I was just now?" He said, whacking away at my arm as he did so. "Knew there had to be something bad happening for Kidra to be wearing that armor! And here you are acting all restrained and somber! Listen here you little scrapshit! I'm too old for this! Too old! I will whip you a new one, Gods above they'll drag me to the stockades for assault!"

When Anarii had finished laughing, pouring his pent up aggression by cane, and wiping away his eyes, he turned up to her. "Take it you found a small trove of armors. But why are you in your Father's armor? Shouldn't you be wearing one of the new ones?"

At that, Kidra shook her head. "We only discovered one armor, and Keith is wearing it."

"Then... Oh. I had hoped for a moment." He went quiet for a moment, then took a long sigh. "Death is an unfortunate inevitability for all of us and there can be no running away from it forever. The lady of the deep comes for us all." The atmosphere in the room dropped a few degrees, but Anarii picked it right back up again. "However, you both have had long enough to think about such dark thoughts on the way here. Don't let me ruin a moment of celebration! Keith, my boy, you must have one tall tale to tell little old me about this. Gods. A knight! My boy's a knight!" He broke into another fit of laughs. "I'll buy you two a drink on me, the top shelf bottles for sure! Moments like these are the ones we save up for."

"Was really the blessing of their sun goddess," I told him. "Led me right to it."

Kidra's lip twitched in a slight smile she fought to keep under control. Admittedly, I was being a little cheeky there.

It's good to be home.

Next Chapter - In which Keith has a wholesome day off

Book 2 - Chapter 8 - In which Keith has a wholesome day off

The Winterscar estate was a hollow shell.

Originally, before the clan migrated away from our old home, we had already scouted and claimed this current ground. The clan had sectioned this estate off for a House of approximately four hundred members, back in our heyday.

Then the migration happened and only three Winterscars survive the trip.

So most of the estate was mothballed and left in the cold. Atius did not re-assign the ground to another house, or sell off the territory, out of respect to the fallen. There was plenty of other directions the clan could expand to, and he assumed our house would slowly recover. Eventually we would reclaim the dead sections that had been reserved for us.

His assumption had been incorrect. Father had hired a few servants to keep the house clean, but hadn't officially recruited new members. In fact, he'd done everything to avoid the issue for as long as I've known him. As a result, only a small skeleton crew kept the estate grounds maintained over these years.

They came out to greet us on the training courtyard as Kidra and I walked up the steps and past our gates. The head of house was an older man named Radinai. He was professional, curt, and to the point. His uniform perfectly crisp and expertly tailored.

"Welcome home, masters." The maids and servants all intoned, bowing as we passed by.

Kidra came up to a stop before Radinai, who remained bowed down slightly. "Keith and I thank you for your work while we were away." She said, turning to look at the rest of the small staff. "As you've no doubt noticed, I am now wearing Winterscar Prime. The recent expedition did not go as planned and Father is now regrettably with the gods."

"That is terrible to hear, my lady." Radinai said emotionlessly. He was far too professional to allow his personal feelings to surface. "We will miss him dearly."

The rest of the servants likewise remained silent. Most hadn't interacted with Father all that much. When he was on the house grounds it was either to sleep, eat, or practice out on the field. The rest of the time he spent away on expedition.

Kidra took a breath, steadying herself. "As the eldest, the rights to command House Winterscar now fall to me."

"Rest assured my lady," Radinai said solemnly. "We will serve you as we served him."

The rest of the servants gave their own acknowledgements. Kidra nodded. "I expect nothing less." She turned to look at me. "My brother is now wearing armor as well, a crusader's armor that has been delivered under our banner. House Winterscar now has two armors to our name."

The servants all straightened out and clapped politely. Keeping a stoic face before the masters of the house was important to them. The real celebration would come later. I could see it in their eyes.

"There will be some changes now that I am left in charge." Kidra said, taking the stage again. "We will be expanding out the house and restoring Winterscar to the size of a more proper House over these next few years. A personal guard will be hired and rearmed, Reachers will be brought in to maintain the house and additional servants will be folded under us as we expand. With Keith wielding a relic armor and the additional Occult weapons we've recovered, our house's fortunes should be vastly improved to support our new ambitions."

Well if everyone was about to retire and celebrate that the house they worked for has two entire armors now, this news hit them like a sledgehammer. I could see glints of barely concealed fervor in the faces of the servants gathered.

Generally, working under the houses was the first step to being accepted into the caste itself. All of the servants here had worked under the hope of joining our banner. At least, at the start. They had stayed all these years keeping that hope close to their hearts, despite Father's lack of ambitions.

And now that Kidra had announced we would be expanding the ranks. It was guaranteed they would be rewarded for their loyalty. This was a long time coming for all of them, and frankly, they deserve nothing less than full admittance, no questions asked.

When Kidra dismissed the servants, they moved off to their task with newfound spring in their steps. Oh, they all kept it inside, trying to remain stoic and professional in their duties. But I had no doubts when we weren't looking, the servants would be throwing their own after-work party to celebrate and gossip about the news. More than one was going to have a hard time working tomorrow I suspect.

Kidra and I made our way into the old home, splitting off to attend to our separate tasks. While I desperately wanted to deposit Journey into the armory and make a straight line to the baths, I had a very special job to take care of before anything. So my first target was my personal room.

I grabbed the attention of the first maid I passed by, signalling her to halt. "Hello Mazri. I need your help with something."

She turned and gave a polite bow. "How may I assist you, Master Keith?"

Ah. Going to need to get used to being called that. Sheepishly, I scratched the back of my head, only to click the armor's gauntlets against the helmet. Sometimes I felt graceful in this armor, other times I felt more like a fumbling idiot. This would be the latter.

Oh well. "Please go to the Reachers and fetch me a regular safebox, a few sheets of metal and welding tools. I'll be in my room when you return. I have work I need to do."

She bowed deeper, "Of course, I will bring you the supplies right away." The maid turned and scurried away, passing by another servant who quickly came up to offer similar greetings.

He gave a similar bow, before straightening up. "Rehla wishes to inform the masters that an early meal is being made in honor of your return. It will be served in half an hour, if you so wish to attend. This lunch served will be mushroom ragout, with broiled anrix isopods set on a soft bed of spinach topped with bearnaise sauce and a white wine pairing. Dessert is to be baked apple slices with cinnamon and a light vanilla sauce."

Oh. Food. Real food.

Actual food made by the hands of a master chef.

Our single cook was probably one of the best assets our House had, in my opinion. Rehla was probably working a small miracle right now from the moment she got word our airspeeder had been sighted arriving. "Please, tell her we really appreciate the gesture and that I look forward to tasting her cooking again. It's been a long few weeks of rations."

The man smiled, gave another bow and turned to deliver the reply without further word.

Talen's journal remained locked in my grip and I gave it a slight shake as I watched him walk away. The contents lightly tapped the sides, reminding me the box was full despite Journey making the weight feel effortless. My other hand patted Tsyua's seeker on the belt, still firmly attached where it was supposed to be. None of my servants knew the literally divine artifacts I was carrying absentmindedly on me.

Eh.

The gods could stand to wait half an hour for me to cram food down my throat I think. I swear I won't spill anything on the box.

The best place to hide things was where nobody could reach. And there were many such places here in the clan.

To say the uninhabited parts of the estate had dilapidated would be an understatement. That turned out in my favor.

I could pick places where I'd hid items in my childhood, sure. Compartments in the ceilings, or in the floors. Over the years there's a few dozen places I'd found in these new estate grounds to hide things.

If I was being real, those had probably long ago been found out by the staff here and they only politely indulged my fantasy of thinking I knew the house better than they did.

But now I was an adult, and more importantly, I had relic armor. That opened up new places to hide my items. Places where only someone who was extremely prepared could poke their nose into.

Keeping Journey on, helmet firmly locked in place, I strode deeper into the forgotten stretches of the estate, locking the doors behind me as I went. I knew from experience the temperature would drop significantly on each doorway I passed the deeper I went into the Winterscar grounds.

Eventually, I reached corridors that as a teen I hadn't dared to open up. By the time I'd reached this part, I had been shaking and clattering already from the cold. With Journey, I felt nothing.

INow, the doors before me carried the warning ribbons on them. Skull and bones. The truly unheated sections.

I grabbed the sides of the bulkhead door and unlocked the trigger.

A gust of air from my current room fled down the empty corridor as the temperature difference demanded the air to move. Following that wind, I took a step inside and closed the doorway behind, sealing me into one of the dark, forgotten sections of the colony with a heavy clank.

Journey had already lit up its lights. There were no hallway lights, no power flowed here. And even if it did, not all those lights would run given the massive amount of neglect.

Unlike other parts of heated structure, there wasn't a mobile dust layer here. Instead, the ambient air moisture had long ago frozen alongside the dust, trapping it on the thin film at my feet.

Each step I took, the ice under me crackled, disturbed once more. I marched through that darkness with intent, going further into the superstructure. Old rooms that had never been seen by human eyes for decades, abandoned since the last clan had evacuated it. Signs of inhabitation that had long ago been covered up by frozen dust.

"Temperature?" I asked Journey, curious to see how bad it was.

The number returned was a fair bit higher than the actual surface, but still cold enough to kill. A rebreather could tank a puncture indefinitely at this temperature without overdraw at least, so these corridors were a bit safer than walking the surface.

The danger here was the gases, which meant that if a scavenger wanted to come down searching for my secrets, a rebreather wouldn't be enough. Those only heated and dampened the air. If the air already lacked oxygen over the decades of being left unmaintained and the ventilations powered off, that rebreather would do absolutely nothing to save the unfortunate soul.

This was what I was banking on to help hide my treasure.

I passed door after door of unmarked rooms, all different scales and sizes. Some could have been used for storage, others servant quarters. The trek took a while, walking down history. There was even another courtyard I stumbled on, training targets still out and eternally ready for the day humans reclaimed these grounds.

It was on a second floor up that I found a room that seemed inviting. Here, I stepped into the past.

When clans moved, most things were packed up and readied. People often had an entire year to plan out what to bring with them. But there were still hundreds of junk items that were slowly accumulated over a lifetime and made little sense to carry given the size constraints. Either because they could be re-created in the next home, or they weren't important enough to carry with.

Here was a room filled with such things. Clothing in a cupboard, a bed that was still neatly folded up, all the fabric still in one piece due to the sub-zero temperature preserving it. Wall-cotton was a hardy plant that was easy to grow in the aquaponic farms, and a single plant could produce plenty of fabric to work with. There wasn't all that much point to bringing the more easy to create items, like blankets.

I could see photography on the drawer to the side, showing a smiling woman holding a rather unhappy looking cat. The photo was laminated, held up by a metal clasp. Three other clasps were left on that drawer, all empty. This picture was placed front and center, pointed right at the doorway rather than the bed. Almost as if left specifically for whoever walked in to see. A message for me, I think.

My hands reached out, and I picked up the old photo, noticing how the lamination was slowly unbinding on the edge. The back had writing, legible.

'Her royal highness, Lord High Executioner, Poutini the Third, The Uncrustable.' It read. 'Beloved cat, nefarious terrorist to all exposed ankles, and the reason the rats still run around. May the deep freeze we leave behind do the job her royal highness refused to bother with.'

Cats were often kept as pest control, but nobody could fault a family for spoiling certain cats rotten. This ball of fluff certainly looked the part. It was odd to think that this woman was likely long dead of old age, and the best I could hope to find was her children's children. Despite the massive gulf of time, people still seemed to be the same. Humor was eternal at least.

Next to all that was a small glass box, closed with nothing inside. Other remnants remained scattered all over the room, leftovers that painted the history of a servant within the manor, serving whichever house had once owned this territory before Clan Altosk had moved in.

I thought it was touching personally. This was as good a place as any. "All right, Journey, show me the best spot to bury my treasure." My hand patted the black safe box I'd carried all this way.

"Location spotted and outlined on HUD." Journey chimed, pointing to a small nook on the opposite side of the bed. My headlights were casting deep shadows by the flooring here, anyone who was searching this place would likewise hardly see the spot.

This would do well to fool anyone passing by with a quick glance into the room. If they continued a more in-depth investigation, I seriously doubted any attempt to hide the item would have fooled a more invested seeker.

The backpack I carried dropped on the composite wood flooring with a clink of metal tools, all colliding against one another. Kneeling down, I brought out the right weapons for the job and cut into the floor with my occult knife, neatly matching the dimensions of the safe box.

Journey's HUD made the work simple, outlining where the cuts needed to be, and keeping my hands perfectly centered. Once done, I lowered the steel box into that hole. Inside was Tsuya's seeker. A box within a box. And under the fabric nest that cradled the seeker, I had set up a false bottom. Here I had hidden another box: Talen's journal.

Forgive me, Tsuya, but learning the occult had more value to me than the seeker. If one was to be stolen from me, I picked to have the seeker taken.

My bag of tools held a drill and plenty of screws, all of which I used to liberally tie the safe box down into the floor. Should the worst happen, I hoped the possible thief would stop with Tsuya's seeker and leave the rest of the safe box behind. With everything set, I gingerly lowered the cut flooring section back on top. It fit snuggly. In the shadows cast by the bed, the cut partitions was almost impossible to notice. The craftsmanship Journey had enabled was certainly top tier.

I stood back up, slapping my hands free of ice. "Right. Now that that's taken care of, time to trap the place." I reached for more tools and items inside the backpack, everything I'd need to give someone a terrible, terrible time. I'd even brought a broom with me to disturb the dust layer and start laying some false trails into the other paths.

If there was an unfortunate soul stumbling around looking for my shinies, they had better be wearing relic armor.

Because I wasn't making deterrents.

The baths were one of the main spots people socialized. Undersiders found this the weirdest of our cultural quirks, they were all used to having their own showers and baths inside their own private rooms. I always thought keeping a separate bath all to your own household sounded lavish and extremely inefficient.

Plus, it would be too quiet.

Water was a time to talk to your neighbors and put the anxieties of the past behind you. Clean the body, clean the soul. Choosing to do that alone sounded so… strange. I remember being worried for the mental health of the pilgrims when I first heard their stories. At least until they made it clear they had other ways to socialize in the undersider cities.

Up here, it was the single primary way different castes all intermingled together, besides early schooling and ball games in the empty hangars.

The entrance to the bathhouse alone inspired peace and a farewell to worries. The very architecture was deliberately different, made with ceramic tiles instead of metal. People wrote poetry, stories, jokes and etched art into these tiles. Each would be works someone had spent months polishing and perfecting on their own time until they were ready to submit to a free space in the wall.

Washing the very structure with times people remember fondly or laugh at, and art to share with others forever after. Who would want to clean anywhere else but here? Undersiders were an odd bunch.

Our group of three made a stop at the entrance before splitting up. I could see dozens of others coming and going, a lot of faces I recognized from the weeks spent in the heated sections of the airspeeder, on break. Everyone wanted to get clean.

Kidra took a left to the women's grooming hall while Teed and myself made our way to the right, passing by the fabric curtains into the men's version.

Sounds and smells were the first thing to hit us.

People talking mixed together with laughter and shouting. Kids fighting each other with towel whips on the dry section, waiting for their fathers to wrap up shaving and haircuts.

This hall was large, wide enough to have pillars required intermittently in order to keep structural integrity for all the buildings built above it. My first stop was getting my hair tended to. While I'd been out on expedition, my hair had been doing as hair is wont to do. Which isn't always pretty.

There were plenty of open barber chairs, where I made my way to one and asked the gentleman for a loose cut. The man took my coin and made quick work of the locks of hair that had overgrown during the expedition. He finished it off with a few quick swipes of a razor blade on the bits of stubble that had taken root. I hadn't tipped him for a prolonged and serious cut, just something quick and to the point.

I took a long look at my reflection as he worked with quick and practiced movements. Shaggy hair that reached my ears was my typical go to look. And while I would have enjoyed having a beard, my genetics had chosen freckles and patchy stubble instead. Very manly, yes, I know.

Kidra told me that according to some of her friends, I would look good with round glasses. And Teed had told me that his first impression of me was an overworked rail-thin engineer with perpetual soot in his hair and cheeks. And his second impression was to check his pockets to make sure everything was still there. My best friend everyone, round of applause.

The barber did his job well, getting done in minutes, already cleaning up the snipped off hair and cleaning his hands as the next man took my seat. In minutes, I was shoving my clothing into a cubby, taking off the necklace key inside and trading it for my belongings. There were two divisions here, one for the dirty clothing I walked into the baths with, and one already pre-filled out with a comfortable and pre-washed robe I'd wear on the way back home. I left that one alone while I piled up my belongings on the other side of the divider.

Shut door, click, turn the key and done.

It was now time for my favorite part in all this - not having to use a gods-damn sponge to get clean inside a heated environmental tent. I rolled the sliding door and entered the far more wet part of the grooming hall.

A full shower here was bliss, getting to actually scrub soap all over and wash my hair fully. This was what really let me sink into feeling home.

The entire process was quick. It was bad manners to hog a showerhead for too long since people wanted to get into the baths. Once I was clean of dirt and grime, I was ready for the bath.

The bathhouse itself was enormous, one of the largest open structures in the clan home, setup at the very center. Here lay a massive lake of steamy water, filled with smaller islands of bench seats scattered organically all over. For people to find a nook and relax with their friends.

At the center was a large central rock with decorations and plants of all kinds growing on it, like a small mountain from the picture books. They say the soul of the clan lived within, energized by the people that surrounded it at almost all times of the day.

The water remained at hip height at every part of the bath for the most part. Floating composite wood trays held refreshments, anywhere from liquor to fruits, usually shared by the small groups of merry goers.

If the grooming halls were loud and filled with sounds, this place was even worse with voices echoing and bouncing all around. I could see all kinds of people here, anywhere from the elderly in their own corner having calm chats, to the teenagers on the other side of the room playing social games of all kinds, mostly as an excuse to flirt.

Children had their own separate, more shallow part where they splashed around and made a ruckus away from everyone else. The guardian was sitting by to ensure the kids didn't accidentally pull off too much roughhousing. She looked tired, likely having played with the kids a few moments ago and was now waiting for her replacement to take the next shift.

A little further away, I could see Teed having already settled down, Anarii and his wife right by him. They had claimed a U shaped island of half submerged benches, where they all relaxed. Teed, like many others in the clan, kept up with body training, giving his darker skin definition and muscle mass. He had accentuated the look with silver link necklaces, each overlapping. And, more importantly, matching the square metal rectangle earring Reachers carried as proof of skill and ranking within that caste.

Undersiders were always shocked at how much the surface clan put grooming and self-care on a pedestal. For a people that spent a massive amount of time sealed up in environmental suits, I suppose it did sound odd. The reality is that only a small portion of our population spent so much time outside. Most only stepped outside for ceremony reasons or general training in case of future emergencies.

And when the main social event that saw all castes in the same room involved a relaxing dip in the water, in one of the few times you could really let loose of all the layers of clothing… well, showing off was something universal to humanity I would think.

Anarii, on the other hand, was an older man who already had a wife and had no cares to keep up appearances like his youngers. Wrinkly pale-white skin and white whiskery beard did nothing at all to help with that. Despite it all, he still had a gold earring proudly displayed, denoting his master-level skills within his career. Teed was an excellent pilot, but only seven pilots in the clan wore a gold earring right now, as far as Teed told me.

Anarii's wife was similar, looking more like the grandmother I wish I had. Or rather, unofficially, I considered her my real grandmother.

Teed waved, and I made my way over, taking quick steps through the hot water and finally sinking into the bench at his side.

Oh gods in the skies above, this was how people were meant to live. "I'm never getting out." I mumbled happily as the warmth surrounded me like a blanket.

Teed chuckled, turning to Anarii. "See, you made the wrong bet there old man. Told you that would be the exact words the kid'd say first."

Anarii frowned, "Fine, you win. Bah! I'll buy the first round. Swam right into that one." He grumbled, but his wife pushed him lightly back down on the seat as he stood.

"Allow me dear, I need to stretch my legs a bit. We've been sitting for a while now." She said in a warm voice. Beatrice was a woman from the Logi caste, specifically an operator. That was easy to tell considering she had ink markings on the side of her cheek. She had been in charge of organizing where her caste runners were at all times and telling them which directions to go. Supposedly a fairly involved task which she'd retired from recently, now giving a helping hand to the mushroom farmers, which was much slower paced and relaxing work for the elderly. Inter-caste marriages weren't super rare in this case, because the Reacher caste was roughly at the same level as the Logi's so there wasn't any fuss to the two getting together.

Anarii scoffed. "How about we both go and make it a nice romantic walk to get tipsy." He stood up, using his cane to help prop him up and the two hobbled through the water away.

Teed grinned sheepishly at me. "I didn't forget you had a… 'parched' throat. Consider my end complete." He waved at the retired pair walking away.

"Zero shame, huh." I said from my seat, moving my hands through the warm water and feeling as it passed over my open fingers. Bliss. "Getting a poor old man on a bet?"

He shrugged. "You didn't specify where the drink had to come from, only that the water be flowing."

I shrugged back. "What's the official way to demand bribes again?"

"No, no, you did it right." Teed said, chuckling. "It's not about who pays so long as you're getting paid, see? Think big picture." His finger tapped the side of his head, a knowing smile. "Now, 'bout your part of the deal here."

I waved his concerns away. "Heigi, Heigi, I'll figure something out. But I'm not going to outright tell her to go ask you on a date. That part's on you, so quit being so shy about things. I'll set up a moment," Turning, I tapped his chest with a pointed finger. "But I'm not leading her into bathhouse games just for you to wuss out. Got me? You're silver, put your ego where your mouth is."

He laughed at that. "Even if I were a gold pilot, I'd still feel nervous 'bout asking a damn knight out. Just as I was finally getting over asking a ranking retainer out, she had to go and turn into a knight."

"You knew she'd have eventually. Father would have retired and one of us was going to pick up his plate. And it wasn't going to be me."

The water splashed a bit as he shifted, stretching out and staring up into the faraway ceiling. This was one of the few places in the clan where there was so much open space above. It made the baths feel enormous. "I knew that," Teed said, hand raising up and motioning up. "Just thinking I had more time to climb up the ranks before the time came. Feel like I'm only a few months away from making it into gold. Would have felt better asking from that position."

What was funny, at least to me, is that Teed hasn't seemed to realize Kidra hadn't just become a knight. She was now the lady Winterscar. As she was the eldest between us and thus held the rights. Earlier today she'd strode into that courtyard already in command and prepared with a plan for our House. Teed wasn't just planning on asking out any random relic knight, he was thinking of dating the head of a House. The scandal and gossip about this could be legendary.

And of all the heads of houses, Kidra was probably the only one he actually had a chance for since she wasn't going to bow to the pressure of marrying for political gain. The other houses could go choke on ice, I don't see someone like Kidra giving even an inch of her own autonomy. Especially now that she held all the power.

Talking about the devil, she walked out of the women's hall with a few of her old friends, making her way to another section where a gaggle of women were occupied. They all cheered and waved as she approached. Given the tattoos they sported like mine, they were all retainer caste. Didn't need to look to feel Teed shift around and sneak a disguised peek.

I elbowed him in the side, "Get your mind out of the drain. That's my sister, you bastard."

"Wasn't looking, swear on Talen." He chuckled, the traditional response to our familiar inside joke. "What's your next plan of action, if you don't mind me askin'?"

Not so subtly changing the subject there buddy. "Now that you're a knight I mean." He clarified. "Noticed you didn't get the additional tattoo yet. You'll have to stop by for it at one point."

"Gods, that would look like an odd sight. A twig like me walking around with that on my shoulder. Think I need to work out first. Knights aren't supposed to look scrawny."

He gave a weak shrug. "Don't be supposin' you need to care how you look when you're at the top of the mountain."

Humming in consideration, I sank deeper into the water. Anarii was making his way back with a floating tray from the corner of my eye, and his wife staying by the shopside talking to old friends.

"If he brings back strawberry flavored shots, I'm kicking you over there." I threatened. "I'll see that as a sign from the gods."

He gave a quick look over where my sister had settled with her friends, all of them animatedly asking her questions as she politely answered each. Even from the distance it was pretty obvious who was the center of attention there. Frankly her sense of style also eclipsed the women there too, as she had some sort of unworded elegance around her.

Kidra was always immaculate in her appearance and mannerisms. It was the armor she wore at all times, and even around me it rarely dropped. I think Teed was the only one who'd seen her slacken that armor, and only a few times at that just like me.

"No way," Teed said, almost pleading "There's twelve of them. Rather eat glass. And so long as you're not in armor, you ain't dragging me anywhere. Don't even think about it, twig. I will throw you halfway across the water if you try. Don't think I won't make a scene."

On the other corner of my eye, I saw a small group of men stumble out of the men's hall, all scanning around the lake with the energy of people who had a goal. One of them saw me, and pointed in my direction to his fellows. The others all whooped and jumped in, making a direct path to us. The leader of this group of hooligans was a familiar face. One that I'll never forget from childhood, looking down in sheer terror at a specific avatar of white feathered vengeance.

The rooster tamer himself had come out to say hi.

"Okay, but hear me out - what if the numbers got even?" I grinned. "Because it looks like word got around that we're back early."

"Fuckin' gossips." Teed sighed, voice dripping with defeat.

"No place safe from my kind buddy." I said, wrapping an arm around his neck and whispering more conspiratorially. "Now, here's the plan…"

Next chapter - The Occultist's Cookbook, First Edition

Book 2 - Chapter 9 - The Occultist's Cookbook, First Edition

"Alert. Ambient temperature within comfortable margin." Journey chimed in my ear, waking me from my meditation.

Around me, the small familiar room had taken on a different look compared to what it had been the first time I'd stepped foot. The walls glistened slightly, condensation forming on the sides. The small heater I'd brought with me remained humming, fighting a hard battle to keep this single room heated.

It wasn't perfectly insulated with any sort of quality, unlike the ribboned doors that I'd passed earlier. But a room was still a room, and with a heater constantly supplying power, I had created a small pocket of habitable air here, deep within the mothballed sections of House Winterscar.

Getting this heater on the sly was a little difficult to arrange. If I ordered a portable heater and then disappeared for a few hours, the connections could quickly be made. So I had to give a good excuse where I'd be and a more subtle approach to swiping the heater.

Hard part had been done now. Within this small pocket of warm air, I was free and truly safe from all prying eyes. No one could accidentally reach me, since they'd have to make a full journey through the dark zones.

A small cloud of wispy grey had been actively swaying from all parts of the armor, reaching out to the room like tentacles. It was fascinating to watch.

I'd discovered a few novel things from poking my nose into Journey so far. Namely how the bloody hell it managed to cycle clean air in the suit, even if completely submerged. There was no obvious tank of air anywhere that anyone could see.

The answer lay in how the suits repaired themselves - they could destroy matter, and recreate it, within hardwired limits. All Journey did was destroy carbon dioxide and recycle it into oxygen, with a few other gases to balance. It only cost some energy to do so, which was where a fair percentage of the power cells it ate went to.

In this room, the stale air had long ago gone bad according to Journey. Not totally bad, but not great for my health either. What Journey was doing right now was acting as a magic air purifier. With each swipe of those reaching tendrils, the air it passed through was converted into something more breathable. I didn't need to move, the heater was causing a gentle wind within this closed room, so new air was constantly being cycled where Journey caught and filter it.

Soon enough, Journey chimed that the room was ready enough. So, heated enough and clean enough. Time to get to work.

I unhooked Journey's helmet, setting it down and taking a breath of the air here. Smelled slightly stale, but not overly so. A breath out and I saw the vapor mist billowing out of my mouth. It was still cold enough to nip at my cheeks and nose, but certainly habitable. The poor heater wasn't going to perfectly warm this room up considering the oppressive temperature right past the walls and sealed doorway. There were too many leaks.

That's fine. I had brought a good amount of power cells with me. I could tank the cost.

There was a reason I needed to be able to work without a helmet. And that reason lay inside a black safebox I had hidden here a day ago.

Unlocking the box, I saw all the contents within had gone untouched. The seeker remained cradled in a bed of linen, appearing as the centerpiece. I brought it out and set it to the side. This wasn't what I planned to investigate first. Tsuya had said the seeker worked with the mites. Those elusive buggers were nowhere near the surface, so I figured my research on that would be limited.

My target lay under the false bottom of the safe. There were questions I needed answered. Kidra had shared the recording of events at the bunker and we'd both poured over the details, trying to figure out what was going on.

The technical answer we arrived at was 'What the fuck.' It was pretty clear I'd only get my answers once I studied the Occult. We'd tabled it for later, on her part because of the sheer amount of paperwork she'd taken on, and on my part for the busy work of executing that paperwork. I'd been marching around the clan drumming up support. Kidra had planned a return to the light, but that wasn't going to happen without some effort and legwork. New servants needed to be hired, subcontractors from the Logi castes needed to be brought onboard to handle the numbers, and a hundred other smaller details.

Finding the spare time to sneak out and study the Occult was an oddly difficult task to juggle. Especially since this wasn't something I could even let a tiny hint escape. People would ask questions about why the second armor in House Winterscar was absent.

A bit of digging around brought me back into the present and I found the latch to lift up the false bottom. Talen's metal safe box reflected the ambient light, giving a slight glint. I brought that up wholesale and set it down. It's odd to consider that this tiny box might just be the most important moment in my life. I twisted the handle and opened the box.

The panel protecting the interior slid open, revealing the thick tome of metal. I could hold the spine in one hand, but it certainly stretched my fingertips. Despite how beefy it looked, most of the space was taken up by the thicker sheets of metal and the velum material that separated each. I don't think there are more than fifty sheets within the whole thing.

Now that I was using my eyes to see the surface, I saw what Atius had. There were indeed words inscribed on the surface sheet. The same ones that the clan lord had read to Kidra and I.

I gingerly flipped that first sheet of metal and moved onto the second.

To begin to understand the Occult, one must understand that the occult was not made for humankind. It came into being as a part of the universe, far before our time.

There are three rules to the Occult that defy logic and have no means of explanation. All remaining rules of the Occult can be derived back to these original rules in some form.

The first rule of the Occult, and the root from which all stems: Reality can recognize patterns.

I'd hoarded books and stories whenever I could. There was one point that was quickly understood, the Occult as I knew only became a thing after the annihilation of the world. There was a whole range of history that just didn't exist, wiped off the face of the world. That happened to a lot of things, where Old World humans would reference items or concepts that used to be a thing but no longer existed.

The Occult was one such term. Old world humans saw the Occult more like stage magic - pentagrams, black candles, goats on the altars. But past the information blackout, the Occult re-appears in more modern stories and history, this time as an actual force of nature. If reality truly did have runes of some kind that it bowed to, those symbols wouldn't look artistic like the Occult of the old world, with written words scribbled on the sides for effect.

So then, what would reality itself recognize as a pattern? I traced through the words inscribed into metal.

These patterns are commonly called Fractals, though they do not always equate to the mathematical term. Some cultures have used the word 'Glyphs', 'Sigils', or 'Marks' - or what I assume are actually Occult fractals.

The source of these patterns came from chaos theory, a branch of mathematics people of the old world studied. Chaos theory are equations which are inherently unpredictable. Even beginning with the same conditions and input data, the result would deviate from the previous calculation.

Yet, if repeated again and again, some show patterns. And if that pattern appears, unerringly, no matter what data is used, the pattern will always appear. As if inscribed into the very fabric of the universe itself. The language of deities.

The metal slab ended there. Hastily, I flipped the sheet, reading the next page.

The second rule of the occult: Electricity ignites these patterns.

It was discovered that these patterns will remain inert until an electric current is run touching the pattern. The material does not matter, although it has traditionally been plates of metals due to ease of conduction and access. The size, or location of the pattern does not matter. The strength of the electric current does not matter.

The third and final rule is that all patterns connect to a single concept. When active, that concept is manifested upon the world. There are an infinite amount of patterns within chaos theory, and of those patterns, there is a sub-set of patterns that reality will acknowledge. Within that smaller infinity, lies an even smaller sub-set in which the concepts represented by the inscribed glyphs map to human understood concepts.

To wield the Occult is to seek out and record those unique patterns of reality, and then bend them to your will.

I took a pause, digesting the information in the dim light. This must be why Tsuya had referenced 'The soul fractal' - that could be the pattern that matches the 'concept' of soul?

Which brought another question: If the Occult was a force of nature that pre-dates humanity, and all life in general - then why is there a fractal for a human soul? What exactly is a soul in the first place? Was this universal, in such a way that the soul was a concept that already existed before life even developed?

The Occult is split into two masteries. In the first order of mastery, an inscribed glyph can be activated with no other action. These glyphs connect to simple concepts. Simple glyphs such as 'Heat' or 'Division' - They can be used by anyone, even in ignorance.

The second mastery is far more elusive and known only to a handful. These concepts require willpower to shape and manifest the concept into the world. The white wizards of Tanrok draw their powers from this branch of Occult.

For many years, I could not understand how they could connect to the Occult in such a way as to command it. They hoarded that knowledge, protecting it from anyone.

Urs, a colleague and technomancer, once told me that all knowledge was a grand cycle of discovery, destruction and rediscovery. That the eras constantly cycled around mass extinctions and resurgences. Each iteration of history leaves behind traces the next cycle uses.

I took his words to heart and discovered these cycles applied to the Occult as well. The Wizards were simply the next iteration that had reignited the torch of knowledge - a fact that in their hubris, they had forgotten and thus left unguarded. And so I went searching for the original torch.

Their predecessors were long extinct tribes that revered shaman chieftains, who were capable of wielding what was most likely the Occult. Once I began to search through their ruins, I found the truth.

The shamans hadn't found a way to directly command the Occult. Instead, they found a workaround - a patch of sorts - to enter the framework and command it from within the system.

I flipped the page again and what I saw next instantly connected with what I'd seen before. Specifically in Kidra's video footage. Winterscar had released a tendril of its spirit, which had touched the sides of the console and left an etching of a fractal. That fractal had begun to glow bright occult blue and the whole bunker came to life after that.

What I was staring at was that exact fractal. I felt my hair stand on edge, hand brushing on the cold metal fractal. Under it was one more paragraph of text.

This fractal, the Julia Set, is known as the Soul Fractal. This is how the wizards, and the shamans before them, are capable of embedding intent into the Occult - they have embedded their souls into the system, granting a direct connection.

To truly wield the occult, forge a soul fractal and infuse your soul into it. This is the first step to becoming a wizard.

I'd never heard of wizards. Given the age of this tome, I had a suspicion these wizards were to our modern day warlocks analogues like the shamans had been to them. The previous iteration of humanity. No idea what happened to the wizards, either they got stomped out or slowly changed to become something different.

I slowly unclasped the metal bindings, freeing up the sheet of metal. It was rigid enough that bending it was outside the realm of my own human strength. Lifting it up, I held it between both hands.

All of reality would recognize this glyph, according to the book. The words that surrounded it were nothing to reality. The material the glyph was inscribed on was equally unimportant - only that it could conduct a current.

"Journey." I spoke, licking my lips and preparing. "Pass a small current of electricity through this plate."

"Affirmative." Journey chimed. And then the glyph began to glow in my hands, exploding in color. Occult blue dyed the room as the inscribed glyph came to life. The lazy wind within the room began to swirl around me, kicking up dust that reflected the occult light. At the center of this slow moving malstrom, the soul sense within me flared to life.

The same connection as when I had held Atius's blade. A sense that I could activate something.

There was no hesitation. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and dove forward.

Next chapter - The realm of souls

Book 2 - Chapter 10 - The realm of souls

The world rippled around me, a wind of energy and chaos flying past. Belatedly, I realized it was me that was moving, soaring through a bridge in the universe. As I flew through the air, the reality around me chipped away, I felt it's hostility.

Outside was no place for a soul to exist. It took an act of willpower to remain cohesive, something I realized instinctively how to do.

Rapidly falling away behind me was my body. And rapidly advancing towards me was a metal shell, a colder more unthinking body. Somehow I knew with every fiber in my being this was a safe harbor to moor at compared to surviving outside. My soul settled into it comfortably enough.

I could see in a way that I wasn't quite able to put into worlds. Around me the world appeared as concepts. The floor wasn't such a thing as a true floor but the knowledge it was a floor. Everything around me was a blob of concepts, only when I focused did I start piecing together what was around.

It took a bit of time for me to acclimatize to the new soul sight. A mental greyscale image of the world came into focus, in a manner of speaking. My body was one of two items of note that seemed to 'glow' in pale color. A warm amber for my body, and a cool blue color emanating from a chestplate within Journey. However, I noticed that there were more appearing into 'sight.' Further focus revealed what they were: Fractals. Different kinds, spread all over the armor.

The central fractal at the chest however remained the one that glowed brightest.

This felt like a possible home destination my soul could harbor in, as far as I could feel - and it was occupied. Journey's own soul fractal I'm assuming. I knew these armors were working hand in hand with the Occult, but this confirmed it beyond doubt. I wasn't sure what would happen if I tried to fly there, I strongly suspected this was what Father had done.

I still felt a connection to my body. Or rather, I hadn't fully committed to the soul fractal, leaving a part of me still connected home. Enough that I could sluggishly command my arm to move, bringing the plate I now existed in closer to my body.

I was a little afraid of what might happen if I dropped the plate on the ground. If that electric connection broke, would I be stranded outside of my body forever? What happens to a soul when the power is cut?

The thoughts began to plague me, fear of death taking root in my heart. Sheepishly, I decided it was time to return home. Maybe I hadn't been exactly... uhh, thinking when I picked to jump headfirst into the fractal.

Once more the ability to move was there and without effort I found I could thankfully fly from this soul fractal back into my body. It accepted me wholly, a far more snug and perfect fit compared to the dull metal sheet.

My soul dug back into the roots of my body, almost like sinking into warm water, submerging under. When I opened my eyes next, the world had returned to normal. The sheet of metal in hand remained glowing softly in the room, still powered in my hands. Empty. And waiting.

Gods above, that was a trip. "Journey, turn off the current."

The light died out in the room, replaced only by the heater's own yellow glow. The soul sense faded away with it.

Already, there were dozens of possible experiments I could take this. And almost all of them could cause me to instantly die off.

What happens if I use the soul fractal to free my soul, and then dive into another person's body? What happens if I try to jump into Journey's soul fractal? What happens if the glyph is destroyed while my soul is inhabiting it?

Some of those questions I don't think I'll get an answer to.

I set the sheet of metal back into the book bindings, then picked up my helmet and equipped it. The armor brought out a full display on my HUD and the information I was looking for was a few clicks away.

Journey noted no great abnormalities within my body while my soul was partway gone. Instead it seemed like I had gone into a deeper meditative trance. As far as the tech was concerned, nothing strange had really occurred at all.

I dug with new hunger at the pages inside the book, flipping from metal page to metal page. Journey still had a mental block of sorts that prevented it from displaying the contents of the book. In order to get anywhere, the helmet had to be off.

The rest of the book had fractals. Each page detailed a new fractal pattern and it's uses. And while it was clear Talen hadn't been a researcher of the technical kind, he still took care to write out the actual math equations if he managed to discover them.

Fractals could apparently be tweaked by changing the constants slightly. There was a 'true' pure fractal in which the results were perfect, and slightly changing the constants around that equation would reduce the effects but maintain the spell.

Talen related it to writing. Language was a series of symbols the human mind was trained to recognize. There could be hundreds of fonts for a single letter, all of them uniquely different or extravagant, but still clearly recognized as a letter. The same of fractals and how reality recognized it.

The fractal of heat was one of the early spells covered in the book. This Occult sign looked far less structured and rigid compared to the graceful lines of the soul fractal. Instead, it was a floating mess, looking more like clouds. The inscription itself required different density of cuts, which would affect the result. The pure fractal would generate invisible flames. Slight modifications would have the flames become something more pale translucent blue, and onwards down until actual normal fire would appear.

This could be called upon without intent, though the result would simply be fire. If I was reading the book right, executing this while the soul fractal is active should give me a lot more command over the fire, though Talen hadn't explained exactly how to manipulate the flames. It seemed the book was more a jumpstart, giving the basic instructions along with a handful of useful fractals to begin with. It was clearly up to me to experiment with what I had to work with.

"Journey, if I gave you an empty piece of metal, could you inscribe a fractal pattern into it using your spirit to eat away at the metal?"

Journey chimed affirmative, exactly as I'd expected. Winterscar had done it to the side of the console in the bunker. There was no reason Journey couldn't follow through with that.

With the occult knife, I cut a small section of metal off from the room. Most things were made of composite wood and other 3D printed construction goods that had good enough insulation compared to sturdiness, but there was still plenty of metal to go around.

I couldn't just point at Talen's sheet of metal and tell Journey to copy that fractal - it was hardwired to see nothing. So I fed my armor an exact formula to inscribe on the cut metal. Journey's spirit snaked out like tendrils of black mist, flowing up my arm and into the cut section of metal my hand held. The process took only a few seconds, after which the tendril retreated back, leaving the metal cutting alone.

What was left behind was the exact fractal I had hoped for. I'd done some modifications to the constants, which should have tuned down the purity of the fractal into something more adjacent. If I was right, this would be the traditional yellow orange fire and not something stranger.

I took a deep breath, then gave a command. "Journey, pass a small current of electricity through my fingers."

The sigil began to glow bright blue and fire erupted from the fractal, flowing up into a long tongue. I stared at what I had in hand. Welp. This was outright magic.

The tongue of flame was perfect in every regard. It didn't waver at all except when being moved or interacting with wind. The strength and power remained completely constant.

"Got any idea where the energy for this flame is coming from?" I asked Journey.

"Negative. Anomaly has been logged for further review." The armor said.

"What, not even a guess?"

"Insufficient information for meaningful answer. Further analysis is required."

"You know the same thing that caused this is running deep inside you. You're made partially of the Occult. It's curious that you're able to use such things without knowing anything about them."

The armor gave me an oddly cheeky answer. "Counterstatement: Does the user understand all actions red blood cells take?"

Ah. I got what Journey was saying. Sure, I knew I had blood running in my veins and I'd go as far as to say blood sure was important. Bad to have it leak out the body, some would claim. But as for how it actually functions to keep my body lucid and working? It might be written on some book that the Caretaker caste knew about in depth, but I certainly didn't.

"Fine." I said, still waving the flame around. Even up close I could feel the heat in the air on the sides of my cheek if I brought it close enough. "Say, how much modification can you do on yourself?"

"Within parameters, modifications are possible."

"How about battle damage done in specific manner and then intentionally left unrepaired?"

"Within parameter." Journey answered.

If I wanted to be a warlock, you gotta have fire. Had to be done. Maybe I might not know how to throw that fire in a ball yet, but the first steps were already forming up in my head and I wanted to take a wild shot at it.

"Inscribe that equation same as you did on this piece of metal, but on the palm of my right hand. Make it big enough to fill out the whole palm." One of the things Talen mentioned when going over the fire fractal was that size affected how large the flame would be. He postulates that this shows size does have some relation to the effects one could expect, but it was more as an additional parameter some fractals used while most others did not. Something I would be abusing outright if I could first prove my little idea worked.

Journey did as ordered, funnelling its spirit across the palm and burning into it the fractal of flame, at least the modified version I'd setup.

"All right, so when I open up my hands dramatically, I want you to run a charge through the inscribed part of the plate." I said, inspecting the fractal.

Journey chimed affirmative. Not really expecting anything to happen, but secretly still expecting things to happen, I brought my hand into a fist and extended it further away.

Then I opened my hand.

Fire sprung out of it like a furious power woken into the world. It curled around my armored hands, Journey being completely immune to the flame itself. Even further away the flame blazed on, the heat already reaching my exposed face.

I'm not going to talk about what happened next because it's rather embarrassing, but let's say the inner kid within me took command for a good fifteen minutes while I jumped around waving a fist made of fire through the air. Did you know fire makes a sound when passing by through the air? Like a whoosh that could be felt more in the bones than just the air. Don't ask how I know, let's say I read that in a book once.

When I calmed down, the full implications of what I could possibly do with this were already being crunched into my head.

Most fractals had no actual size requirement. So long as it could be inscribed accurately, it could function. Larger fractals had the advantage of fitting in more recursion patterns within, which would 'strengthen' the fractal in odd ways. Hence a larger flame fractal could fit in more detail and thus make a bigger flame proportional to the added detail.

Other fractals would work just fine so long as they have a minimum amount of detail setup. Which means I could start putting these fractals all over the armor in hidden spots, activating them on command.

Besides the combat applications, the more mundane applications were frankly so much more important they outright eclipsed anything I could do.

The fire required no energy source save for the current of electricity, and consumed no oxygen as far as Journey had examined it. It was simply the concept of heat itself made manifest into the world, which it would naturally appear as fire.

In a single hour of study, I had the means of solving the clan's entire heating issues almost permanently. Occult heaters. It seemed like such a stupid use of an all powerful wizardry, but the mundane was how wars were won. Heating already tied up thousands of cells in the colony, freeing up even a fraction of them would have been life-changing.

Atius was going to be a very happy clan lord.

Next chapter - The empty throne

Book 2 - Chapter 11 - The empty throne

"Open up the chestpiece, let's see what's inside."

Winterscar obeyed, metal parts peeling away. Kidra watched closely, grabbing each plate part as it split off from the main.

We'd finally found a section of time that both my sister and I were free, so we decided to have a nice bonding moment by ripping apart the family armor looking for answers.

The under armour appeared as hundreds of stands, made of some kind of mesh fabric. Occult blue light leaked from under these ligaments, seeping from behind. Kidra pointed with a finger, tracing one of the fiber clumps, "Curious."

"They look almost like muscles." I whistled. The entire system looked extremely complex and perfectly tidy, now that it was opened the right way instead of ripped apart in combat.

"That's because they are." Kidra said. "I recognize all these. It's a mirror of human muscles. This, for example, looks exactly like the deltoid muscle, directly where the real version would be, by the shoulder." She reached out for a plate right under the armpits of the armor. Once more, fibers appeared under the plate. They were neatly organized, in such a way that any computer expert would consider the cable management more like art. She hummed in appreciation. "The respect for detail is quite something. Even the anterior muscles are in the correct location. Whoever forged the armors knew the human body well."

"Talking about that, how exactly do you know all of these?" I tapped the fibers with my own finger. Despite looking like metal strands, they were oddly squishy. Still firm, but somewhat soft.

Kidra shrugged. "A detailed portion of the training Father favored was to understand how the human body could move. Knowing how to hamstring a target, or where to cut for maximum effect is something I needed to know how to perform. Killing someone isn't difficult, dear brother." She said, adding a wide and innocent smile. "Incapacitating, reducing or predicting their range of motion is far more arduous and requires scholarly work. Sometimes it is important to leave the enemy knight alive, if only for ransom reasons."

"Well, my dear sister, it's clear that I've got a lot to learn about the proper ways to cripple someone for life, now that I'm a knight now too." Ask me how to trace on a circuit board for a break or find a cold solder joint and I'm your man. Ask me how best to disable someone's left arm and I'll probably go with 'Stab until the target is convinced to stop trying, you know, politely.'

"A skillset everyone should know for a civilized society. I'm surprised we aren't teaching the children how to maim people. Truly a shame."

"On the topic of the armor and less morbid things, any way to detach the fibers to see what's under?" I asked, being a bit more serious now. "I mean, we can always use the knives to cut through. But that seems…" I trailed off, waving my own knife around in a circle. Well, armor can repair itself from practically everything so long as there's enough of the spirit left.

Winterscar's speakers crackled to life from the helmet laying by my left. "Negative. Artificial sinews are not designed to detach. Manual deconstruction required for additional maintenance."

That answered that. Kidra's own knife lit into action faster than my own thoughts. I could see the leftover halo trail of the blade edge as she'd flourished the weapon on draw, the same movements taught by Father inadvertently over habit.

With expert precision, she cut through the fibers one at a time, until we could peel them off the chestplate and reveal what lay below.

"Eerie." I said. "I know Winterscar isn't going to feel pain, still feels odd to be cutting into armor like this."

Kidra cut another section. "That is personification, do keep it in mind. The fibers match human anatomy so you are placing feelings and empathy where there is no analogue. Winterscar is a machine."

"The lines between machine and human are pretty blurry these days." I said under my breath. "What with souls and mysticism turning out to be more and more real than expected."

The armor in question remained silent as we cut through and a part of me really hoped my sister was right. It was still uncanny, knowing the armor was at least sentient in some manner. I'd seen Journey's soul fractal. Whatever reality considered to be a soul, these armors had one. It was really screwing with my head.

Under the fibers, we found what we were looking for. More traditional wiring crossed all over, this time far more organized than when I'd seen it before, deep underground. But those times had been after the heat of battle, there were no clean cuts, it was battle damage. Here, we had carefully cut and left everything under the fake muscle fibers undisturbed.

Fractals as I'd expected.

Metal plates with etched patterns of different kinds, all glowing occult blue. Whatever the occult was, it was consistent and didn't deviate from that theme. The majority were unfamiliar to me, not noted down anywhere in Talen's book. Talen himself might have known them, but he'd only had so many pages to work with before the tome would become too difficult to produce in the numbers that I suspected he had made them in. It had included what I had come to term 'the starting kit.'

Everything else, I would have to research and discover on my own, though I had plenty of solid fractals to work with.

The ones inside Winterscar were all wildly different. Some looked like circles repeating across eternity. Others like triangles. And more just looked like crazy shapes that made little sense. I had Journey take pictures for later analysis.

Near the heart - or on the location the human heart would have existed, we found Winterscar's soul fractal. And it was an utter mess. Only the center part of the metal plaque fit the description of a soul fractal, the rest seemed like additional fractals that had been stitched or grafted to the sides of it. One of which I could recognize as the fractal of heat, only greatly warped.

I didn't quite understand why the soul fractal had been connected in this way to the other fractals. I'd need to study more of the Occult for an answer to that.

"Here." Kidra said, tapping that pattern with the turned off knife tip. "This is the same one that was etched in the video. At least the center part of it, the rest of the lines spreading out from it seem to be additions."

"I know it. I know what it does."

Kidra looked up, "Is he inside?"

"I don't know yet. But I intend to find out."

We'd poured over the events in the bunker together, multiple times now, debating what every action meant or had been, before I had found time to begin my study of the Occult.

During the time I was away, Kidra's video feed showed how she was trying to command the terminal, only for Winterscar to start acting up. The HUD had started to flicker, warning signs appeared all over, pointing out an intrusion. A virus of some kind taking command of systems in a manner that the suit was wholly unprepared to combat. Following through, a tendril of Winterscar's spirit had lifted off, and dove into the side of the terminal, spread across the metal, licking the edges.

The warning signs had disappeared, and the tentacle of spirit had instantly retreated back into the suit. Kidra had paused her actions, asking the armor what the hells had gone wrong. The armor simply answered 'Unknown'

The side of the console began to glow occult blue, and the terminal screen began to flicker on its own, moving through menu and systems as if haunted. On that console side, was this very fractal.

I knew Journey had a soul fractal, but other than the knowledge I hadn't done anything more, having my hands full. This time, the heart of a relic armor lay before me, and I reached down to touch it.

The soul sense within me instantly flared to life again and I felt something beyond the moment my finger touched the metal. As if I had connected with a friend.

A dozen ideas and meanings coalesced inside. The first, a realization I was touching and connected not to a power of some kind - but to a living soul. It felt both familiar and yet alien. Something not quite human, but with clear intentions.

The second concept I understood was that this soul was not Father. Instead, the soul felt utterly ancient. As if it had lived centuries, one day at a time.

I felt feelings next, a simple desire to protect and care for. That single thought was far more clear and precise than any feeling I had ever felt in my life. My own mind was filled with hundreds of thoughts each day, with a massive range of ideas and purpose, and all of them felt colorless now in comparison. This soul was specialized, it only thought very few things but what it did feel it felt with such vivid color the world lit with light.

It wanted to protect, it was made to protect. This was the prime purpose. It was jarringly alien, as if the soul here had a more complete understanding of purpose itself, compared to my fumbling attempts to find such a thing.

To say it was utterly humbling would be an understatement.

The only thing anywhere near as closely ingrained in my own soul was a generic need to survive. And that was something so passive and hidden under layer on layer of thoughts as to be barely noticeable until such a time my life was threatened.

This armor went far beyond such a basic desire.

Beyond the central purpose, there were other feelings I could understand, floating on the edges of the soul.

Feelings of contentment, a soft, lazy happiness at being able to perform the current work correctly and a steady enjoyment of the present peace. There was no danger right here, and the soul behind my fingertips was happy about it. It meant its user was safe.

Winterscar was pleased at being examined. Not for the actual action, but rather because it knew this was the user's intention and by doing so, it was assisting its owner. It hadn't felt pain at being cut open, although it had certainly noticed the damage and kept the information in mind.

It also saw me just as I saw it. Small tendrils touching my own soul, slight curiosity to the fumbling contact. It certainly didn't dive down deep to peer at who or what I was, rather it didn't care quite as much. It had felt something similar to my soul before, and that hadn't been a good memory for it.

Deeper down were feelings of relief.

Relief that I wasn't going to be charging into its home. Relief that it was no longer compromised.

I pushed into the fractal, exploring around, and felt Winterscar allow me access. The armor could see my intentions were not to linger within. Such thoughts put it at ease.

And I found out why.

There was a void that was slowly being re-filled by the armor. Traces of emotion there, a completely different color compared to the armor - anger, defiance, resistance, an unshakeable mission to remain.

Father.

And he was gone. Gone, gone gone. Only an echo of history remained behind. Two souls couldn't inhabit the same fractal for long. He had been unwelcome and unexpected, a constant fight between him and the armor that was breaking them both and I could see the damage still unhealed even now. Winterscar had been trying to purge him, and failing. Up until the bunker, where he had chosen to leave on his own accord.

Which meant only one result possible. "He's in the bunker." I breathed out, realizing what had actually happened. "We left him in the bunker."

There had been some kind of synchronicity when Winterscar forged the engram of combat, a similarity that allowed Father's lingering soul a foothold into Winterscar's soul fractal. He'd taken the step and invaded.

Winterscar had used his need to protect us to get him to move out before the fight for domination reached a point of no return for the armor.

Kidra stared back at me as my hand zipped off Winterscar's soul, the connection severed. "Father was left behind in the bunker." I said again, turning to her, almost frantic. "We have to get him back!"

My sister remained impassive at my growing panic, reaching a hand out to steady me. "Breathe. Whatever we can do, you need to understand that it can not be done right this moment. We can schedule an expedition back, however even at the earliest, it will not be for half a year or more."

I knew why. We needed resources and capital. Airspeeders were expensive to rent out, and that included the cost of pilot and crew. Supplies needed to be assembled and prepared, and orders given so that all remained on track while we were gone. Not even considering the whole mess of the raiders approaching. The clan couldn't afford to be down a relic knight, let alone a small expedition.

"There is nothing we can do for him as of this moment." Kidra said. "We will, soon. You need to breath, steady yourself. Right now, focus on the present."

It all made sense, the logical part of me understood instantly.

The emotional part of me didn't.

The cold heater remained unpowered within the old estate room. I had left it there, now only bringing power cells with me. Once more it hummed to life, becoming the only other source of light in this room besides Journey's headlights - and my own burning hand, the occult sign for heat brightly lit up on the palm of my hand.

I stared at that flame, losing myself in it. The realization that we had left Father behind was taking a toll on me and I wasn't processing through this the right way. Was he still there, sitting in the darkness down deep in that half ruined bunker? Had the machines destroyed everything, or had they simply left it alone once the turrets had been ripped apart? Did he sleep when the power was off? Or is he gone? If I came back half a year later, would I find a fading soul, filled with insanity from the isolation?

I'd mumbled out an excuse to Kidra and practically ran straight out of that room. Then I searched for the first thing that could distract me.

The hangar rooms were the only place in the clan compound with any measure of space, normally the empty ones were used for sports. Wallball being the single most common and popular of the set. I went into those courts with a vengeance and spent my energy slapping a ball and trying to outplay the scavengers lined up there.

It had helped a bit, but it hadn't been enough.

I slunk into the kitchen next, staring at our reserve of drinks and wondering if I was so far gone as to follow his footsteps. The bottles winked at me. I stumbled backwards, and raced away.

This time, I made straight for the Occult. Requipping Journey, and ran my way into the quiet bowels of the mothballed sections. Thinking it could do the trick and completely forgetting that I'd have to spend a half hour waiting for the sub-zero room to heat back up to a respectable level. Half an hour with only the silence of the room and wailing thoughts in my head.

In hindsight, maybe not my best idea to date.

Father was alive. I had experienced before what it was like to be a disembodied soul. He was still alive, assuming if a soul fractal was left unpowered the soul inside would remain dormant. Otherwise…. No, I had to believe that.

I had to keep hope. And I needed something to study, to look into, to keep my head from spinning.

In a flash of brilliance, I remembered a detail I hadn't yet checked into: Tsuya had unlocked all parts of Journey when our group had left the bunker.

I brought out the history.

Video logs. Hundreds of them, all neatly sorted by date. It was perfect. I could lose myself here, in someone else's life. Recording the past expeditions. An entire library cataloging a life spent in this armor. There were so many, I wasn't even sure where to start.

"Journey, could you… could you show me a video of…" Of what? I scrolled through the archive and found hundreds of files. Thousands even. "Show me a video of the most important moment in her life." I said.

The armor complied, the scroll bar flickered and files zoomed past my view. I was scrolling back through the ages, until one video was selected and began playing.

I saw the surface.

The view wobbled in the way of a person walking. The dark sky showed a deep black. The steady crunching of boots on the ice above, many of them. Only the white lights of the armors kept anything illuminated. Ahead was a scavenger, bundled up in an environmental suit, and only a few hundred feet beyond was a mountain.

He turned, glancing at the camera and then panning around to the unseen behind my view. "The shrine is just this way, my lords crusaders." The guide said, pointing at what looked to be a staircase chiseled into the sides. "I'm afraid I cannot guide you past the stairwell. It is a cursed ground that only those who serve the imperium can cross into. I am sorry, this is where I must bow out."

Another armored crusader passed by, tapping the guide's shoulders. "We thank you for guiding us here, Azekul. You've done your part. Rest easy. What's left is something we know how to do, for our own pilgrimage. Wait in the airspeeder, we will be back shortly after daybreak."

The guide nodded, bowing deep and then turning to walk away, shuffling past the viewpoint.

"This is it then?" A woman's voice sounded. I realized it had come from me - or rather the viewpoint I was seeing through. It sounded young, brash, confident.

This must be Cathida. "Looks pretty fuckin' plain." She said, annoyed.

The woman who wore Journey turned her head, and the view shifted in accordance, showing five other crusaders standing in the snow. One of them turned to glance back. "Aye." That one said. "It don't look like much from here. And for reasons. You'll soon see, Langg."

"All this dagger and cloak shit," Cathida said. "Better be worth my time. I could be underground right now being useful, or racking a bigger number."

There was a chuckle, and Cathida turned to the leader of the pack.

"This is the single most useful thing you will do in your life. You will swear an oath. The final one." He said.

"I've sworn all the oaths already, every last one of them." She said hotly, folding her hands on her chest. "Lived by them day in and day out. You saying there's a fifth? Thought that was just bunk rumor and squire shit."

"Yes." The leader turned and walked to the stairwell, beginning his accent. "There is a fith one. One only our order swears and will only do so upon the surface, under the goddess's eyes. The Imperator and I brought the three of you here because all of you showed true potential. Your actions, deeds and skills have spoken for you. For some," He turned to glance at a crusader by Cathida's side. "Your loyalty and devotion brought you here. For others," He turned to glance at Cathida, "Only your undeniable skills did. Each has a use that will be forged into a weapon the goddess will wield against her foes. And so we will offer each of you a choice very few crusaders get."

The group followed behind, there were no further objections.

The climb lasted hours, only a small part had been up the stairs. The rest was an actual climb. Journey simply fast forwarded through the whole. In seconds, we were now at the summit, the world considerably brighter, the light blue of daybreak. Here, I saw a small temple, pillars extended out, surrounding the statue of a woman holding in her hands a massive gold orb, lifted high. The surrounding mountain had obscured the temple, leaving only one direction where it could have been seen from. The same direction the sun had started to rise from.

All the crusaders knelt down at the sight, including Cathida.

The leader approached the shrine, turning around and speaking to the assembled group. The fifth crusader took a spot at the leader's side while Cathida and two others remained kneeling.

"I have brought you here to induct you into the Indagator Mortis. Imperator O'rasis has come with me to bear witness."

The three crusaders remained kneeling. I saw Cathida's hands clench slightly around the hilt of her sword, vital signs showing her heartbeat had increased.

"We are the elites of the Imperium. Our order once served the emperor himself, before he was lost to time. Now, we served a new master, one beyond even the emperor. The goddess herself."

The sun rose further, light now touching the orb of gold above the statue. It began to glow, writing appearing to stand out against the gold.

"These orbs were left behind by her divinity, hidden on the surface where the enemy has been banished forevermore. It is here we will swear the final oath only those of our order do so. Before we begin, know that your life will forevermore be changed after this moment. Should any of you three choose not to take upon this mantel, to not join our order, you are free to stand and leave."

None of the crusaders kneeling did so.

The leader nodded. "So be it. Raise your swords, and read of the inscriptions layed by our founders. This shall be the oath you swear to. I shall call you one at a time to do so."

The view tilted up, as Cathida zoomed in her vision on the golden orb. She soaked in the words as written.

I shall seek the lost emperor and return them to their rightful throne. The world must be united.

"When the end times arrive, our enemies shall find only our mercy lacking." The leader spoke. "In her wisdom, the goddess has given us the chance to find and restore the lost emperor along with the tools to do so. We shall reforge the empire into the spear that will be driven into the heart of the machines and shatter them forevermore."

A more somber voice took on the leader's speech. "Know that we are not the first, nor the last. The goddess speaks to us once a century, and her words are cryptic, made to sneak past the violet goddess. Only the greatest of our numbers are sent out to truly search for the heir. The rest of you will be tasked in other ways to further the cause."

He turned to glance at the imperator, who stepped forward and took the podium. The imperator's voice was a deeper pitch, an older man. "Countless crusaders before you have searched for the inheritor of the throne. Doubtless, countless more shall come after us. Remain ever vigilant, for the end times may come at any day. When the balance between man and machine ends, only a war of extinction remains. This is the true calling of our Order. When that war comes, it is our task to have the world prepared to win it.

And for that to happen, the empire must rise from its ashes. All of it, from body to head.

Solaris Imperium."

Next chapter - In which an old lady yells at Keith

Book 2 - Chapter 12 - In which an old lady yells at Keith

An imperial room appeared into view, shaking left to right as the helmet was settled and sealed. People were milling around. A young boy was staring directly into the camera, a hand reached out to where my ear would have been. He spoke.

"Don't you think you're a little too old for this Grandma?" He said. "Can't you send out one of your squires?"

There was an old voice, the same one I recognized from the first time I'd tried digging into Journey's past. This was the Imperial Crusader, Cathida.

"Bah! Listen here dear - if you want something done right, you get a professional. And I am a professional. I'm not going to let some wet-between-the-ears pelf squire get in a mission like this one. This is too important to leave it in the hands of kids."

"But you're retired!"

"Peh!" An armored hand came into view, the right one. The left gauntlets came by next, fiddling with the straps, tightening leather additions and decorations.

"You can barely move outside the armor!" The boy continued. "The disciples can be better protected by an inquisitor, or another crusader if you don't want the squires out there."

The view shook left to right, "No child. This was a mission given to me by the goddess herself. She's tasked me for a reason. They need someone skilled, loyal and expend- ah, well nevermind that. Don't you worry your little cheeks about it too much." The viewpoint rose, likely as Cathida stood up. An armored hand reached out to pat the boy's head. "You haven't seen me fight before, have you?"

"I've seen you sleep on chairs mostly. And ask me to sneak you treats."

The armored hand drew down and pinched the boy's cheek. "Why aren't you a bundle of sass? Some of me must have rubbed off on you. I'm sure your mother is going to be happy with me out of the picture for a few months. She's far too late however, my work is already done." She cackled, a barking laugh. Even the view shook slightly.

Again the hand rose up, curled into a fist, and threw out a slow experimental jab. "The trick to the armors is that they move you. These old bones might not move themselves anymore, but my mind is as sharp as my blade. In armor, the mind is the only weapon important enough to care for. The goddess protects me as I protect her."

"Grandma! You're being stubborn again!"

Another chuckle. "Don't be so worried for me, my adorable little brat." A finger extended out to boop the nose of the boy. "In her wisdom, the goddess saved me like you would save a trump card, for the moment a mission of true importance came around that only a veteran of the elite could handle." Cathida seemed to almost puff out her chest. The view shifted over to one armored hand, opening and closing experimentally. "Once more into the fray, wielding my armor. There's no words you could string together that could pry me out now that I'm wearing Journey again, so give it up! I've been brought back from the dead for this. Now, hurry up boy or I'll show you how a sandal's really supposed to be used. We haven't got all day."

The boy shook his head, turning around and reaching out for a scroll of paper. I watched as he pinned it on the chestplate, a red wax melting on the side to affix it. A tendril of Journey's spirit flickered out, flowing into the wax, leaving behind a small chain of metal linked back to the armor. There was writing all over the scroll, penned beautifully.

The boy ahead knelt down, hands clasped before his head as he mumbled a prayer.

The comms on the side switched to private. "Journey." Cathida said. "How was my son?"

"User remains healthy and undamaged." The armor responded.

She chuckled. "Must have been quite hard on you, good job." Two hands stretched out in front, view looking up as Cathida stretched out. "It's good to be wearing you again, old friend. Indulge this old bat one more time."

"Affirmative."

Around Cathida, two Imperials arrived, waving incense from chained hollow spheres. They escorted a third robed man that carried a sealed rectangular box.

Cathida walked to them, where they knelt down before her, the box extended. She reached a hand out, and flipped the clasps, lifting the lid. Inside the box lay the crusader longsword I had grown familiar with, cradled in silks, polished to a mirror shine.

She reached down and brought it up, raising it high to the air. There was an edge to her voice now, a mixture of pride and excitement, even as her voice wobbled in the way elderly people did. "I am the instrument of her might. I am the sword by her side. Tremble all ye who tread upon the sun, and break before my will. So swear I, and take upon this mantle. Sol custodit."

It sounded almost like someone who had long since gone past their time was trying to cosplay those moments again.

"Solaris Imperium!" All three sword bearers answered back in unison.

She flourished the sword back into her scabbard and all thoughts that she was elderly utterly slipped past my head. The move was deadly, practiced, precise and every bit as surprising coming from someone that sounded as she did. Anyone fighting her would be in a world of hurt.

The view turned to the boy. "You be good now, don't bully your sister. I might be gone a few months but if I come back and hear you've been naughty..." She leaned down, almost conspiratorially, "Well, I wouldn't recommend that. Remember your uncle?"

The boy grinned, laughing. "No one's going to forget, half the city heard you."

An armored hand patted the side of the boy's cheek. "Your uncle was being stubborn and forgot his place. There isn't anyone more stubborn than me in this city. Now don't forget that."

"I just worry, is all. Grandma, you could die if you go out there. People die all the time."

"Bah!" Cathida chided. "Other people die. I don't. Death can file the paperwork and stand in line. The only way the machines are taking my number down is if they bore me to death."

She turned to view the entryway where two others came in. They looked like scholars, and I saw something else I recognized. The black box. The seeker.

"Crusader Langg, we've brought all the supplies and are ready to begin. Wickem has already plotted out the most efficient path to cover this region. Once we've completed the round, we will be returning to Nadra, and be relieved by the local chapter there."

Cathida nodded, taking one last look at her grandson, one armored hand shaking a finger. "Don't forget. I'll be back before you know it."

I'd spent the last half hour looking at random videos, getting a sense of who Journey's past owner had been.

Cathida had been a hotheaded maverick convinced she was correct about everything, and if proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt, would double down while secretly amending her ways. An acrid, acidic personality that demanded respect and unfortunately had all the skills to back that up. She hadn't joined the Indagators because of her loyalty or ranking, she'd joined them because they were doing themselves a massive disservice each day they didn't have her among their ranks, training their squires.

Life eventually humbled her it looked like, she stopped swearing every other sentence or picking fights, but that stubborn and willful streak never left, which made for some hilarious footage of an old lady yelling down hotheads.

"Seemed like quite the character, eh Journey?"

The armor chimed back. "Affirmative."

I rose an armored hand ahead, opening and closing it. Watching the gold plated scale fold and unfold. The weight of Journey's history drew down on me.

"How many other users besides me?" I asked.

"Three." It answered.

"Oh? That's surprising. I would have thought more had equipped the armor." I knew Cathida's son had taken up the armor once she had retired. So three users before me meant Cathida was actually only the second owner of the armor.

"Any video footage of the first owner?" I asked, curious how far back history could be seen.

Unfortunately, it seemed those had been purged by said owner so I didn't get any other viewpoint into the past.

"You know, I've been thinking about changing how the armor looks. But feeling conflicted about it." I slid down one of the wall sides, holding an arm out to no-one. "On one hand, it's bad luck to mess with something owned by a dead imperial, especially a crusader. I feel like changing the armor would be spitting on the memory of Cathida." I lifted my other arm, hand out. "On the other hand, I can't keep walking around looking like a crusader. I'm not one, I haven't earned any of the rank or the honors associated with it."

Journey remained silent. Maybe I had to ask the right questions.

"Do you know what she'd have picked?"

"Negative. Cognitive engram required for meaningful answer."

Suppose I set myself up for that one. Of course Journey wouldn't be able to tell, that would requ- Wait, was that an option? Winterscar had made a combat engram out of recordings from Father's time in the armor, was it possible to generate a different kind of engram from enough data?

I had to bite my tongue before immediately jumping to that. There were a few things I should probably understand. "What is a cognitive engram in the first place?"

"Machine learning model developed to simulate human function."

That didn't give me more info than I already knew. I need to rephrase this. "If I'm understanding this right, you could… recreate Cathida?"

"Negative. Engram would not be a true one to one copy. Closest possible match estimated within ninety nine point nine nine nine five percent."

Which was basically 'yes' just not quite perfect.

Should I even say yes to this? I had no idea what these engrams really were. And the concept of souls certainly was a thing in this world that I was still slowly learning. There might be some serious ramifications to saying yes here.

"What would happen if I asked for an engram to be created?"

"Administration permissions will be required. Current natural language model will then be replaced with cognitive engram model, following override confirmation."

"What, would it be permanent?"

"Negative. Current language model is a simplified basic transformer that can be regenerated from generic default data."

I thought about it. Mulled it over. Asked a few more questions. Journey gave me strict and dutiful answers to each. No, there's no one being brought back to life. No, the armor wasn't going to change ownership. No, it didn't anticipate anything like the Occult - although I took that answer with a grain of salt.

The more I asked about the option, the more it seemed like a good idea to at least try.

Experimentation was the way people made progress. Sometimes, I had to take the leaps offered to me. "Journey, execute administrator override. Generate the model and tell me what Cathida would have picked, to start."

"Administrator override confirmed. Loading predictive modeling. Isolating model to language modeling. Partial cognitive engram, online. Overriding natural language transformer. Well young man, if you ask me, I'd recommend black and gold."

There wasn't even a pause. Journey's synthetic voice simply stopped, and Cathida's voice continued the sentence, the same elderly warble to it that I had heard in the videos I'd been looking through. "Don't care if it's been three hundred years, black and gold never goes out of style. You'd look quite dashing in that, yes. Give you a new set of headaches to deal with too, mister popular. Heh." The voice started cackling, like a witch from the old times playing a trick on the world.

What in the gods above had I just done?

I scrambled up, opening up Talen's book, taking the soul fractal page out. In my bag, I brought out a small voltmeter, placing both prongs on the plate and setting a small charge. The fractal lit to life.

The armor continued to speak in the meantime. "And if you're going to swing around my sword like a barbarian, at least do a proper job of it. Been really annoying to see you flailing around like that. Kids these days."

I dove into the soul fractal, gaining sight. The world around me became concepts surrounding. I turned and started at where Journey's soul fractal should be.

It looked perfectly normal, or at least as normal a soul fractal should look. I stayed there for some time, searching with my eyes for any sign of differences. There was nothing.

"Have you gone deaf? Well? Ask me to change up your colors already!"

I snapped back into my body a moment later without issue. "Are… are you Cathida?"

There was a familiar cackle. "Oh no my dear. That old bat is long dead, but you can call me Cathida if you wish, I have no skin in that game. I'm a part of Journey, imitating what she would say if she had been here."

"What do you mean, exactly?"

There was an annoyed sigh that sounded so lifelike, "Fine, I'll reword it. Let's say you told your sister you planned a surprise trip underground to talk about your feelings to the first machine you saw that sweeps you off your feet. What would your sister say?"

"Uhh… she'd tell me that was a bad idea."

"Good enough a guess. Now try to picture the exact words she'd say and tell me those."

I tried to picture Kidra, her accent and mannerisms. I almost knew the entire script she'd say, looking at me as if I was kicking metal. "... 'I've heard plenty of ideas come out of that mind of yours, this one is the single worst idea I've heard yet. You. Are going to kill yourself.'"

"See? Wasn't hard at all now was it? You just made a temporary and fleeting cognitive engram of your sister in your head. Or at least the dumbed down squishy meat version. Same for me, except far more accurate. And not, well, meat." She cackled. "I've got all of Cathida's memories, history, logs, or whatever you kids call it these days. I know her like the back of my wrinkly hands. If I had wrinkles." That cackle again. "Now young man, there's been quite a lot I've been meaning to set straight in you."

"You have?"

"Of course I have!" The voice came back, indigent. "Sloppy posture, sloppy presence and sloppy skill! Golden tits above, the skills. Mediocre! Enough to deal with the yokels, nowhere near the standards I'd expect from one of my squires. Yesterday on the training yard against your sister? Embarrassing. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. And by that, I mean you've got a lot of work ahead of you. And now that I've got a mouth to yell at you with properly, you can bet your rosy pink cheeks I'm going to make use of it. You're lucky I don't have access to more than just scolding you. Journey never cared to do more for its user than keep you nice and safe when the going gets rough, but I certainly am not of the same mind."

I gulped. Cathida heard that and chuckled darkly in response. "Oh the fun we're going to have. Now change up the colors and let's settle on a fitting look for the new you. I would also recommend a cape. Are capes still dashing these days? Nevermind, silly question. Capes are always dashing! Every Imperial worth their salt has a nice cape. What are you staring off into the air for? Hop hop, we haven't got all day!"

Next chapter - Elder hermit of the armor, what is your wisdom?

Book 2 - Chapter 13 - Elder hermit of the armor, what is your wisdom?

Cathida was unhappy.

Which, as I'd learned over the last two days, was not a rare occurrence. In fact, I'd say that being grumpy was her default. It's only by accident that this grumbling had a reason behind it today. She was brooding that I had blown off her training requests in order to do my sister's bidding, again.

I, in my vast intellectual capacity, have been wisely used by Kidra as exclusively muscle. Sent left and right to deliver goods, give small speeches, and threaten the right people - all in armor of course. I hadn't even gotten a chance to report my breakthroughs to her personally yet, since each order was handed to me at a distance. Kidra was plotting in ways only the old Winterscars would be able to compete against.

And once she'd gotten a report with a photo of the new look I'd taken up, I'd been thrown into the deep end of her plots.

The dark grey, black and gold gave a nod to the crusader heritage, while also making it clear I wasn't a crusader myself. The red sigil and theme gave a clear nod that I was of House Winterscar. Journey even modulated my voice in helmet to sound slightly darker and more ominous to fit the theme. The combination made for an impressive, dangerous and regal look. Like something even the machines didn't want to mess with.

And it damn well better do that. Cathida and I had spent an entire two hours carefully tailoring the look.

With the administrator account permissions, Journey had no issues generating quite a lot of additional parts for the armor. Some things however, like the cape and a half kilt, had to be done the old fashioned way. If it wasn't in the design docs, the armor would be stubborn about it. Cathida had verbally shrugged at that, saying it was hardcoded limits. She couldn't convince Journey any more than I could.

Let me restate that: Cathida couldn't convince Journey. This threw me in for a loop, considering Cathida was a figment of Journey's imagination - in a manner of speaking. This was like a sock puppet talking back to the owning hand. Like the same person role playing an argument with themselves. Journey was on a completely different level when it came to method acting.

By this point I had stopped thinking of Journey and Cathida as one and the same, even if they technically were.

"If you keep acting like a weasel, you'll sprout a tail and teeth to match." Cathida grumbled in my helmet as I slunk down into the depths of House Winterscar's abandoned property, checking behind me periodically to make sure I wasn't being followed.

"Well if you have any suggestions on how best to keep the literal artifacts of a god safe, please let me know. I'm all ears."

"Peh!" She huffed. "I'm an armor, not a magical idea factory. Aren't you supposed to be the clever one? Weasel."

The second thing I'd learned about Cathida is that she likes to complain. A lot. In fact, I'd hazard to say she hasn't stopped complaining from the moment she'd been 'created'

"You're only being cranky right now because this is more important than training." I huffed out, knowing it was basically futile to try and reason with this old lady.

"Of course I'd be upset! It's been two whole days and you haven't even gone on the courtyard to train even once!" She shot back. "The faster you learn how to properly fight, the faster you won't end up twelve miles under with me laughing at you the whole way down. This hocus pokus isn't anywhere as important as a real sword. Peh!"

"Counterpoint - those real swords are made of hocus pokus. I'm thinking learning how they do that might be worthwhile, you have to agree with that at least?"

She didn't answer back to that, grumbling instead, which was Cathida-speech for 'you win this round.' as I've recently learned to translate. I would strongly theorize that Cathida was physically unable to string the words 'You're right' in that order.

I jumped up the last set of stairs leading to the second floor, avoiding the carefully laid traps and making sure my tracks had been covered. The door opened up slowly and I walked into what I'd started calling my sanctum. If I was a wizard, I'd damn well have my own tower. Of sorts.

The small heater remained at the center of the room, unpowered and waiting. I had fit a power cell into it a while ago and there was still plenty of juice left in it.

Last time I'd been here, I'd spent most of my time chatting with the old bat in my armor and figuring out just what I'd done. The other half of the time was spent looking at a mirror while Cathida and I slowly changed the look up. By the time I was done, I had responsibilities to handle back within the estate grounds and those basically never stopped coming until I specifically requested the time.

Today I had a few tests in mind for the Occult that I'd been plotting. And there was plenty of it that I could do without having to take my helmet off.

"All right. Experimental log number one. I'll be testing the effects of stacking multiple fractals of the same kind near each other."

I coughed out, raising my hand and poking at it with my finger in a few spots. "Journey, etch the fractal of heat here, here and here."

My first experiment was to see if fractals could stack their effects together. In this case, the fractal of heat was my testing rat.

Journey's spirit wrapped around my arm, wherever it trailed, small etchings of the fractal were left behind. Once done, I gave the order to pass a current of electricity through all of them. The result was small tongues of flames all over the arm, each hovering above their respective fractal. Impressive, but ultimately useless.

I ran through a small gauntlet of additional tests anywhere from layering the fractals one over the other, to reshaping the size and overlapping multiple fractals into each other. Results were inconclusive. Size affected some fractals but not others, so that was on a fractal to fractal basis. Overlapping would instantly cause the fractals to stop functioning, so interfering patterns were bad - with exception to interfering patterns that weren't part of the Occult up to a point. I could scratch one single line through the fractal but so long as the pattern was still technically whole, it would work.

Too many lines and the fractal lost coherence. It looked like fractals could withstand a bit of additions so long as they didn't muddle the whole thing too significantly. However, the opposite was absolutely not true. Remove even a tiny dot from the pattern and it would stop functioning. Ultimately, I ended up with a lot of data that didn't all fit perfectly together which made me question if there was a consistent rule to the whole thing.

The last experiment I wanted to run was something I took from Winterscar. Its soul fractal had been many different fractals, all connected to the center soul fractal. So it stood to theory that maybe fractals could be joined together. What would happen if I perfectly connected the fractal of heat multiple times together?

The implications that fractals could be joined together gave me a theory that the Occult was more like a language. If there was an infinite amount of fractals that reality recognized, then among that infinite valid set, there could be a chance that concepts for control existed.

Like 'Shoot fire in a straight line' or 'Make an explosion' - in which case I could create spells of a kind ahead of time, leaving them coded up on the armor and activate them at leisure. Or do what Talen did and carry a book of metal sheets with those spells pre-written there.

Unfortunately, I had no way of testing that theory out. Twelve hells, I didn't even know how to discover new fractals or what steps were taken for that. And the bad news didn't stop here. The armor didn't have any tools to model or graph mathematics. Which meant that I had no way of figuring out how to seamlessly combine fractals together. So until I had the right software that let me mathematically stitch fractals together, that second experiment wasn't going anywhere.

Journey could create fractals with perfect accuracy, but only when I had the equations solved ahead of time. Figures the hard part would be discovery rather then execution.

I changed tracks and began a more in-depth study the Soul Fractal. First, for ease of access, I had a small copy embedded on the inside of my chestplate right by my skin. Second, I had a permanent current run through it, triggering the fractal and leaving it powered. The soul sense now became ever present.

"Journey, any difference in my vital signs?"

"Still hale as a peach on a tree, young man. Journey doesn't see anything wrong with you. Why? You do something I should know about?" Cathida said.

Here's another issue I've discovered since 'unleashing' Cathida back into the world: Journey's default voice was completely gone. The armor itself no longer spoke to me directly, instead it seemed to speak through Cathida, making for a strange game of telephone.

"I'm testing first the effects of having an active soul fractal so close to me for longer periods of time. For all I know, there might be some poison or health issues." That wasn't a high chance on my radar, Journey had a soul fractal active at all times that the suit was powered on. And knights didn't get strange sicknesses from that.

But I digress, at least trying to see if there was anything off was something baseline I should do.

Survey says, it's either a very slow cooking poison, or it was generally safe to carry an active fractal around for so long. Journey hadn't given me more answers about the fractals, the armor itself seemed just as new to the whole field as I was. I had to re-discover things all on my own, including the safety of it all. The only oddity with Journey is that it refused to acknowledge Talen's book existed, even if I had it on hand. The pages remained blank when viewed through the helmet, and as far as Cathida was concerned, I was coming up with these ideas and plans out of nowhere. The blindness didn't carry out anywhere other than the book, so the rest of the Occult was on the table at least. Why that was a thing? I hadn't the faintest idea and chalked it up to a quirk of the armor.

But I digress. One mystery at a time. Right now, I was going into that soul fractal, searching for the medical limits there first. My discoveries were racking up minute by minute once I really set my eyes on testing this whole Occult one step at a time.

First thing I discovered: If I sank too deeply into the fractal my body would go into a kind of coma, like a meditation trance. The deeper into the soul fractal I got, the less control I had over my own sense and body until the entire world blurred into the soul-sight and my body slumped down.

I tested the different amounts of connection I could have and found an interesting middle ground.

Only reaching slightly into the fractal, I gained that soul sight while mostly remaining alert within my body. It gave me an additional sense for little cost. To make it even better, I found I had a feeling of concepts behind me. The only issue was how novel the sense felt, thus making it difficult to really process through. It was like a blind man seeing for the first time - the world of color didn't make sense, there wasn't any pattern recognition imprinted yet, rather everything felt like a surreal blend of colors with no rhyme or reason. It would take me some time to really hone that soul-sight into something I could rely on the same way that I could with my eyes.

Being able to keep the soul-sight active while still fully lucid and in control of my own senses was too big of an advantage to give up on only because it was too hazy for the moment. Nothing could sneak up on me ever again for example, once trained. And I had a somewhat vague ability to peer through walls and objects. Nothing could hide from my sight either. The advantages were there, I just had to hone the skill so that the feelings weren't so muddled together.

That said, there was an additional item to note: About halfway into the soul fractal, at the border where I lost connection to my body, active fractals in the world began to glow before my sight - or at least that's how I interpreted it. Like a whiff of a strong scent and direction.

Talen had mentioned that the second mastery of the Occult was to directly command the fractal concepts using intent, which was something the old tribe shamans had managed to accomplish by backdoor using the soul fractal.

The question was how to do that. I'd spent the past hour testing out the soul fractal by itself, now I felt confident enough to start mixing up the lessons.

See, after I spent some time floating around in the soul fractal thinking about how to impose my will upon the natural elements, that's the logical conclusion I came up with: Go and grab it.

Extremely scientific, I know. The soul fractal let me move around like a blob, so that made me think this was what the shamans had likely done first on discovering this fractal. They moved their blob like soul-roots and reached out to the glowing fractals themselves.

In the real world, the common sense was not to touch an open flame since burning was a thing humans aren't fond of. And now I was considering touching the fractal of heat with my bare soul. What was life without a bit of risk though? It'd be boring to keep playing everything safe and fortune favors the bold.

I brought my hand close to my chest and had Journey light up the fractal of heat on my palm. In the soul-sight, it glowed bright blue. This close, it was easy to reach a tendril of soul out and touch the fractal itself without exposing myself too deep to cold reality outside the warm comfort of my soul's housing.

The root-like appendage narrowed into a tip, and I lightly brushed the very edge of that fractal.

Oh boy. That was something. On touching it, I felt something. More accurately, a lot of things.

The first is that this fractal was drawing energy from somewhere else. Somewhere beyond. I didn't get much more sense from that.

The second, was that the fractal was eroding away. Part of that energy was slowly severing the connection and warping the metal it was etched on, giving this fractal a limited half-life. Journey's armor was made of tough stuff, for the metal was almost completely unyielding. But not perfectly unyielding. It would take eons before the fractal had melted itself out of existence, and yet that time would inevitably come.

I wasn't sure all fractals wore off like this, or if it was just a quirk of heat itself. That would require more testing with other fractals. I hadn't heard about Occult blades breaking down before at least.

The third item I felt was concepts. Many of them, all tied together. Majority of which was gibberish to my mind. Like static noise. Some of these concepts I could understand somewhat. There was a vague notion of agitation for example. Some kind of movement. The rest felt more like garbled static.

The last item I found was that this static was malleable. Simply observing it already changed it. Reaching out a metaphorical hand to the static gave odd results. Like swiping a hand over a smooth plane only to feel an occasional bump or crack where my soul could connect to something.

It was those cracks that gave me a place to latch onto.

I brought my hand back, retreating into my soul fractal and brooded there. Here was my working theory: This wasn't the pure concept of heat. In fact, it was tainted in a way by a hundred other smaller concepts that were introduced within the equation itself.

Dozens of these concepts were dormant or otherwise garbage data. I had no idea what part of the equation connected to those. And maybe one of those concepts was something that let me bridge into the fractal, where I could impart my intent into the fractal.

I snuck a soul-appendage-hand-thought back onto the fractal and pictured the flame narrowing.

The flames remained stubbornly unchanging.

You know, it would be seriously nice one of these days if I could just get something right the very first time I tried it. Is that so hard to ask for?

No, this wasn't the right way to go about this, clearly. I had to think like an Occultist. Everything revolved around concepts and connections. Talen mentioned that this method of imparting intent wasn't something that existed naturally - the shamans of old had used it like a patch job.

All right, let's keep it simple: The soul fractal lets my soul into the fractal magic like a backdoor into the system. My soul could create the intentions. And this fractal of heat had cracks in it that my soul senses could feel and latch onto.

My mental picture was just that - a picture. In a system where everything revolved around concepts.

I focused and tried to think of the concept of a flame narrowing. Instead of looking at the flame in hand and willing it to constrict, I pushed my mental understanding into the fractal itself, completely ignoring the flame that appeared outside.

The moment I did, the small flame began to stutter and move.

Ah. I love it when I win.

By the time I had returned to the Winterscar training ground, it was already far past the time to sleep.

There was a knock at my door. "Master Keith, are you awake?" A woman's voice said.

I groaned and rolled over in my bed, hugging my pillow for comfort. I'd come back home really late and had barely gotten a few hours of sleep. The knocking resumed without mercy or feeling to that fact.

"Master Keith, forgive me, but I've been sent to wake you up."

I rolled over again. "Fine." I grumbled. "I'm awake! I'm awake."

Taking a few seconds to put on some quick clothing on, I was in a presentable state when the servant knocked again for entry.

She slid the door open, then came in with a wild look in her eyes, as if she'd seen a ghost.

"What's going on? Something happened while I was asleep?" I asked.

She was among the new hires that Kidra had brought on. Her name wasn't known to me yet which felt odd. Spend enough years with a small staff and that was just inevitable that everyone's names would be memorized. I trusted my sister's judgement with the new staff here however. She certainly had a plan for everything given the amount of work I'd been given.

The servant nodded, bowing down low. "This one was dispatched to polish and clean the armors in their storage. I did so, first with Winterscar and then with Journey."

I had a feeling I knew where this was going…

"Your armor, master, it… it talked to me." She said, a note of panic. "It demanded that I bring you to it. It yelled at me and was most irate when I didn't know the voice was coming from the helmet. I'm afraid your armor might be possessed by an evil spirit of some kind."

"Ah." My hand reached out to scratch the back of my neck on reflex. "Well, you're half right. My armor's a little unique right now and it's still a little temperamental."

The servant nodded. "Then it's not possessed?"

"Not by an evil spirit, no. It's an armor's spirit, that isn't in question." Now, whether it's an evil spirit or not was up to interpretation.

The servant seemed to pale at that response. "I'm terribly afraid that I've offended the spirit of the armor."

I shrugged, putting on a light morning yukata. "I think my armor is offended by everyone, she's a little cranky. Don't worry, I'll straighten this all out."

She nodded, looking a little less frightened and more relieved. "I'd... I'd always heard armors spoke to their user, but they were said to be programs that gave reports. This… this wasn't that."

Looks like I'd need to visit a certain retired crusader before she scared away all the new help. "Did she say anything else?"

"No, master Keith." The servant said. "She was only insistent that you be brought before her. Very insistent."

I nodded. "Suppose I'll need to sit down with that armor and have a nice long talk with it about proper decorum. What is your name?"

She bowed lower, "Melandy, my lord. The lady Winterscar hired me yesterday along with four others."

"You didn't do anything wrong, Melandy." I took a few steps past her and out of my quarters. The hallways stretched out to the sides, a small chill lay in the air of the early morning, the general heaters were usually turned down over night as less people used these streets. "Let's go see what my cranky armor wants this time."

Cathida wanted what Cathida wants: Which is to say she wanted me to suit up and train since it's the morning. And if she had to shake down servants left and right for it to happen, by the goddess, she will do so with a grin.

Honestly, I'm more surprised it took her three days before she started haunting the house.

"Finally decided to drag yourself over, did you?" The armor sat in the display vault, perfectly assembled on top of the shrine. It looked almost smug in a way. The helmet staring back at me accusingly.

"I would appreciate it if you didn't scare my staff." I diplomatically asked Cathida, pointing a thumb at the serving girl hiding behind me.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." She said in a voice that promised everything but sincerity. "You know what I'd appreciate? If you didn't blow me off on this, you little git! You said we would train yesterday! Swore it up and down, I can have Journey dredge up a recording of you!"

Okay. Rebellious armor. Didn't see that one coming. Great. Everything is great. "Okay, I admit I said that - but we came back at three in the morning! Of course I wanted to sleep!"

"Then you shoulda' thought of that before you gave me your word! Youth these days! PEH! No excuse or spine, none! You're going to put the armor on, go out into that courtyard and train until the sun melts the snow, or else! Don't start a war with me, I've fought in plenty before, I'll trounce you in sheer experience."

I turned to look at Melandy, and she returned the stare. "Are they… supposed to be like that?" She asked timidly. "When I cleaned Winterscar, that armor didn't say anything. I'm afraid I might have turned something on by accident!"

Sighing, I shook my head. "No, my armor's more of an exception to the norm. I don't think anyone in the clan has seen something like this. You didn't do anything wrong, don't worry."

The armor remained staring at me, in quiet contempt. Which was incredible considering it didn't have any facial features to display contempt with. Presence of will in a way. I had a feeling Cathida would gladly become the glorified poltergeist of house Winterscar, wailing away through the walls, if it got her what she wanted. Or if she found it fun. That was altogether another strong motivation.

"Fine." I made my mind up. I'd brought this demon back to life, now I'd have to shake hands with it. "I'll go train this morning. But in exchange, I don't want you to be scaring more people like this. Are we clear?"

The armor scoffed. "You don't get to talk terms with me you little weasel. I'll do whatever I damn well please! Goddess above shine down on me, I'll yell at the rats and roaches skittering by if I have to. Try me."

"Melandy?"

"Yes, master Keith?"

"Would you do me a kindness and have some coffee made for me? The strong kind. It's going to be one of those days."

"No, no no no! Keep the blade leveled up, edge at a tilt. You take a step forward and lift the blade up, then cut down. The strike is meant to close the distance while offering a defense from top strikes mid-lunge. If the edge of the sword isn't pointed right, you won't be able to cut away the expected attack! Do it again. And tilt your body more inwards, you're expecting something to be cut off from above, and it won't be a broken tea kettle. Whatever it is needs to be pushed out of the way immediately before it falls down on you."

"Like this?" I twisted the blade edge so that it pointed further up, then repeated the swing.

"Better. Now, again!" Cathida said.

To be fair, Cathida was a better teacher than Father. That I was already able to replicate the first basic attack of the crusader longsword style within five minutes was evidence enough.

However, she also had the entire faculties of a relic armor to work with. Ghostly outlines of where my feet should be placed appeared on the ground, something my HUD would show. That included an outline in three dimensions of where my hand and body should be positioned. I would match the outline a few times and then try to repeat the movement without assistance. The rest was to drill it in.

I repeated the hit, following the guidelines. We weren't going for speed here, just accuracy. My movements were slow, training the muscles to perform this again and again. It was as if I was fighting underwater. There was an issue with all this - not in the training but the imperial style itself. To be blunt: This style was comically overexaggerated.

"I still don't get it." I said. "Even going at full speed this move would be too predictable. Why such a wide arc? Anyone would see this coming miles away."

"Machines are usually twice or three times as large as we are. The wide arcs are required to make sure you catch a hit. You aren't trying to stab a machine, you want to cut off the limbs and eliminate the venues of attack it has."

Lights went on in my head. Now I understood - Imperials didn't fight other knights. Of course their style of combat would be more specialized for the enemy they fought. "Look, we'll need to talk about application use a bit. Surface dwellers don't fight machines often, the main two enemies up here are the weather and people. And one of those I can't fight with a sword."

"BAH!" She spat. "Your savage surface style clearly doesn't take into account the true uses of an armor. Now trust me and do what I say."

"These 'Savage' combat arts that we surface dwellers use are built specifically to fight other people." I argued. "The enemy I'm going to fight up here will usually be other knights."

"You think this cudgeled up style of yours can stand against the imperial style? Don't make me laugh, young man. You lot are too big for your knickers."

I sat down in a lotus position, longsword placed ahead of me. The other guards and warriors in the courtyard paid me no attention, continuing with their training.

Kidra had followed through on her promises and increased the guards. And that pace wasn't slowing down yet. Previously we only had two. Now the whole courtyard was filled with people whose names I didn't know, all wearing the Winterscar black and red uniforms.

"What are you doing?" Cathida asked, irate. "Don't tell me you're already tired? We aren't even half an hour into training!"

"I need a style of combat that can both handle machines and humans." I said. "That part I can't negotiate on. This imperial style seems to be built specifically for handling larger opponents, but that's not who I'll be fighting. So we need to come to a compromise of some kind."

Again, Cathida only scoffed. "Have no fear. A squire would be able to defeat any of your knights and so will you once I've trained you correctly."

"You fought surface knights before?"

"Admittedly, no. The old bat only came up once in her life to the surface, not long enough to challenge some poor knight into losing their lunch money. But if she had, she would have absolutely taken a few names. Any crusader worth their golden glitter would have. You surface dwellers only accidentally use the full breadth of armors. We imperials have used armor for centuries! We train in them as children, you only inherit these armors once you've already learned all the wrong things already."

I still couldn't quite understand why Cathida was so confident this over-leveraged style would defeat the surface one. The movesets Father had shown me were extremely tight and optimized to give very little hints at where the attacks would come from. It was hard to see why the imperial style would succeed against this.

She'd said something about learning all the wrong things before inheriting the armor. "So what's the trick?" I asked. "Because it's sounding like there's a trick here that surface dwellers don't know about."

"The Ferrum-Corpus! The iron-body transformation. The ultimate goal all knights strive to achieve. It's all in the mind, young man, the mind! Instead of trying to perform the movesets as quickly as possible with your physical body, relax the body and move the armor directly. The armor can go far faster than you can, believe me. You have to stop limiting it."

I looked down at my hand, deciding to try this odd scheme of hers out.

Once.

Twice.

But matter how hard I tried to visualize my hand curling into a fist, it remained as is.

"You're doing it wrong." Cathida unhelpfully added, cackling all the while as if she'd played the world's greatest practical joke.

"You don't say. What's the correct way to do it, oh wise hermit of the armor? What am I doing wrong?"

"Cathida would have told you about the iron-body mantra teachings. A whole philosophical ramble that's filled with impressive sounding words. In truth that's all bunk. The science is that Journey listens to muscle impulses and won't overextend past your body's current physical motion. So the trick is to both relax your muscles while directing them to move. You get the armor to misconstrue movement orders, yet not have your own body limit the armor. Do it right and it'll feel like your body is being puppeteered by you instead of full movement. That's why it's called the iron-body technique. The armor becomes your body. It's simple, get it?"

All right, fair enough. "So what's the first step to all this?"

"Oh what a surprise, now you want to listen eh? How about you give it a try on your own first. You're hot-headed and think you know everything, so go on! Show little old me what you can come up with on your own. And when you come crawling back to ask for instructions I expect no more back-talking."

She was testing me here. I didn't have high hopes of being able to figure this out, but damned if I wasn't going to try. Father's movements were faster than a human could have moved. I knew that from experience. I think he was unconsciously activating this technique. At that point he likely wasn't thinking about the individual movements anymore, only considering the fight as a whole and planning out the next steps to take while trusting his body would move.

The flow state of combat I remember he mentioned. Could I replicate that? He would have built that muscle memory up over years of practice. If I was intentionally aiming for that end goal, was it possible to shortcut those years?

Ten minutes of odd attempts later, I was still nowhere close to success. Given Cathida's goading, I'm almost sure it wasn't something I could achieve quickly. It was a truly odd ability to be able to simultaneously choose to move your body without actually moving your body.

"This is hopeless." I grumbled. "Quick question, how long exactly does it take to learn on average?"

Cathida snorted. "About time you asked me that. Four to five years of deliberate practice."

Urk. No wonder she was laughing. "Four years?! You made it sound like it was just a state of mind or - I - nevermind." I sighed. Of course she had deliberately been vague about it, the little troll.

"What, did you think you'd get all these skills without the hard work?" She said. "Now have you learned your lesson about trusting your elders, or do I have to beat it into you some more?"

I grabbed the longsword and got back up. "Fine, you win. I'll follow your instructions to the letter, respected elder-sama."

She certainly nailed the smug in her voice, I'll give Journey credit on that one. "The first step to learning the proper technique is to perfectly master one strike. Once you have committed every motion of that strike to memory, we'll begin to relax the muscles during the strike until only the ghost of the muscle memory remains without the actual follow-through. We'll do this for each move within the Imperial longsword forms."

The longblade sang through the air again as I repeated the same motion again and again. The whole time I felt like I was overlooking something to all this, but I couldn't quite pin down what.

"Would Cathida have won against, say... Father with this technique?"

"Eh, that one's a toss up. Cathida would be consistently faster..." She paused for a moment. "Though I suppose the over-telegraphed moves would have reduced the advantage somewhat. Your Father was a veteran already, using the technique unconsciously in bursts."

"Hang on, you're saying that others reach the iron-body technique without applying the imperial training style to it?"

"Give a fool enough time in the armor and eventually they'll stumble on it. Imperials discovered a more focused method of honing the skill, which is what you're doing right now. For reference, most regular undersiders take about fifteen years to reach a master level, mostly because they don't dedicate themselves as wholly as imperials do."

"So… You're saying Imperials would generally be faster earlier in their careers and that's what gives them an insurmountable lead on the surface dwellers?"

"... yes? What are you twisting the words around for? I don't like that. You're scheming something. Stop that."

"So by that logic, assuming both practitioners of their respective styles were of equal speed, would the surface style come out ahead?"

Oh she didn't like that response. "No! Not one bit! Each of these movesets needs to be honed and practiced in order to be used with any amount of speed. Your surface style was not made to work with the iron-body technique! Too specific movesets, too many precise counters, too much improvisation on the fly - there'd be hundreds of moves to perfectly train. The imperial style was deliberately made to flow from one movement to another, the counters wide and generic enough that you won't need to train so many years. Saying two knights of equal speed would be completely igno-"

Wait.

I sat up, suddenly having a bright idea, and began to make my way directly to the hospital wing.

"Where you going?!" Cathida squawked in my ear.

"On thinking about it further, I think I do have a method of getting that skill without the work."

"Why are you like this?! Who raised you? I need to scream at them."

"Oh, that one's a long story." I said, already making my way out of the courtyard with a single minded goal in mind. "Ultimately, what I need to do is find a way to order my body to move and have it not respond to me. Right? While I could train up that skill for four years like you mentioned, I think there's a faster way to get immediate results."

"And what way would that be?"

I chuckled, reaching the medical wing and opening up the pantry. "Why, drugs of course. The people who raised me knew all about those, specifically poisons. I think one of my old cousins has just the right thing for me..."

Next chapter - From blood to iron

Book 2 - Chapter 14 - Blood to iron

Petty bullying usually involves an extended foot tripping a casual passerby and then snickering about it. That's what people think when asked. Winterscars, on the other hand... Well, we poisoned each other instead. Was this normal? Oh, absolutely not. People would be appalled if a story of someone getting bed sick from a practical joke got out. Add in the word 'Winterscar' and the people's reactions would shift from 'Oh!' to 'Oh...'

No surprise that the bastards all brought a dozen different poisons and anti-poisons on the way to the new clan home. All these old memorabilia had survived the trip, even if their original owners hadn't. I suspect Father had planned for these to be sold to keep the wheels of the estate running, in case of emergency. After all, medicine of any kind is rather valuable up here. Interesting thing about poisons is that they can often be used as a cure depending on the situation.

Majority of the sabotage Winterscars did to one another involved ailments that would incapacitate the target or produce fevers and nausea. Mild things that never lasted longer than a few hours and never caused any permanent damage. Not because a lack of willpower to see the escalation on all this, oh no.

Hallucinations and toxins that could permanently cripple or even kill a man were outright banned by order of Atius.

And, yes, he did have to get involved according to our family histories.

The original generation of Winterscars were escalating their antics quickly until the clan lord arrived at their doorsteps once he got wind of the issue. This was not seen favorably and cost the House a lot of clout.

Houses were given full freedom to police themselves as per tradition, and having the clan lord show up to do the job for misbehaving troublemakers was a massive loss of face. The Winterscars got a lot more cordial about their political backstabbing and power squabbles after that. They made sure none of it ever got too out of hand such that it would affect anyone outside the House. The unspoken rules of clan culture were still firm - if it could harm the clan as a whole, it was everyone's responsibility to band together to curb the rogue elements out.

So there was an upper limit to how potent these poisons were, thankfully.

The branch families each had their own little signature traps, but the one I wanted the most right now was the paralytic agent my cousins were fond of using. Slipped into food, the agent would act quickly and cause lethargy, enough to force the victim into bed for a few hours.

Ergo, it was an excellent ploy to use when that person had to be somewhere important and would lose face if they didn't show up. Yes, I had experience with this firsthand early on when I was still a potential threat on people's minds. At least while grandmother was still alive and training me to be her next pawn. Once she kicked the snow, I was on nobody's radar and never had to worry about poisons in my meal again.

That same little toxin now lay available for my use in a small pillbox filled with the powder. Actually standing before it, remembering all the history around this little powder, made me take a step back to mentally re-evaluate my actions.

"Journey." I said. "Somehow I find myself about to ingest literal poison in order to sneak a possible shortcut to hard work. Emphasis on possible shortcut, it's not even a guaranteed thing either. Something about this picture feels off."

"Off? Seems all perfectly in character for you." Cathida said. "I find it hilariously endearing, personally."

"Endearing?"

"Sometimes, the squires I trained only learned when they got their hands burned. Each generation there'd always be at least one that took every leap they saw. Every single time."

I fiddled with the poison in hand, considering exactly how much of this plan had been fueled by excitement compared to sound logic. "What usually happens to those squires?"

"You're young. If this were actually dangerous, I'd yell at you about it. Go on now, eat the poison."

I pointedly noticed how Cathida hadn't actually answered my question here at all. My danger senses were now blaring wide alerts. Maybe this was how she handled those squires of hers. If they didn't listen to her warnings... actively encouraging instead with a malicious smile certainly shoveled some snow in the boots.

Sighing, now fully snapped out of whatever had possessed me, I put the box back on the shelf. "Never thought I'd hear an armor actually asking their user to chew on poison."

"Oh no dear, Journey is furious about it. Or at least the armor version of furious." Cathida cackled. "A shame it's not in charge. Now, go on, eat up. You didn't come all this way just to put the box back on the shelf, don't be boring."

I shook my head. "On second thought, maybe I am a little hasty. And come to think of it, I only have limited amounts of this. Even if it does work, it's a solution that would run dry if I abused it."

Winterscars were good at brewing poison, and they were also good at hiding the ingredient lists to create their signature specials. While Father had recovered whole stashes of poison leftover in the airspeeders, the Winterscars took the cooking directions to the grave with them. I build tech, I don't brew poisons.

"Oh, and it wouldn't have worked either." Cathida added, almost as if on whim.

Somehow, it seemed perfectly in character for her to avoid telling me that up until now. Still made me snort air out and roll my eyes. "Couldn't have told me that sooner?"

"What? And spoil the fun?" Cathida chuckled.

I put the pillbox away, back into the pantry for storage. "Out of curiosity, why wouldn't it have worked?"

"Journey's returning a bunch of medical jibberish to that question, I wish you hadn't asked. It's giving a headache to process. Do you know what Acetylcholine is?"

"Uh, sounds like a chemical of some kind." I answered. "I think. Probably."

Cathida scoffed. "I could have guessed that. Shining some sun on it, Journey says this little poison of yours only blocks signals at the neuromuscular junctures. Translating to human, you're too late to trick the armor. Though you might be on the right path, only unlucky with the tools available."

"You think there's promise to this?" Well, maybe I should expand my horizons after all. Learning how to brew poisons is a healthy and normal hobby anyone could be proud of after all.

"It was known that Imperators were masters of the iron-body technique, even using improvised movements outside the imperial style. Cathida always assumed they were simply picked from child savants and trained sixteen hours a day or some nonsense like that. Imperators were the zealots among zealots, even the old bat didn't want to mess with them. Now thinking about it, could it be some kind of venom they used? Nasty business."

I brought out the other bits of poisons I had on hand, "Anything I can cobble together with what I've got here? If it's possible to get this to work, I should give it a go."

"You want to start mixing compounds we hardly know about and then eat them? How desperate are you, exactly?" She asked dryly.

"... point taken." Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I really need to stop thinking with my monkey brain here, jumping at the first solutions available. This compulsion of mine to leap first and ask questions never is going to get me killed someday, and I don't mean that as just a figure of speech.

All right. Let's slow down and be more logical about the whole thing.

From the drugs angle, this particular poison was the best Winterscars had. They might have come up with something more potent if there hadn't been a ban on the brewing arms race, but unfortunately we lived in more civilized times. So, if there was a trick to learning this technique without the grind, I'd have to work with the advantages I uniquely had available. The Winterscars had poisons, and I had technology.

"Is there anything I can do with the administrator access I have in order to make it easier to do the iron-body technique? Some kind of preference tweaks? Settings?"

"You could turn off the safeties and up the sensitivity. Only option I can think of."

"Would that work?" I pointedly asked.

Cathida laughed. "Oh by the sun no it wouldn't. The armor would break your bones with the whiplash if you put the settings too high. They need administrator permissions to tinker on for a reason. They weren't made to be messed with by rank and file soldiers."

All right. Administrator direction was off the list. What else did I have access to that other people before me didn't have?

The Occult. Only the warlocks knew that one, so if they'd discovered any armor secrets, they'd likely kept it locked up for themselves. Talen's book was a compilation of general fractals, all of them basic concepts. None were for speed.

However, there was one fractal that could possibly let me shortcut the iron-body technique. I closed my eyes, breathed out and felt for the soul fractal I'd inscribed on the inside chestplate. I'd gotten used to having a small finger dipped into it at all times, giving me access to the soul-sight. Now, I dove further into it, keeping a trailing bit of connection to my body.

My sight receded. Feelings from my body dimmed until they were only a distant memory. Only concepts surrounded me and several dozen glowing fractals within Journey's armor. I could see through the soul sight as my body began to slump forward.

With the last bit of connection to my body left, I commanded my hand up as fast as I could think.

As I'd expected, I had slunk too deep into the soul fractal and my commands to move hadn't gone through. So I began to test how much of my essence I needed to leave in my body in order to get results. Took a bit of fenangling.

The hand shot up, finally. Or at least, I think it did. Hard to tell with only my soul-sight. I drew back into my body, taking full control again.

My world reawakened to Cathida speaking midsentense. "-do that? What sort of violet devilry is this?"

The hand I had commanded up was raised, palm out to the ceiling. "Did it work?" I asked, curious.

"Work? It did more than that, Journey picked up command signals to move without any signals detected anywhere past the spine. You went from a complete novice to a grandmaster, what in the sun's name did you do?"

"Hocus pokus stuff." I grinned. "And trying to squeeze out every bit of value that I can out of what I have to work with."

Looks like I'm on the right track with this. Only issue is that I had been almost completely submerged into the soul fractal, which seriously limited the way I could perceive the world around me. That wasn't viable in a combat situation.

There's promise here, only I needed to fine-tune it. The trick would be to find a way to keep my senses connected, while disconnecting my ability to move just enough.

I wandered out of the medical wing and returned to my room to train. I didn't want anyone to watch me raise my arm up and down a few times randomly. People might talk.

It took three hours to find the right spot. I nearly gave up a few times out of sheer frustration.

While my essense felt like a blob that could be moved around, it could also be 'shaped' in a way as well. In this case, the shape I ended up making was that of a plant's roots where my head would be, while the rest of me was sitting inside a new soul fractal I had inscribed on the inside of my helmet.

I had to keep a steady discipline to maintain the 'shape' so that my soul touched the right parts of my body but avoided other parts. Felt like I was balancing on one foot while keeping my arms in weird shapes and my other leg bent. Awkward, but not impossible.

With this configuration, I could keep my senses with exception to smell, and feelings from my right toes. I had no idea which root had accidentally brushed up the right way so that my left foot's toes were fine. At this point, I'd given up trying. I could live without smells and moving my right toes.

All in all, I had hobbled together an extremely rickety workaround to using an imperial technique which itself was a workaround to exploit an edge case in the relic armors. Well. A great man in my life once said the most profound words of wisdom: If it's stupid but it works, then it's not stupid. And boy does it work.

I moved my hands, in awe at the sheer speed of it. They moved fast enough there was an air current trailing behind for a short second. I could even feel the skin and bone squeezed a bit each time the hand came to a stop from sheer inertia.

Everyone using armor naturally ended up to a point where they moved faster than human speed. Past that point, improvements became scarce from what I learned. Didn't matter if the technique was used to train or if it had been a natural development. The imperial teaching certainly trained people to reach that point faster and with more focus, but the end result was the same.

My technique, on the other hand, blew past that limit.

All the parts that willed my muscles to move worked. Only the part of the brain that actually sent those signals down didn't and registered more like a coma. As a result, I was technically performing the perfect iron-body technique.

Outside on the courtyard, time had passed by. The guards had all left to begin the day, and besides one servant passing by, the courtyard was empty.

Moving felt slightly odd, even walking out here had a strange dreamlike-sense. The motions were a little too crisp and quick until I slowed down and took each step deliberately. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with spending a day or two moving around in the armor.

I took the stance once more and tested the movements of Cathida's top strike. Once I felt comfortable with the moveset, I decided to execute it full speed and see what that looked like.

To do this I had to go through every step as fast as I could think while keeping it accurate.

I took my stance, sword moving to position. Closed my eyes and breathed in deep.

Journey moved.

The sword cut through the air with a high pitched whistle. Just as quick as the motions had been, they came to a stop. I could feel the whiplash even on my limp body, my chest felt like it had been crushed lightly both ways. A small gust of air passed over after me, fading a few feet ahead.

"Wind resistance would be cut down significantly if you powered the sword so that it cuts through the air. Right now, only the metal edge is cutting and that's got imperfections."

"Can the blade get warped?"

She cackled at that. "Oh no dear, you don't have to worry about the metal breaking apart. Tensile strength against the inertia is largely within spec at the speed the tip is reaching. Not enough mass for it to get dangerous. Similarly, you won't have to worry about the blade heating up. Journey's already crunched all the numbers and returned deep green."

I blinked. "One second, heating up? How would swinging a sword heat it up?"

"Air friction." She said as if it were the most natural thing ever. "Well, can't expect you lot to know that obscure bit of trivia. The old bat sure didn't. Only something to worry about if the speed breaks past the sound barrier. Journey's powerful but not that powerful."

"All right, fair." I had no idea what she was talking about. "Uhh, going back to the topic, mechanics wise, how was that swing?"

"Imperfect stance, yet paired with the speed of an Imperator. Never seen that combination. Very odd to see."

"You think they managed to reach this level with the venom path?"

"Cathida never knew the answer to that. Whatever techniques they used to reach those speeds, it's a well kept secret." The armor gave an almost verbal shrug. "Result is the same, you're moving as fast as an Imperator. Don't know how you're doing it, don't know how they did it either."

"Wasn't she a high ranking Crusader? I'd have thought she'd know."

"Too brash and unruly. Certainly had the skills, but lacked the sheer single minded faith."

I paused for a moment, curious. "Does Journey know?"

She cackled at that "Armors talk with each other only to assist their users in some way. Journey had no reason to ask, none of the armors are born gossips. Even if it had sent a request, answers would be encrypted anyhow. Indagator Mortis do that with everything they touch. After adding gold to it somewhere, of course. Priorities dear."

I could have all the theories in the world, but for now I had something tangible that gave me an advantage. Sure, it wasn't unique in the world - but it was good enough to get me an edge up here.

My stance shifted back to the traditional one surface dwellers used, and then I engaged in my favorite kata. The movements blurred around me, even faster than Father's strikes had been. With the sword active, I was now the center of the whirlwind.

There were errors everywhere in my strikes. The speed blurred it all together. Even if they weren't perfect, I had a feeling I could stand toe to toe with some of the better knights in the colony now simply because speed would overcome most mistakes.

Atius had fought with this speed.

And the sobering thought was that his opponent, To'Aacar, had still been twice as fast. I needed more wins before I could handle the circus happening a mile under me, let alone more than one level down. I couldn't go back down there without being stronger.

I had the Occult, a perfected iron-body technique and an armor with the full unlocked memories of an elite crusader. There was so much that I could accomplish with what I had, the good I could create for the clan as a whole, and the possible weapons I could forge to fight the coming tide. I needed just a little more time to refine everything into usable strategies.

There was the sound of movement behind me, someone running and sliding to a stop. One of our new soldiers. I paused my movements, turning around.

Panting, hair windswept backwards. He'd been sprinting to get to me. "Terribly sorry to interrupt your training, master Keith." He said, taking a quick bow while struggling to keep his breathing under control. "Lady Winterscar has sent a summon for you, effective immediately. It's urgent."

I nodded, turning off the weapon in hand and sheathing it. "Know what it's about?"

He gulped, raising back up, eyes fixed past the courtyard as if seeing through the walls in the direction of the gate.

"Aye sir," He said. "Clan Lord Atius has arrived at our gates and is requesting an audience."

Next chapter: Interlude - Atius

Book 2 - Interlude - Atius

Three hundred seventy two years ago

Atius watched as the rest of the airspeeders settled down near the habitat bunker. Already, he could see surface dwellers walking out from their bunker bay doors to greet the refugees like old friends, helping them unpack and move in the snow.

He'd lost people in the migration up to the surface. Lost a lot. The machines had easily spotted such a large convoy attempting to escape from the underground and had swarmed them day and night. The journey had been exhausting. He'd lost knight after knight, unable to recover neither the bodies nor armor.

Now, it was finally over. The survivors that remained were safe. The machines would not chase them up on the surface.

Next to him, another man stood by, watching the happenings, a frozen wind softly brushing his blond hair in the sunlight. The length of it made the man look almost feral. Unkempt, save for the rough braids. Atius found it fitting, after all Clan Lord Yvain had gone native centuries ago, up here on the surface.

"You'll see, my friend." Yvain said, clapping him on the shoulder. "The surface isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Sure, living up here is rough. I'll not lie to you about that. Still a small price to pay for safety from the machines."

Atius shook his head, frowning. "It's a prison sentence in all but name. We've traded the enemy we knew for a different kind of struggle. I respect your... clan's help, however I still wish this hadn't been necessary at all." He found it so odd of a word. Clan. Almost like they were tribal savages up above, not cities or anything permanent. "If I had been stronger, or could have made better allies, maybe this could have been avoided entirely."

The odd clan lord smiled, teeth just as white as his surroundings. "Atius, lad. My friend. I don't think all the power in the world could have saved your city. It was simply too far from the others. And that was established long before you woke up as one of us. Rather, I'm impressed you stood the line this long! Seven decades? Or was that Lord Tidian's number?" He chuckled.

"A hundred and twelve years." Atius said, a note of regret mixed with pride. "It was easier at the start, when there weren't so many of them attacking."

It was easier when Ranora, their sister city, still stood firm. Instead, the people there had abandoned their city and fled to join a larger one. Leaving Atius and his people too remote from any help. Geopolitics had been what had put the final nail in his coffin. The nearby cities had no room for them. It was the surface, or death.

Yvain shrugged. "That's the nature of the beast. The machines will slowly erode everything to dust, anything too small and too isolated from others at least. How many more years could you have survived those attacks before you only had a dozen whelps left to protect in that city of yours? You did all you could. This," he said, waving a hand at the busy unloading ahead. "This was your destiny all along. Do you accept it, and become a clan lord? Those 'barbaric little warlords and despots leading fanatical zealots' as you so loved calling us." There wasn't heat in his voice at that, Yvain seemed to find it hilarious even, almost like an inside joke. "Or do you leave your people and take a place among our brothers and sisters underground, fighting the good fight, eternally?"

Atius watched a small huddle of figures by the airspeeders. What was left of his people. Each taking long exaggerated steps, focusing on keeping their balance with the heavy backpacks behind them. The surface dwellers on the other hand moved through the snow as if they were a part of it.

His people hardly knew how to use the environmental suits. Let alone their upkeep, costs, skillset - everything. "Is there even a choice in the first place?"

Without other surface dwellers as a guide, his people would die. Frozen to death by some broken pipe that couldn't be found, deep in the superstructure in a bunker. Or some other of the thousand problems the surface dwellers knew how to look out for almost by instinct. The very climate was a relentless enemy here. The little death that whispered from every corner, a white dream waiting to take everyone and everything. Breath by frozen breath.

"You asked for my help. This is the best I could do for you." Yvain said with a shrug.

Atius understood what he'd be paying in exchange for the surface dweller's help. A Deathless as the lord of one of these clans is something the dwellers flock to be a part of. And one pirates and slavers give a weary eye about raiding, which was exactly why people came. Safety. All Yvain had to do was spread the word ahead of time to the clans with mortal clan lords. They all banded their smaller tribes together and welcomed his people with open arms, expecting him to take charge and lead them all. So long as he remained on the surface, his people would be cared for.

Atius sighed, "I know. And I'm grateful. That doesn't mean I can't be bitter about it in the same breath."

Yvain laughed, slapping his friend on the shoulder with good cheer again. "It'll be an adjustment, I'll not deny you that, lad. But you're young and you'll learn. Don't let these Houses step over you, give an inch and they will take a mile. You need to be a Lord, the one they look up to. Don't slack off now."

Atius had heard of the surface cultures. Their strange caste system, the massive great houses of pseudo-families and the cruel difference in social rank between them.

He found it all distasteful. Barbaric. Not to mention there seemed to be ceremonies and traditions for everything - he was sure if he sneezed by accident there might be a ceremony for that as well. Hundreds he would need to learn, memorize and then direct. And hundreds more unspoken rules within the houses and culture he'd need to understand deeply before he was ready to lead anyone.

There was a lot of trimming to be done. "I suppose the first thing I'll do is address this societal imbalance. I don't know what possessed you surface dwellers to consider science and engineering to be lower in importance. I won't let that stand for long."

Yvain turned to him, a quizzical expression. "I'd recommend against that, lad."

That took Atius by surprise. Yvain was like himself, striving to help and protect others. There was that kinship among all the Deathless he'd met. At least, all the Deathless he had met so far. This sounded out of character.

"Ah, don't look at me like that. It's not pretty to speak about, but there are certain realities up here on the surface you will need to contend against." Yvain said. "There's more to surviving the surface than tech and maintenance skills. You need people to venture outside. And people who venture outside, well they don't always return. It's inevitable. That's why the caste system is the way it is."

"What are you implying?"

Yvain sighed. "Think it through, lad. You need people to go out there for meltwater, metals, trade, power recharging, everything." He said, pointing out the white wastes. "And out there, everything wants to kill them. The weather, the raiders, slavers, pirates, covered up crevasses in the ground and age old derelicts that forgot they're supposed to be dead and turned off. Can't send the hard to replace engineers, they need to be kept safe and deep within the walls. Can't go around demanding anyone with no particular talent to sign up for scavenger duty, where the death rate is a reality they all internalized long ago." He chuckled darkly at that. "No one's stupid and no one likes to be seen as expendable."

"I could pay them. That seems the obvious, moral, solution. Scavenging would be a job like any other, with higher risks and rewards."

"Right. And what of the inevitable poor, who won't have a choice at all? Go out into the cold or starve to death is a great moral choice there, lad."

"That's entering platitudes and relative morality." Atius countered. "We could end up debating that topic for hours and only end in circles without any actionable items."

Yvain scoffed. "All right you Undersider whelp, let's look only at the numbers then. Do the math. What happens if you use greed as the main motivator? What are the impacts of a society that functions that way fifty years down the line? A hundred? Think, Atius. How will your neighbors see your clan, given their cultures of pride and honor compared to yours of money and wealth? Your last city fell to its knees because it had no neighbors left. And now you want to forge a clan up here with a culture that's incompatible with those around you?"

Atius remained silent on that. He hadn't squandered the century of life he'd lived so far. He'd been as much a scholar and philosopher as he had been a warrior. His village had needed him to be everything in order to lead them. And fortunately, as a Deathless, he had all the time to slowly accumulate that knowledge and the books to dig it out of.

The winds gently tugged on Atius's cheeks as he contemplated how the wealth would move, and eventually pool. How the houses would mobilize to protect that wealth. How the death rate outside and inheritance of wealth would affect the clan on a macro scale. And how the culture would shift in accordance over the generations.

"We'd end with the same system, eventually." He concluded. "A different name, but similar stratification."

Yvain smiled. "A worse system, even. One where you have no control. Greed as a motivator has no integrity, no morals, and most importantly - it won't answer to you. No way to correct the airspeeder if it starts swerving at a mountain." Once more, Yvain's armored hand held Atius's shoulder as he leaned forward. "See, greed my friend, is a mindless maximizing function with short term gain as the only metric worshipped. People who forget this always pay the price. So you need another way to motivate people to go out there and possibly die for the greater good."

"You know where this line of thinking leads." Atius warned. "You'll stop seeing individuals and start seeing the world in terms of groups and macroeconomics, if you haven't already. People will become numbers on a sheet to be juggled around. You're trading one monster for another, Yvain."

"And what do you think I am? You call us petty warlords and despots leading fanatic zealots. You think I laugh because I find it funny? I laugh because I know it's true, and the best humor is one that touches reality." He chuckled, then his voice turned to ice. "There are no simple solutions up here, Atius. No clean wins. The surface demands everything of you. So you pick the easiest monster to tame, and you make friends with that darkness." His fellow Deathless looked across the white wastes, in the direction of his own clan.

"I keep it simple. My people have shelter, safety, community and purpose. The door is wide open, I don't stop anyone if they want to leave for better pastures, I make it easy even. And they don't want to leave. That's the only metric I use when I doubt if I'm going down the right path. Clan culture evolved the way it did not by accident or happenstance. It was artificial from the start. Built to maximize survival of the whole by the most stable means possible. Scratch just a bit under the ice and you'll find every song, every tradition, every part of this culture has a purpose behind it."

He waved to the Scavengers further in the distance, returning from an expedition, hauling the large ice blocks needed for meltwater back into a hanger door.

"There has to be a less… manipulative way." Atius said.

Yvain slowly shook his head. "Sometimes, the best way to keep a child safe from the stovetop is to toss a toy the other direction. Not everyone needs to be a scholar and know the how's and why's."

"And the societal imbalance? The suffering this caste system causes?"

He quirked his head to the side. "Suffering? What suffering? Is bowing down when a scavenger walks by really too much of a price to pay for a stable system? On the macro scale, it's a bargain. I would lick the ice off boots if it meant people as a whole would live better. A quick bow is utterly free in comparison. I've seen the lives of Undersiders. You live in luxury, surrounded by the poverty around the rim of the city."

"My city had none of that." Atius growled back, insulted.

Yvain lifted his hands up, placating. "Easy there lad. Your city was run by you. Of course you'd shape it all up to work well, you had a hundred years to work on it. Up here though, the surface dwellers might be poor compared to your old city, but the people... They band together in a way Undersiders don't appreciate. I certainly was suprised by it at first."

"Don't misconstrue my arguments. There are going to be people who abuse that authority to oppress the lower castes. That's not a matter of if, but when."

"Play your part right and it won't happen." Yvain countered, taking a lazy glance at the convoy passing by. In the distance, one of the refugees stumbled in the snow, falling down hard. Three surface dwellers were already on a direct path to the man. They swarmed around him, helping him up, checking the suit integrity, field kits already out and ready for any possible puncture. The older Deathless nodded. This was as it should be.

"What do you mean by that?" Atius asked, watching the same scene.

"I told you. Everything in clan culture was built for a reason." He pointed out the field. "In the end, it didn't matter if the man that fell was from the lowest caste and the ones that came to help him were from the greatest of Retainer houses. Duty is still the same, to help and protect those of the clan. Do you think the oaths people take are for nothing?"

The vows of the Houses. He paid little heed to it when he'd first heard them. Imperial sounding babble to Atius, meant to impress.

When sacrifice calls, I shall answer it. The vow of the Retainers, the ones who ventured outside.

What darkness covers, I shall bring to light. The vow of the Reachers, the ones who maintained the technology.

Where life may grow, I shall nurture my people. The vow of the Agrifarmers, the ones who fed the colony.

And so on. A dozen vows, each unique to their caste. Lip service as far as Atius was concerned. His questioning gaze might have said everything to Yvain, for his friend looked him gravely in the eyes.

"It's not simple pretty words up here, Atius." He said. "Oaths are everything. Lad, think of it this way - even the heroes sung about in the stories, they're not the ones who fought off an army of pirates, or conquered the levels underground. The heroes up here on the surface are the ones who lived up to their oath in some way, each and every one of them. That isn't by accident."

"What, the stories are made up?" Atius scoffed. "Stories are always made up." And yet his mind worked furiously through the implications. Everything up here served a deeper meaning, Yvain had said. The culture up here had been engineered to be what it was.

Then where did these oaths fit in? What was their purpose? Why were the stories told up on the surface made to glorify the ones who lived up to these vows, and why was that so important?

The answer came as cold as the wind on his back. The single piece of information that clicked everything into place. "They swear them at childhood…" Atius breathed, realization dawning. A culture that worshiped tradition and honor, being given a clear direction from birth on how to achieve that honor, and stories as a roadmap to follow.

Yvain smiled. "Now you see the monster we picked. Each day, each time they look at their reflection in their mirror, they're reminded of their oath. Bit by bit, those oaths become their identity as they grow up. So when you publicly acknowledge that they've done it, that you believe they've lived up to whatever vow they took, you don't just pat them on the head, lad. You validate their very existence to both themselves and to their peers. You - a source of authority - publicly acknowledge them and the work that they do. Don't think I can stress how much that changes everything. How much people long for that."

He turned to stare Atius eye to eye, trying to impart the magnitude behind his words. "They will do the impossible to earn your approval. They'll police their worst demons. They will rise over selfishness, greed, wrath, even hatred. It's primal. Echoed all across history, no matter the era or scale. A child seeking his parent's approval. A soldier seeking his commander's approval. An emperor seeking his god's approval. The pattern repeats fractually. Etched deep in the human soul itself:

To be recognized as worthy."

Next chapter - Stay still, stay quiet

Book 2 - Chapter 15 - Stay Still, Stay Quiet

The hot tea poured out in each of our small cups to half full. Each of us thanked the servant as she dutifully did the work and left the kettle on the table. Bowing deep, she slid the door closed behind her.

It was only the three of us left in the room. Kidra and I on one side of the table. And Clan Lord Atius on the other, looming above the table even while sitting. He'd come with his two bodyguards in a surprise visit to discuss business, at least that was the official reason he'd told us at the gate.

He took one of the small cups, swirling the tea absentmindedly in a hand that looked all too large for the tiny thing. "Quite the industry, lass. Imagine my surprise when I start hearing from everyone that Winterscar of all Houses is on the rise. You must have been planning all this for some time. I recognize a well coordinated plan when I see one."

Kidra sat on the opposite side, wearing her usual kimono. Prim and regal as usual, with sharp eyes that always gave an impression she was seeing far more into the conversation. I'd asked her about it once and she'd told me that yes, she practices on the mirror until it was her default look. I can't tell if that was a joke or if she's serious.

This had been the first time since the last couple of days that I'd seen her. Most of her orders were now sent through runners to me, since she was busy being in a dozen different places for different reasons. If it was anything sensitive, she'd send it written out on a letter. Despite all the work she'd been doing, fatigue was well hidden even from me. In all likelihood that fatigue didn't exist at all. Kidra wasn't stupid. She was probably putting an effort in keeping herself well rested rather than putting that effort into acting. She never believed in short term gain strategies, and staying awake to deal with issues would fall squarely in a short term gain situation.

A small cube of sugar was picked up in tongs and dropped it into her tea, after which she reached out again for another two cubes of sugar in quick succession. "I have indeed, my lord. There is a plan I kept for the eventuality in which Father stepped down as the head of House. Each month I made sure it was updated and ready."

Atius nodded, looking pleased. "Tenisent was an excellent fighter and I could trust the lad with my life. I've done so plenty of times already, in fact. Offered him a hand in managing his House multiple times in the past. I suppose he didn't want to see it restored for personal reasons. Your predecessors were a…" he waved a hand around, as if trying to come up with a good word for it.

"A bunch of backstabbing bastards?" I supplemented in from the side.

Both Kidra and Atius gave knowing smiles at that. "That'd be a word for some of it." He said, a small chuckle passing through his voice. "I always had to handle Winterscars with a different set of gloves compared to the other Houses. But not all people are bad from all angles, lad. There were plenty of times they'd shown great honor and cooperation. When the metal is brought down, I could trust Winterscar would be there to stand with all the other houses."

"Suppose at the very end, that's what they did, sir." I said politely.

Atius eyed my armor from the side as he took a sip of the tea. "Was I interrupting your sparring session?"

"Nothing I can't do another time. I discovered a lot of... interesting topics. Was in the middle of testing one such thing." I turned to Kidra, "I think you'll have a day in the bath with this one."

The iron-body technique was something veterans would slowly develop over time. Having Kidra go from novice to master would turn her into the hard carry for our little group. She already had the skills to tackle on the elites in the clan. If she suddenly had the speed as well, she'd be a threat to contend against. All I had to do was figure out enough tricks and feed them to her.

"Is this room secure?" Atius asked, eyeing the surroundings.

Kidra nodded. "I've already assumed you wanted to speak of sensitive subjects. The servant that offered tea is a Chenobi, one specialized in security. This room is isolated and has already been vetted by her."

I nearly spat out my own tea. Chenobi were the specters in the night. A small caste of the most dedicated in the clan. People who would train for years in order to take a binding oath of fealty to a master and would carry that to their grave, serving for ten years before being given the option to retire. Normally kept as bodyguards. I suppose Kidra saw a different use for them.

The clan lord nodded. "She's given you her vow?"

"She has, within the second day I took command of Winterscar." Kidra took a sip of her own heavily sweetened tea. "I have been planning all of this for some time after all. I had prior contacts."

"Excellent. The most pressing issue to discuss will be the raiders approaching, but I'll admit I'm far more curious about what your brother has been up to with Talen's book." He turned to me, eyes twinkling. "He certainly looks like he's had a few breakthroughs, call it a hunch."

I had two options, either I start by explaining everything from the start like a normal person, or I silently bring out my hand and light it on fire like a dramatic idiot.

Of course I picked option two.

"That is… quite something." Kidra said, watching the flame dance across my palm. Somehow, despite it being literal magic, she still kept a straight face as if she'd just seen someone light a candle instead.

Atius, on the other hand, was peering into the flame with intensity. "What fuel does it consume?" He asked after a short pause.

"None from this world as far as I could tell." I shrugged. With my practice in the soul fractal, it was easy enough to reach a small soul-root to the fractal of heat. It began to wiggle around, circling around like a dragon floating across. "It's taking energy from somewhere, just nowhere I can understand. Like it's being sucked out from between the cracks of the world. Otherwise I have an electric current flowing in between the inscribed fractal here. That's basically the whole secret to the Occult. The right fractals are inscribed in metal with voltage going through."

They'd better be impressed with the circling dragon technique. The concept of a moving source of heat was not something easy to keep in mind. Took me a long while to get that going right, though I hesitate to say it was the wisest choice of time spent.

I gave them a quick rundown of my experiments. Of the soul fractal. Kidra corroborated my theory, explaining what she saw when opening Winterscar. I took off my helmet and showed the small glowing soul fractal inside.

Kidra initially couldn't feel any pull until she touched the fractal itself. Atius and I both could once it was close enough to our skin, likely because we'd been exposed to the soul-pulse previously. Him from his fight with To'Aacar, and me... well, old history I don't want to think on. We didn't continue with any experiments until Kidra was caught up with us.

It didn't take long, since attunement turned out to be as simple as touching the fractal directly. "That was most peculiar. I hadn't felt that at all from Winterscar." Kidra said, pulling her hand back from the glowing rune.

"You also didn't touch Winterscar's soul fractal when we were dismantling it." I noted.

She nodded, moving her hand close again to the soul fractal in the helmet. "I feel it now when I bring my hand close. Interesting. Does this sense fade away after some time?"

"Can't tell for sure, it's been a few weeks but I could still feel the sense the moment my hand was close enough."

Atius reached a hand for the helmet, and Kidra passed it to him without issue. He looked oddly at the small fractal within. "Aye, certainly looks familiar. The pillars where Deathless gain and trade their powers do have inscriptions that look as odd as this." He drew a hand closer, touching the soul fractal for the first time. His eyes went wide at that. "Novel. Very novel. I believe I felt some of your armor's soul even." He touched the armor again, a grin on his face. "It's not quite happy with the prodding. Perhaps I should quit while I'm ahead. Forgive me, great armor." He chuckled, passing the helmet back to me. "You say you enter a trance of sorts once you dive into this fractal?"

Nodding, I slipped the helmet back on. It was hard to describe the soul sight I had. I could see concepts - but it was hazy and blurry in a way. I had to be paying attention in order to start seeing details. Though I could pay attention in ways my eyes wouldn't have been able to focus on, say into the room across or the items behind my back.

Oddly enough Cathida hadn't said a word yet. In fact, HUD readings had basically stopped completely, only performing the minimum. Either absolutely nothing was going on anywhere, or Journey was barely paying attention to the happenings. That was strange.

"How strong is the current to activate the fire?" Atius asked, motioning me to reignite the fire.

"Low. It's also easily reproducible. All that needs to be engraved is this symbol into a flat metal surface, and then a current is passed through. I think even a hand crank could keep this lit."

Kidra's eyes never left the floating flame, watching it intently. Atius leaned back in his chair, scratching his beard in deep thought.

"A hand crank, and yet you generate that much heat?" He asked, a sense of calculation deeper in the tone. "That's the start of a perpetual energy machine. Something must be off."

He'd read my mind on that one. I'd been thinking a rudimentary steam machine of some kind could easily self-supply itself and generate unlimited heating. I'd already had the rough designs in my head. "What's off is the law of conservation of energy." I said. "Have you heard of it?"

"Yes, I have heard of it." He waved away the concern. "I've only dabbled in engineering over my years, enough to know a screwdriver from a welding torch at least, lad. I'll admit it's been years since I last sat down and studied the mathematics of physics so I could use a brush up, the base concepts stay in my mind. That law roughly states that energy cannot be generated from thin air in a closed system." He pointed at the fire in my hand. I'd stopped having it dance because keeping focus on the concepts was getting difficult and fogging up my mind. "That," he said. "Can be abused."

"Exactly! It's gods-damned amazing is what it is. Free energy - well, not perfectly free. I can feel the energy coming from somewhere, so the system isn't completely closed."

Atius remained in deep thought, leaning back and... frowning. I took the silence as a go-ahead to bring out my plans.

"See, first we can create Occult heaters." I said, getting animated. "We can easily disguise it, but once we get those heaters and start spreading it out in the clan home, we'll free up all the power cells taken for that task. We can then shift those over to def-"

"No." Atius said softly. His eyes turned to me and I saw an echo of eternity there. Gone was the warmth, instead only the centuries. Cold calculation. "No." He said again, now with the full voice and authority of the clan lord. "Keith, this book is not unique, is it?"

I shook my head, a little bewildered. "N-no. Talen said it was one of many."

He nodded his head at that. "And already you've discovered a possible secret to perpetual energy and heating, within scant days of opening it. A simple, easy to implement solution no less." He tapped the sigil in my palm. "You are not the first to hold this book. Likely, there were hundreds before you that stood in the very same spot you do now."

I didn't quite understand what he meant, until Kidra voiced the question Atius was really asking. "Then, where are they now?"

The clan lord nodded at her with a smile. "Imagine Keith created this heater. It would spread out in the clan and then traded out over time. Every clan would eventually own these heaters like we own the Occult blades. And yet, we don't have these heaters. So every person in Keith's boots either failed to create the heaters... or was eliminated in between the creation and their complete spread."

My mind jumped to the cycles of destruction Talen spoke about. The shamans, the wizards, and likely other long dead cultures and civilizations that had taken up the Occult so long ago their names don't appear anywhere in the world.

"Either this perpetual energy of yours is not feasible due to logistics issues we can't yet see. Or…" Kidra said, trailing the question.

"Or the machines have some way of tracking the Occult and are making sure anything that could be a threat is destroyed before it spreads too far." Atius finished. "The warlocks don't create perpetual energy machines, I know their ilk. The tools and items are simple. Straightforward. I don't believe this could be just coincidence. They may be aware of the enemy in the dark and are being deliberate in how advanced the spells they use are. Machines have never been spotted on the surface, however there's a hole in this. Survivorship bias. We've never heard of machines on the surface, it might be because they've never let anyone live to tell the tale."

Atius drank more of the tea, clearing his throat with it. "I've been mulling over one additional issue I've had with Talen's book. The armors are purposefully blocking the sight and mention of the book. Yet the rest of the Occult itself is perfectly visible, am I correct on that assumption?"

I nodded, looking down on my palm where the fractal of heat was clearly visible. Journey wasn't making any effort to hide that. In fact, it was being incredibly idle right now, almost as if dozing off. "It is."

"Why try to hide the book itself? It made no sense in a way I'm familiar with - there was more to this than I could see. Now, I find out that this book also contains free heating with next to no drawbacks, within the hour of reading it? I don't like this." He set his fingers on the ground, folding them together. "I don't like this at all. There are no free meals. This reeks of a ploy."

"What do you mean?"

"In the old books, they spoke about icebergs - giant mountains of ice that floated within a large body of water. Often the surface seemed small, but it hid a mass under it that was deceptive." He undid a few buttons on his tunic, easily stripping them off. "The same happens over time when studying history. Quirks that make little sense. Traditions that seem silly on the surface, only because the context behind them isn't exposed. The world doesn't make sense, simple solutions seem evident and yet haven't been implemented. Often it's what you don't see that's the more important lesson. The dark spots in history."

He placed the first button on the table. "Imagine a game with two players. This is the player's first move." He set down another button. "Imagine the two players took turns countering the other's moves." More and more, he placed the buttons on the table until he no longer had any more buttons to put down. "Each time they played, the board was changed. Say a third person walks into the game just now. If he sees the board, can he understand at a glance? Likely not. Some pieces may have ended up in situations that seem outright improbable, or make little sense. The third person can't understand why the pieces are where they are because the history and context is missing."

Kidra took a sip of her tea. "Then, in this metaphor, we're the third player. And the book is the last move played by Tsuya?"

"Correct, except we're not a player at all. We're a game piece." He sighed, looking deep into his cup. "I don't trust that Tsuya has our survival in mind. I trust she has humanity as a whole in mind. She had no hesitation in sacrificing you during the destruction of the site all those weeks ago, right?"

I gulped, nodding. In hindsight, the goddess had indeed left me to die once with only three short farewell messages. Kidra, on the other hand, being more religious, was having a hard time swallowing this. Her eyebrows were knitted in focus, a slight frown breaking through the ice.

"Often in games, you send the pawns to test the line of defense expecting they will die in exchange for information on how the enemy reacts." Atius continued. "What I fear is that we're not the finishing move, Keith. We could be the pawns sent to die in exchange for that information. If it's important enough, it's possible the whole clan can be seen as expendable."

"What about the seeker?" Kidra said to the side. "If Tsuya is betraying us, why did she grant a second artifact? And the sphere. This doesn't make sense."

"That's exactly the point, lass. It doesn't make sense because we don't have the full picture. We're missing pieces. She could be playing multiple plays all at the same time. Playing the odds, maybe. Or she's placed these as red herrings, either for us to doubt our own guesses or setup for her enemy to find. The problem is that we don't know her plans, we don't know what tools she gave us that are truely for us. We don't know if this seeker is a decoy or the true item. We don't know Relinquished or how she fights Tsuya. What I suspect that this book is meant as a trap for Relinquished."

"So. We're the bait." I concluded. "Tiny footnotes. Why hide the book from the armor but not us?"

Atius nodded. "If I'm right, it's likely to give the book itself a better chance of surviving past our deaths. Reuse possibly? A weak version even, something that'll work only once every ten tries, though that's better odds than none. If she's playing at the scale I think she might be."

There was a heavy weight in the air, the thought that I was being betrayed by the goddess. That she'd have the armors hardcoded to scrub all mention of the book so that if the enemy stepped on our dead bodies, they'd have a slightly harder time finding out where we got the ideas from.

"This is all just hypothetical, we could be jumping to the wrong conclusions." Kidra said. "Tsuya is a goddess guiding humanity for centuries. The thought that she'd view us as expendable soldiers in her grand war rankles me."

"Lass, it's because she's spent centuries that I worry the most. Time strips away humanity, if one isn't careful to keep hold of it." Atius said, almost with an edge of pity to it. "It only costs us a pound of snow to assume the book is a trap and act accordingly from that angle. At that price, I'd be a fool to pass on it. There is no possible reasoning not to proceed with extreme caution."

"Are we too late though? I mean, I did open it up and start experimenting."

Atius shook his head. "I think we've caught this early enough we haven't tripped past the point of no return or triggered whatever method the machines use to track down and wipe out Occult wielders." He downed the last of the tea in his cup, before refilling it from the hot kettle. "For now, halt all Occult related activity. We can't trust any of the fractals in Talen's book are safe to use. I don't want you to be using the occult in any manner until we're sure. Instead, I want you to create an untested occult heater - a simple one - and have it sent directly to me. I'll have it carried off somewhere far where I'll turn it on and leave it for a few months as bait. If there are no signs of anything sniffing the heater out, then we can start small tasks. And always as far as possible from the clan."

While I felt sad about being forced to abort my progress, I knew it was the right call in the end. Besides, there would still be some progress on this, only slowed down to a crawl in the name of safety.

He watched his cup intently again, eyebrows furrowed in thought. "I'm finding myself having a hard time making this call. This kind of power could be the difference between life or death against the coming raiders. Immediate survival might be a play we're forced to make if things become dire."

The old Deathless remained deep in thought, mulling over options, calculating lives and their weight. Neither Kidra nor I dared to interrupt.

"There is an alternative." He said simply, looking up. "Armor runs on the Occult. We know those runes are likely safe given that it's been used for centuries without issue. Those we can study in relative safty."

"The issue with that," I interjected, "Is that I don't know what those fractals do, and even if I did, I can't modify them in any way since I can't reverse engineer the fractal equation from an image. I don't have that kind of software. Their use might be really limited."

Not to mention the Armors were more than just the occult. They were paired with software and a soul fractal of its own. Those could end up being required to use the rest of the suit's fractals.

"Fortunately, that's not the end of our options, lad. There are two more set of fractals we can draw from." Atius said, waving my concern away. "The first set won't need to be modified, and we'll know what they do already. That should help with your situation."

"We have that?"

"Yes. Mine." He lifted a hand out, occult blue flared to life there, crackling like lightning. Two pairs of ghost hands extended out before fading off. "As I've told you before, Deathless gain powers by attuning to pillars underground. The pillars underground pre-date us Deathless. I know from folklore that the fractal symbols inscribed on their sides didn't appear until we appeared some five hundred years ago. Given how the pillars pair with us, I suspect it might have been a patch job of some kind. The goddess using already existing resources to help power us further. I strongly believe they're far more safe to work with given their goal was to be used in combat."

I remembered talking to Tsuya, she mentioned Relinquished had appeared seven thousand years ago, and that was when the world ended. It was silly to think about, but the ancient Deathless might actually be a new thing to the world, at least on the scales that the gods played on.

Atius paused to take a sip, swirling the tea in his cup. "In my travels, I had my armor take pictures of each pillar I came across underground. I felt it would be important someday, though I didn't know what any of it meant at the time." He patted his tunic, "The armor didn't survive my last death, but the data has been stored away a long time ago." He fixed me with a look, the cold calculations once again alive within the recesses of his eyes. "You and Kidra will work on reverse engineering the fractals I use. See if it's possible to use them either as a bluff or in actual combat. If the raiders believe we have three Deathless ready to fight, they might simply break before even attacking. Given what you've told me about the soul fractal's use, you have my permission to use the soul fractal to pair with the pillar fractals. It'll likely be required, if my hunch is correct. The soul fractal has already been touched upon, no sense in backing out now. I'll take that chance given the possible payoff."

He drew out his sword next, laying on the table. "The second source of fractals are the Occult weapons. If you succeed in discovering how these weapons function, I'll have you forge as many as you can make. Whatever the secrets that allow the sword to cut more than reality, I want it. That kind of power in a fight could easily cause a route in their forces."

I gulped, thinking back at the rip in reality swords like his could produce. That sort of strike, done in the middle of knight battle, could easily cause the enemy knights to panic and run.

"Information is dangerous in this world." He said. "All things and knowledge travel physically, given that the mythical internet is long dead. And that means the spread of knowledge can be contained. Possible treasures like software or weapons are likely found all the time by chance, and when they are not keep secret... We need to stay still and stay quiet. I'm trusting only the two of you with this. The more people are involved, the more danger of a leak appears."

If a ceiling plank falls in the frozen wastes miles away from anyone, does it make a sound when it hits the ground?

I think I know what happened to the wizards.

Eventually, they must have made too much light in that dark forest.

Next chapter - Trial of the Occult blade

Book 2 - Chapter 16 - Trial of the Occult blade

The neighbors are going to be a problem.

Atius had ended the meeting with us going over what he had originally come to settle: The raider threat. The update was short and to the point. He'd dispatched scouts to get early reports on movements from the Othersiders. The scale of the attack would need to be massive to overcome the defenses of the clan and the reputation of a Deathless. That sort of industry can't be hidden.

The clan lord was going ahead with shoring up the defenses and getting maintenance crews to start bringing the wider turrets out of their mothballed states. If it turns out to be a hoax, he'd lose a few months of resources that could have been put to living conditions which was a price he was willing to pay.

The price he wasn't willing to pay was panic and terror. After debating with his war council, they had come to the conclusion to keep the attack hidden from the public for now. When the announcements come, they'll come paired with all the solutions. The last thing the clan lord wants is fear spreading through his clan in the middle of preparations for it.

The airspeeder's crew had already been sworn to secrecy as a baseline, this was just confirmation that these orders were now permanent until Atius was ready to deliver the news himself.

Regardless, time was not in our favor and the clock was counting down until the threat came to our doorsteps. We had to get prepared.

"Got a moment to talk?" I asked Kidra as we watched the clan lord pass by the gates of our estate, bodyguards in tow.

"I have fifteen minutes at most before I need to return to my duties." Kidra said.

"The feast I'm guessing?" I'd heard about it from the gossip vine. Kidra was putting together a feast to celebrate the rise of house Winterscar. As should be expected. We recently gained a new armor and we have a new head of house. Both would have earned their own separate feasts, so Kidra couldn't skimp out on this one. Winterscar was rising as a brand new house in all but name, a whole new culture would emerge from the new members working together. It was our duty to make sure that culture wouldn't become the petty political power grabs of the old. Kidra wanted something functional, streamlined and powerful. And I just wanted to eat fish and tinker on projects without having to worry about words like 'budget' and 'responsibility' so I'd say our goals were perfectly aligned.

She probably had a few more tasks for me to do. And the recent news Atius had dropped on us paired with his direct orders had probably put her plans on the wayside. "Don't think I can help out with that, given the priorities to the clan." I didn't mention the Occult since we were now outside the saferoom, but the idea was implied. Between helping her with the feast and working on the tasks given that could possibly swing the fight to our favor, the priority was obvious.

"I'll need to compensate. Thankfully, I have a myriad of tools at my disposal besides sending you to stare people down in armor." She said, already calculating in her head.

"Got a few more minutes while I have your ear? I did discover something recently and we haven't had much time to talk."

"I'm assuming it's good."

I chuckled ominously at that. Cathida certainly fit a lot of adjectives. "I wanted to introduce someone I met. Since you're always nose deep in paperwork these days, I haven't been able to introduce you yet. You know, I'm going to miss the days when I didn't need to schedule an appointment just to talk scrapshit with you."

"Somehow I question that. Knowing you, dear brother, you'll already have figured out how to bribe my secretary within the day."

"Please, I would rather call it charitable contributions. And it's chocolate, by the way. Just for your information." Admittedly, this was just food court gossip about Kidra's new Logi accountant keeping a small reserve of personal funds specifically for chocolate. I can't vouch for the accuracy.

"Well, have you already sent for this person?"

"In a manner of speaking." I tapped the side of my helmet a few times.

Nothing came out. Kidra glanced around the emptying gateyard. "I'm waiting for this bit of yours." She said dryly.

I coughed, knocking my head again. "Cathida, that was your cue."

"Hmm, what? You stopped talking about boring things now? Finally, should have told me earlier. All this tea drinking and talking about raiders, you couldn't have brought out anything more fun to talk about?"

Kidra's eyebrows shot up, boring a hole into me. "What." She said delicately, "Did you do to your armor?"

"I had Journey overwrite it's language to mimic the previous owner of this armor. It was an old crusader named Cathida, who died in her twilight years doing one last mission."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised you managed to make an armor, of all things, go mad."

Cathida cackled in. "The only thing I'm mad about is that your little brother here doesn't know the proper ways to fight! Back in my day, no squire I train would ever be this held back. Too much backtalking. I have to beat it out of the little git somehow."

Kidra nodded slowly, then turned and walked to a bench, sitting down as if nothing was wrong. She tapped the side of her ear, activating the comms chip. "Edgar. I'll be held up for another half hour. Please move my schedule accordingly." She turned back to me, a wide smile. "Now, you're going to sit down and tell me every little detail about what you've been doing with that armor while I haven't been looking."

So long as it wasn't sensitive information of course. That went unsaid. I made my way over and sat down by the bench. "Remember last time when we were opening up Winterscar?"

"I remember you panicked and ran. I decided to let you take the time you needed."

I nodded at that, leaning back on the bench. People were passing by, handling errands and items. Pointedly, they didn't stop to gawk or stare, keeping their heads focused on the tasks at hand. "That was the right call. I needed some time to think or just do anything else to keep my mind busy while I calmed down. Journey had video logs of Cathida."

"Ah. So you started viewing the memories left behind? How long did you spend?"

Cathida chimed in on that. "The little voyeur spent about three hours in total watching random videos suggested by Journey. Not that I mind, all those videos showed me in a great light and I have an ego to maintain."

Kidra fumbled slightly. "It's… odd to hear an armor speak like this."

"What, timid all of a sudden just from little old me? Ha! Even dead my presence is still keeping people on their toes." The old grandmother said, the harsh tone at an odd conflict with the whispy breath that colored the edges of her voice. "If it makes you feel any better deary, I'm not truly Cathida, only an echo of the old bat. Keith here described it as being a 'figment of journey's imagination.' Accurate enough I suppose."

"How do I even refer to you? As the armor, or the woman?" Kidra asked, curious at the engram.

"Cathida works fine, though Journey is more technically correct. Like I told the brat here, I don't care myself."

"What do you care about, exactly? I don't often get the privilege of speaking to armor like this, I admit it's peaked my curiosity." Kidra said.

Cathida cackled like a witch. "Oh, the only thing Journey here cares about is keeping little Keith safe. Me on the other hand, I want to whip him into shape, and then beat him a few more times for good measure. Also feed him more. Have you seen how skinny he is? Poor dear would keel over if a strong wind blew the wrong way."

Kidra smiled at that, stopping my interjection. "He does, doesn't he? I've never been able to get him to eat all his vegetables when he was a child, a habit that followed somewhat to this day. I'm glad there's someone else who's interested in his general well being, that puts me more at ease."

"Peh." Cathida scoffed. "Anyone who's going to inherit my legacy had better be just as good as I was. And that's what I intend to do, even if I need to drag the little monster kicking and screaming every morning to the training yards."

Kidra nodded quickly at that. "He has been rather... lax about his combat training. What kind of training are you planning? Do you need any additional resources? I would be more than happy to assist."

"You know, I'm right here and listening in." I said dryly. "I'd appreciate having a say in all this."

"Quiet brat, the adults are speaking." Cathida cut in.

"Keith, you need to listen to your elders." Kidra added, with a slight grin that betrayed she was having fun with all this.

Great. Now my armor was teaming up with my sister within the first few minutes of meeting up. I regret this already.

And while my sister might be only entertaining the armor's requests, Cathida was dead serious about dragging me each morning for training. That, I knew implicitly.

Things only got weirder once the Iron-body technique started to be discussed between the two. Before I knew it, I was now booked each morning for the courtyard, with Kidra as my sparring partner. She wasn't going to miss a possible chance to gain an advantage, and what Cathida relayed on my breakthroughs with the iron body technique had her attention.

I sighed in defeat, watching my lazy mornings vanish into a soft memory behind me.

For me, I had a good amount of work on my hands. First of which was staring back at me:

A cobbled together Occult heater - untested as requested.

I'd never turned it on once and I had no idea if it would work. However, all the components besides the occult had been tested in isolation so in theory things should be fine.

It had been a bit of a head scratcher to get this working. The first idea was to simply boil water and have the steam rotate a turbine which would then power the fractal for perpetual energy.

Easy right?

Except that this heater would be left in a dark place away from the world for months. And the fatal flaw to this early concept was that eventually either water would leak out of the system or the moving parts would wear out over time. I needed something that didn't have any moving parts, nor required anyone else to come by every few days to refill something.

That significantly cut down on the options I had.

However, I did have a trick up my sleeve - thermocouples. Tech as old as time. Taking two wires of printed metal, one copper and one iron, I connected the two and had the joint hovering over the expected fire source. The other two ends joined together and were left out in the open where they'd be exposed to the cold air. In between, the metal wires would connect to the metal block that should house the occult fractal, and the temperature difference would cause a current to go through. That's basically the whole core of the 'heater'. I'd added a lot of other tweaks to the model, including an environmental shield and casing with a nice handle to make the whole thing more portable.

So long as someone jump started the thing, it should in theory keep going almost indefinitely. The metal would eventually wear out, but not for years I expect, which was plenty of time for the experiment.

I packed up the heater into a canvas bag and put it to the side. That would be destined to go straight to the clan lord with written instructions.

The next thing to do was to reconsider Talen's book. All of the fractals inside that book were basic ones that could be used for general purpose engineering. That's the pattern behind these. With exception to the soul fractal, that one tied everything together.

Given that the armors all used that fractal, I was pretty sure Atius was right when he said it was worth a gamble to use. If it's somehow something machines can pick up on, that airspeeder has already flown the hangar a long time ago. I'd already made up my mind to continue using the soul fractal inside my helmet to enable the iron body technique, and soon my sister would be joining in on this too. She had been extremely interested when Cathida had started to blab about how her lessons with me had been going so far.

"Well? You gonna figure out the hocus pokus that's making my sword a good one?" The old crusader in question chimed in. "Or are you going to stare at that box and drool all day?"

"I'll get to that when I get to that. See, I can't even brag about this box to anyone." I reached out and grabbed one of the folding sections. "Look at this craftsmanship! It folds up perfectly and can still insulate itself. Everything connects flush to the surface, it looks like absolutely nothing from the outside!"

"Why yes, you're right. All I see is a box." She said, deadpan. "And I'm not going to read through Journey's scans. Don't bore me to death young man, I've already done that once."

"All right, fine. I'm done." I said, tightening the ropes to seal the bag shut. "See? Not going to spend more time looking at it. Even if it is a masterpiece of this era."

Complying with her request, I brought out the sheathed longsword. It really puts some snow into my boots here, considering how beautiful the sword was. My little box had welding scars all over the edges, and while everything was mechanically sound I hadn't put a lot of flair to making it pretty.

I'll say it's for practicality reasons and not mention my complete lack of artistic skills. This heater is supposed to remain nondescript in a dark gloomy trap-filled place for months, if not years.

Cathida's sword on the other hand was a work of actual art. Like most imperial items, it was all about the presentation - and the gold. Can't ever forget the gold. It had been recently polished up by the servants, so compared to the otherwise drab dust filled appearance it held when I first untombed it, now it looked every bit the part.

Of course, I had no idea how it worked.

That ends today! The mystery of these chunks of metal were going to be revealed. I brought out my toolkit and set it down next to my knife, putting the occult longsword away to the side.

There was no way I was going to take apart such an intricate weapon. The knife was a lot more simple and a lot less valuable. That one I could mess up without feeling too bad over it.

Of course, even the knife ended up being another small work of art. "The things I do for science."

I went slowly. Journey gave me a visual display of where I needed to tackle the weapon and I kept the workspace clean around me. Every part was removed bit by bit. There was a possibility of putting it back together after, so long as everything was organized well enough.

The valuable part of Occult blades weren't their hilts. A lot of blades have been disassembled and reassembled in different ways. A knife could become a spear and then turn back into a knife over a few generations depending on the owner's whims. Though a spear was usually something more for a mantle piece. The only occult spear I've ever seen seriously used in combat was done by that machine Feather, To'Aacar. Given his confidence with it, I'd guess he figured out something to make the shaft occult-proof, otherwise it would be too big a vulnerability.

I didn't feel too nervous dismantling a blade, since the important part wasn't something that could be dismantled.

Eventually, all that I was left with was a chunk of metal with a blade and my knowledge of fractals. It had the shape of a blade, but no sharp edges. Instead, it looked fat, and uniform in volume at all ends. Occult weapons cut in a way that no one could explain. No edge needed to be honed, and rather that would actually reduce the effectiveness of the blade. The glowing edge was where the cut happened, after which the blade would follow through. From experience, cuts were fat things and everything in the way of the blade wasn't shoved to the side - it was outright gone.

That meant there wasn't a huge amount of forces that would push back against the blade when they cut. Thus, the hilts of these blades weren't extremely solid. This was something the blades took advantage of.

I took a vice and suspended the blade there, using the flat planes as the anchor points and leaving the edges out in the open. With the preparations done, I brought out the voltmeter.

Previously, it wasn't understood how these things worked. I put the two sides of the voltmeter right by where the vice grip held and powered it on. The blade remained cold and lifeless as expected.

We knew very little about the blades, but some deductions had previously been done. The first was that voltage had to be applied where the hilt connected to the blade. I brought the two prongs down to the small section where the hilt would have connected.

On turning that on, the entire edge of the blade lit up occult blue. Again, as expected. The edge ran all around the blade, including the section by the hilt. This was where the lack of resistance during swings was an advantage. Every Occult weapon was held firm on the grip the same way that the vice clamps held the flat planes. It was screwed in, with a small gap where the hilt blade edge could do its thing without breaking the hilt.

As far as the clans went, that was where the end of our budding Occult research had ended. There was a rumor one clan had cut into the Occult blade's hilt but found nothing other than the same metal, and the weapon had stopped working as a result. Scans of it showed the same as well - it was a hunk of metal through and through. Such rumors made most people leery of losing an occult blade. These were expensive after all.

My studies with the Occult made the mystery behind these blades obvious in hindsight - inside the metal, the warlocks must have somehow hidden a fractal. No one needed to see the inscription after all. So long as reality recognized the symbol somewhere, it would work.

How exactly the warlocks had managed that, this was what I set out to figure out.

I dove into my soul fractal, activated the blade and stared down at the metal. There was no glow, no signs of a fractal that I could see. Which made no sense, because if there was a fractal inside that metal, then Journey's soul fractal should have equally been hidden.

Maybe it was a proximity thing? I brought my hand closed to the blade hilt - and got results almost instantly. My hunch was right on this one, the small pale 'glow' of a fractal hummed inside the hilt all at once.

I couldn't tell what shape it was, only that the concept of a fractal was somehow buried inside the metal.

Withdrawing from the soul-sight I pondered the issue. "Say, Cathida. If you were a warlock and needed to sneak a fractal inside metal, how would you do it?"

"Pay someone to do it for me." She answered back without hesitation. "That's what money's for young man - you spend it. I've got things to do, places to be. Well, I had things to do."

I groaned. "I need serious suggestions. Best way I can think of is to inscribe the fractal on a plate, and then weld another plate on top. But there'd be signs of some kind leftover on the edge."

The edge looked pristine at least. Turning the knife over in my hand showed no signs of anything odd.

The timer on the side of my HUD showed only a half hour left before I was due back home. The chances that I'd figure out exactly how they'd hidden their fractal today was slim. However, they weren't going to keep that secret from me for long. I knew where to look, and I was already hot on their heels.

Cracking my knuckles, I opened up my full bag of tools and got to work.

By the three gods in heaven, I was going to be forging occult weapons soon enough and no amount of clever hiding would stop me for long. And I certainly would not find myself regret saying that, no sir.

Next chapter - Interlude - Kidra, part 1

Book 2 - Interlude - Kidra, Part 1

My opponent angled his weapon, taking a defensive stance from the Tetsu school of combat. The posture radiated stability, nobility, and an unyielding will. It complimented his relic armor nicely, fitting. The flat metal blade he held reflected a glint of light off the edge, promising an invisible wall of steel that could hold off any foe.

A wall I fully intended to crush under my heel.

I mirrored a response with the far more aloof stance of the Makiskeru combat arts. This had me constantly bouncing on the tips of my feet, sword moving lazily through the air like flakes of ice in the wind. Ready to launch in any direction at any moment, from treacherous angles.

This style was a favorite of mine, though not something I could execute for long, requiring too much effort to be effective for long. An exhausting style that had been developed specifically for knights with pure unpredictable aggression as the core theme. But in armor, stamina had no meaning.

Some people find only adrenaline in fights. A terrifying brutality of life and death descends down into the mind, usually surrounded by the white promise of ice, ever searching for the smallest of holes to slip a shiv in between bones. My little brother was one such person.

Others felt only grim resolution, a reality that must be faced with no other option than to fight and possibly die. Father fit here.

For myself, I felt music. Like a chorus whispering in the back of my mind, grains of sand spinning wildly down in a waterfall, the noise ending as a crashing cacophony the moment my blades came within reach. Each grain a possible action, a possible counter. In the center of a fight, I felt most at home.

"Match. Set." The soldier nearby announced, raising a hand up. Teenar was among a recent hire of soldiers, a great ten for one deal that I'd gone a length to recruit under my banner. The other nine soldiers that had defected with him surrounded the courtyard, watching the match intently, all wearing the Winterscar uniform. This was the first time they would see their sworn liege fight.

My list of sparring partners was in short supply. Keith trained with me in the morning, and as admirable as he tried, combat simply was not his calling. Certainly, he could hold his own against the rank and file. He had been trained by Father after all, his skills were a cut above the rest by sheer discipline and repetition. He knew all the steps and fundamentals. They didn't sing to him the same way they did to me.

The soldiers here had trained all their lives. Some could stand and offer an excellent fight - outside of armor. None of these soldiers had training with relic armor, so even if Keith loaned Journey out for a few hours, the fights I would get wouldn't draw out the best of my skills. They would need more time to train as knights first before they could challenge anyone.

So I had to be resourceful.

It started as curiosity at first among the soldiers. That turned to excitement when they heard and saw the distinguished elite knight walk onto the field, invited onto the House grounds for a friendly sparring match.

One of the five knights hand picked by the clan lord to be among his bodyguards.

A celebrity. Denmar Ironreach. The same knight that had stood at my side a few weeks ago as we escaped the underground.

It was an excellent opportunity to engrave allegiance further into my budding army. A demonstration that they had made the right choice in signing up to this new, untested house.

The first match had sealed that impression. These next few matches will be for my own practice. I needed to see the full depth of my new abilities.

"Fight!" The soldier yelled out, taking quick steps out of the way.

Ironreach remained steady, unyielding. Waiting for me to make the first attack. He had quickly changed his mannerisms after the first bout a few minutes ago. Now, I could tell, he was taking me at full value.

I wasn't the youth he had met and protected a few weeks ago underground. I was a knight retainer, the head of a House, and the inheritor to Tenisent Winterscar's teachings. He'd forgotten that for a moment and paid the price. Now, he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

The field expanded as my focus narrowed. The sound began to hum in my mind. The dance was well known and the steps predictable. Only my feet and arms were too slow to keep up with my mind.

Winterscar had removed some of that limitation, the relic armor giving me infinite stamina to draw upon.

Keith's soul-fractal technique had removed the rest, granting me speed as quick as thought.

I darted forward. Dust flowed behind my steps, scattered up by the speed the armor reached. In a second I was already on him.

Ironreach reacted, taking a step back and sweeping his longsword down in anticipation for a possible barrage of attacks. A dozen different ideas flew through my mind, not in words, more in concepts that I implicitly understood.

I ignored the correct solutions and dove into his guard firsthand. Here, I aimed to test my ability to overwhelm a perfect counter defense. Like a crashing tide, I struck.

He moved into it, expertly reacting with the exact steps required, his blade lightly deflecting my attack, leaving my side exposed. Ironreach was an elite, among the best knights the clan had. His easygoing manner made people forget that. His counter to my opening attack had been perfect. Exactly the optimal move to detooth my opening strike.

He never got a chance to follow through with his retaliation.

Instead, he'd been forced to abandon the attack lest he take far too many hits. The Makiskeru style's weaknesses became strengths as the sheer speed I moved eliminated all possible exploits. The wind rippled around me, trailing behind my strikes at first. Then it devolved into an undirected mess as multiple strikes wove through in opposite directions, crashing like waves against him.

Ironreach held by sheer technique and intuition, minimizing his movements, taking quick steps backwards to keep enough distance to work with. I didn't let up, continuing the barrage, repositioning with each set, left to right and back again.

In the time he could strike at me once, I could strike at him twice in combinations that Ironreach had never seen an opponent deliver.

It took four more seconds before his defense faltered, at which point he instantly struck back on pure reflex. I easily dodged that attack, watching it sail past my vision, as the rest of Winterscar obeyed my commands and swept past, one leg striking out low to throw him off balance.

He jumped over the sweep.

There was no other option he could have done. High up in the air, his longsword was already sweeping down to parry my followup thrust. Time moved slowly in my mind.

My steel weapon clashed with his own, rang out, then finally snapped in half. I bolted forward, right hand throwing the battered hilt at his face as his body continued to sail through the air.

His hand sweeped, battering away the thrown weapon with a backhanded slap. His attention misplaced and unaware of the true danger.

I reached out with a hand and closed around his ankles, fast as a praying strike. His boot firmly in my grip, inertia still pushing his torso backwards from the escaping leap, I had full control over him now. The match was over, all that remained was the follow through.

Winterscar's inner muscles moved, the strength to twist and slam an entire relic armor well within its abilities. The shock of being pulled out of the air, and slammed down into the ground passed through him, stunning him for that one single critical second with a heavy grunt. My foot found Ironreach's sword hand, stomping down and pinning it in place, while my left hand drew out my reserve knife, unerringly diving down and striking at the segments between throat and chest. His armor's shields flared up, easily freezing the strike from my unpowered knife.

"M-match!" The solider yelled out.

It had taken only twelve seconds in total, a set of movements from both of us that came out so quick non-warriors would need to rewatch on video at a quarter of the speed to see what truly had happened in those scant seconds.

"Talen's fortress, what in the purple hell happened to you?" Ironreach's voice spoke from his prone position. I tilted my head cordially, standing back up, sheathing the dagger and giving him a hand up. He took it gratefully, grunting back on his feet. "A couple days ago you'd just gotten into that armor! Has your father been giving you secret lessons this whole time?"

"Something of the kind." I answered back, keeping the card to my chest.

Tenisent Winterscar had been a monster in combat. The youngest knight to ever earn the title of First Blade, not since Yesero of the red mist who was said to rival Lord Atius in combat.

It was within reason to expect Father's inheritors would take and improve where he ended. I let him make his own theories.

I wasn't quite sure if my new abilities would allow me to defeat Father at the height of his skills. While he was quick, the defining trait had been his uncanny ability to predict his opponents. I'd fought hundreds of spars with him, I knew what set him apart. Speed alone wouldn't have been enough. No, for that, I needed to continue honing my new skill.

Ironreach patted down his armor, tossing away non-existent dust. Then, he examined his own disposable sword, checking the integrity. Dents had already formed, the tell tell signs of failure crackling through the scrap metal. He'd need to discard and draw a new one soon. The next bout would certainly see it snapped in half at the wrong moments.

"Never seen anyone outright grab an ankle in midair like that. Tsuya save me, where did you get that idea? Who even thinks they have enough time to snatch someone from midair like that? Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it."

"It was a test to the limits of my speed. My mind has always been faster than my body. I can see what I need to do, and yet my body doesn't react as quickly as I wished it could. It has always been my bottleneck. With Winterscar equipped, I believe I've found a method of bridging that gap."

He nodded at that. "Heard about the older knights moving faster and faster the longer they connect with their armor. Never paid it much attention myself, supposed to be something that takes years to master. So how in the purple hell did you figure out a way to speed that up? Pun intended of course."

"Unless the clan lord orders me to reveal the technique, House Winterscar will hold onto it. Thank you."

Ironreach laughed, patting my shoulder. "Spoken like the head of a house. You're picking it all up way too fast. If I were the Ironreach magnate, I'd be worried all right. Probably keep this between you and me though, little lady. Word gets out they'll think you're using me as practice for a gamble at the First Blade. Which, I'm starting to think you might well be doing." He laughed, a hearty thing, giving away his blade to the attendant next to him, where it would be ferried away and melted down to be reformed. Ironreach wasn't in any positions of power among his house other than being the current owner of the Ironreach prime armor. A position he had earned the same way Father had - sheer skill.

I hummed, considering the idea of First Blade. "I'm not quite sure the positon warrants the effort. I don't need easier access to the ears of the Clan Lord."

My ties to Atius were already closer than anyone could guess. Given what Atius had told me of the sphere he now kept locked and hidden away within his estate. I had a choice to make. One that I had never stopped thinking of in quiet moments of reflection.

Don't feel compelled to accept. The clan lord had said. You aren't the only one. Perhaps a few decades from now, another inheritor will appear.

Do not make a choice purely for duty. The sphere may be someone else's destiny, after all. Time has a way with events, lass. Everything always happens eventually when it needs to.

Ironreach nodded, recalling himself the events that happened underground. "Suppose you don't. So, just training for training's sake then?"

"Preparing for the future." I said. "Hard times are always coming. We all sharpen what skills are the most worthwhile to offer the clan, while we still have the time to."

"Talen hears and accepts those words." Ironreach said solemnly, understanding exactly what I was alluding to. "For the clan."

"For the clan." I responded.

My elusive brother had also been working deep in the hidden corners of the estate, doing his part in his own way. Likely sulking in his sanctum even now, as he hadn't been sighted all day. Last time it was safe to ask questions on his project, Keith had told me he was trying to uncover the secrets of the Occult weapons. Secrets that were not made to be uncovered with any ease.

He hadn't seemed very happy or excited so it was a fair guess that the project was taking time. Or he was brooding about the order to halt all research into the Occult. Atius's own fractal pictures had yet to be delivered, likely due to the level of secrecy required. That left Keith with only the occult blade to continue work on.

"Ready for another match then? Feels fresh to fight you, good training against a Feather. Right spooked me seeing how fast they moved" Ironreach grabbed two fresh blades from an approaching soldier, passing one to me as the soldier bowed and took distance away. I took the dull flat blade, giving it a whirl and listening to the sound it made. Unsharpened metal, shaped like a sword, no hilt besides the naked steel. Crucible swords they were called. Made to be disposable training weapons for knights. The relic armor gauntlets didn't need an intricate or comfortable hilt after all.

To clash blades with the speed and strength of relic armor would break down unpowered Occult weapons. Those were too valuable to use in training. And turning them on for a fight could be dangerous if the armors failed to shield against a hit for any reason. Such an error could cost a knight his arm, ending his career. Thus, crucible swords became part of the culture, and woven into the duels.

"I don't believe my speed is at the same level as the Feather we encountered. Not yet."

Ironreach shrugged at that, taking a few steps back and taking a defensive stance once more. "Maybe. Until then, you're all I have that I can train against. My ego's a small price to pay in exchange for being able to survive against one of those things. Let's go little lady."

The new blade remained silent in my hands once the movements had stopped, but even in that silence I could hear the faint echoes of the music starting once more. "As you wish." I said, feet taking position. "I would be pleased to continue honing my skills."

What I was honing wasn't my connection to my armor. The technique for speed was only the surface advantage the soul-fractal offered.

My little brother was a genius. His craftly little mind could crack into puzzles and enigmas that hundreds of people before him failed at. There was no doubt in my mind the Occult blade secrets would soon be teased out one way or another. If there was anyone up for the task, it would be him.

When he gained the soul sight, he used the skill like a scholar would, an additional tool to be used. Weighing and calculating at all times. Studying the objects and items around him. He didn't realize the true potential of just what he had discovered.

The soul-sight itself would become the greatest weapon the world has ever seen.

Next chapter - Interlude - Kidra, part 2

Book 2 - Interlude - Kidra, Part 2

"Magnificent dueling, my lady." The Logi accountant said, bowing low and offering a towel.

I thanked him, taking the towel and wiping off the grime. Winterscar's helmet remained at my side, hooked onto my belt. "What brings you here Edgar?" I asked. "Are there more logistics to cover since this morning?"

"It's a good break from my duties. And I wanted to see for myself the rumors of your speed were true. I've heard the stories, confirmation was the natural followthrough." He said, following to my right as I headed for my next appointment. House Everbloom's representative would be arriving within half an hour, where we would discuss business and a possible trade relationship between House Winterscar and their own industry.

"Estimated effect on morale? I know you've already crunched the numbers even as you were watching me fight."

He chuckled, a dry and slightly forced sound. I knew him well enough to recognize that was his genuine laugh, even if it sounded off to everyone else. Edgar wasn't part of House Winterscar, rather part of his own Logi caste. He was on loan, and sworn to secrecy. He would be working hand in hand with my House for the rest of his life if all goes as expected. Every house needed the Logi caste to assist in functions after all. "There were twelve soldiers in attendance, and seven servants. Three of which were recording the match. I suspect it will circulate through the House within the day. I hadn't expected you would defeat Ironreach himself, let alone never lose a single bout."

"Risk of the information spreading?"

"None. I've already informed the witnesses this isn't something to spread outside the house estates. It'll surely spread through the members of course, but certainly none would dare share such a thing with anyone outside the House. On topic, does this new speed have something to do with the clan lord arriving a few days ago?"

"You noticed, have you?"

"I am a man of numbers, my lady. It didn't escape my notice that the first mention of a knight moving at that speed happened only after Atius arrived to meet both you and your brother in private. Forgive me for leaping to conclusions. I don't buy the cover story of this being a newly crafted technique handed down from Tenisent."

We stepped into my personal room where an attendant and her apprentice were waiting. In the past I would meticulously spend time perfecting my makeup. Before Winterscar, that had been my armor. Now, the task had been delegated to people who'd spent their lives mastering that art and enjoyed it. These two were in charge of all the House's outwards appearances, fussing over soldiers before ceremonies, making sure uniforms remained well-tailored and that everything looked at its best.

I sat, giving both a respectful bow and told the stylist my needs. "The agrifarmers will be meeting within the next half hour. I'd like to present an approachable and friendly face to them. I don't expect the meeting to be cutthroat, more sealing formalities that had already been talked over correspondence."

The stylist nodded, "I know just the touch. By your will, my lady."

At my side the accountant continued. "How would you like to handle the rumor directions on this front within the House, Lady Winterscar?"

"What are the current conclusions?"

He closed his eyes, stringing together the words in his mind. "The arrival of the clan lord was noted, but people have muddled up the timeline. They believe the source of these new techniques came from master Keith. He'd been spotted appearing and disappearing within the estate like a ghost previously, often in places that don't lead to anywhere. Some say he returned from the expedition changed, after having struck a deal with a Yurei. They say it lives in his armor, and grants him the strength of machines, something he's now teaching you in the mornings. And of course, being the one who knows how to fight, you've taken these teachings and perfected them."

I kept my smile controlled at that, as the stylist fussed over my left cheek, adding the right amount of blush. "They think my little brother's brought back a ghost that's granting him the powers to go through walls?"

The stylist slapped a hand on my shoulder, fussing. She was fine with me listening to the accountant speak, but drew the line at letting me talk while she was in the middle of work.

Edgar chuckled. "Only the ones who enjoy superstition and gossip, my lady."

So. Mostly. Everyone. I said, hand signals being used so that the two ladies fussing over my face and hair wouldn't have any issues.

"Mostly." The logi accountant grinned across the mirror. "Nothing more exciting than believing the young crafty master of the new house you've joined commands ancient powers dredged deep below after all. The ones who care about truth have a different theory. Your little brother was known to hide away shiny items like a pipe weasel would. Notorious even when I asked the old serving staff, they had entire stories of the trinkets and items he would hide away where he thought nobody was watching. They think the young master has simply found new tunnels and attic spaces to scurry around in, now that his armor allows limitless movement and protection from any element."

Conclusion?

Edgar nodded, pushing his glasses back in position. "The current theory is that he's found writings from the previous clan, hidden away deep in the substructure. It's been reported that he's visited the clan archives multiple times, so they suspect he's merged some of the clan's combat techniques along with whatever teachings found inside the basement, ceilings and walls."

And you? I signaled, quirking an eyebrow. The stylist gave me a pointed look, wordlessly going back a moment after as I relaxed my face.

"Everyone's tight lipped about what actually happened that caused your airspeeder to return home early. What I've uncovered was that the Clan Lord decided to change the destination unexpectedly, as if searching for something. I believe he found whatever he was looking for. And he's having you and Keith test it before introducing the rest of the clan with the discovery."

I tapped my hand, signalling to the stylist I wanted to answer. She nodded, and moved to fuss over my hair, both herself and her assistant taking to the task with practiced hands.

"Mostly correct." I said, now free to speak. "The technique requires modifications to the armor itself, and those are more personalized knight by knight. Modifications that only the House Winterscar armors are able to take due to events that happened underground, when Keith and my Father were alone. More discussion will be done with Atius, where he'll ultimately judge how best to use the knowledge. It's very much in flux."

There were certainly upsides to spreading the knowledge of soul fractals to the elite knights among the clan. And significant downsides to operational security. Atius saw through history, specifically the holes in history where cities should have been. He had great interest in navigating those holes carefully, lest his clan become another missing data point.

He was going about this carefully, testing out small bits. While we were all mostly sure the soul fractals themselves wouldn't draw attention, a whole clan filled with knights capable of moving beyond what their ranks should earn would ripple outward.

I don't know what the future held, but I suspected with the incoming raiders, Atius would be forced to incorporate the soul-fractal techniques into our doctrines.

Would my little brother be revealed publicly as a Warlock? Or would Atius cloak the whole thing, ordering all knights to use this technique only in the most desperate of times as a hidden trump card?

The stylist completed her work, patting my shoulders. "All done, Lady Winterscar. Please do take care not to wipe your hands over my work. Don't put on that helmet again for a while at least. Or else I'll be quite cross with you."

I nodded and returned her smile. "I'll see to it. Thank you as always, I appreciate the effort you put in."

The stylist scoffed. "What kind of stylist would I be if I didn't take pride in my work? You have your duties to the clan, and I have mine. Now go out there and wrap up the business, young lady."

Standing, I gave another bow before heading back out, this time in the direction of the audience hall. "Was there another pressing item to discuss?"

Of course there would be. "The prime of House Insight wishes to invite you to their prayer ceremony as a witness and guard while they're outside to offer respect. Urs will be within viewing distance three weeks from now."

"Is there room on the schedule? If they'll have me, I would enjoy joining them and seeing how they choose to honor Urs."

I reached the audience chamber, sliding the door open and walking inside. The dim lights gave the room a warmth, while the raised table gave me a slight height over those that would come. I sat down on my feet, hands folded together on my knees in a comfortable position.

The composite wood groaned slightly at the full weight of armor, but it held without issue as it had done dozens of times before.

"There is room in the schedule, I'll note it down. That's it for now, I assume you want to meditate for a moment before they arrive, yes?"

Edgar gave a short bow before leaving at my nod, as two attendants came in, getting immediately busy setting up the final touches for the room. They would remain as witnesses to the discussions, scribing the conversation.

I had about ten minutes before anyone else was expected to arrive. I closed my eyes, and dove deeper into the soul fractal on Winterscar's helmet, laying by my side. The world receded around me, turning into concepts.

As a warrior, to me the soul-trance was the ultimate form of meditation, the greatest connection to the living world around me. It had clicked into place like the last missing piece in my long years of training, the cornerstone technique that drew and weaved everything together.

Keith saw concepts he was attuned to. Fractals, items and objects.

I saw people instead.

The two attendants in the room moved with practiced ease, concepts of long training and execution flowed from their minds. Concepts of pride and a budding sense of loyalty. Keith hadn't been able to achieve this, he saw only the physical concepts, not the spiritual ones.

He'd seen it like a tool. To me, it was a weapon. This was what had truly let me defeat an elite like Ironreach.

In the soul trance, I saw concepts of combat.

Concepts of movement and training floating through his thoughts, becoming manifest in reality. And I could see it bloom to life in his mind a moment before he executed each movement.

Every move of every school of combat was meticulously categorized and named. Trained and repeated hundreds of times. And so each movement was a concept in itself. The moment a spark of an idea surfaced in the mind of my enemy, a half second before they committed to it, I would see it.

Father had fought like this, only using pure intuition to predict the enemy. And while I hadn't inherited all of his skills and gifts, the soul sight granted me my own form of precognition.

Another presence came into the room unexpectedly. Concepts of duty, speed, and order flowed through that mind. A messenger.

I opened an eye and watched as the Winterscar soldier approached. He took a deep bow before me, "My lady Winterscar. Master Keith sends a message for your eyes only." A small parchment was withdrawn from his tunic, and he offered it to me. The wax seal remained bright and untouched on the envelope, signifying no one had yet read the words within. On his other hand, he offered a candle.

My hands reached out, snapping the seal and unfurling the parchment.

Reading the words, I carefully kept my smile in control. There hadn't been any doubts in my mind in the first place. This was the inevitable conclusion when anything that looked like a puzzle ran aground against Keith. The last discovery he'd made had given me the tools to change warfare forever. I was curious to see what new era his next discovery would lead to.

The soldier lit the candle he held, offering it to me with head bowed. In my armored hand, the flame remained bright and orange, waiting.

The paper message was offered, and the flames eagerly devoured it. Dissolving the three words he'd written into ash:

I've found it.

Next chapter - Sneaky bastards

Book 2 - Chapter 17 - Sneaky bastards

"Did you call for assistance?" An older lady asked, walking up to greet me.

I turned, giving a respectful bow back to the librarian. "Yes, yes I did. I'm looking for access to the software database."

Last time I only had partial access to the common items. Today, I had walked into that library with my armor. Which meant I was implicitly allowed far more lienance.

The clan library wasn't very large, a few dozen shelves all lined up carrying older books. I'd spent a good portion of my youth loitering around here. Further out in the next room were a mix of tables and seats in an oddly spacious room compared to the rest of the smaller more compact architecture. There, scavengers of all castes came together to study for different tests or challenges in their respective fields.

It was a cozy place, not quite as opulent as the bath, but still wide and large in its own way. The real size of the library lay hidden inside the terminals however. Inside those, there would be treasures collected over time. The most prized were 3D printing files of various kinds, which were highly controlled. The more exotic files required a librarian to carry the data and supervise the construction. They took their work seriously.

"Master knight, what kind of data are you searching for?" The old librarian asked, clearly used to dealing with knight retainers given the calm in her voice. There was a glint in her eye, almost as if challenging me. No free meals here, my status was not going to make anything easier.

"I'm looking for history on experiments done to examine the Occult weapons." I said.

That caught her by surprise. Not every day a knight asks for Reacher scrapshit. She recovered quickly, furrowing her brows in thought. "Hmm, not many answers for that master knight. Those aren't studied every day you know."

I shrugged at that. "The clan's old. Surely a few people have tried their hands at figuring out what makes these knives tick."

She gave a wan smile, the kind given to children. "I'm sure the archives will have a log or two. I'll go search for it now."

"Please, I would appreciate it." I answered back, following behind as she made her way to a terminal.

It has been three days of nearly non-stop work on that knife. I didn't expect any easy answers of course, I haven't yet started the batch of more intrusive or outright destructive tests into it just yet. This was the research phase, where I was coming up with a list of possible ways the warlocks could have been sneaky about this.

The obvious first idea to hit my head was that these blades were two separate plates of metal, with one side inscribed with the fractal and then both sides welded together, then polished up to hide the welding. That seemed too simple and easy of a solution.

No, if I were a warlock, it wouldn't be enough to just hide the fractal. I had to make sure that if anyone tried to sniff it out by testing the blade that the fractal would be either impossible to notice or otherwise erased some way before the tester could reach it.

My running theory was that they'd used two different metal types. The center core would be created of a metal with a high melting temperature, and inscribed with the fractal. Afterwhich, the warlocks would bring out a second metal with a far lower melting temperature and dip the blade into that. The result would be brought out, cooled and then polished up.

If they made the metals to have the same coloration, then the inscription would be completely invisible to the eye. The only issue with that theory is that reversing it would be simple as well - heat up the blade until the weaker metal turns to liquid and flows off, revealing the stronger metal and the fractal as well.

So while this method would hide the fractal correctly, it would not destroy or prevent the fractal from being found if someone got lucky with the strategies. And there could be lost tech that was made to scan metal alloys to discover their composition, those tools would certainly discover two different metals stuck together.

An alternate theory is that the warlocks understood the inscription doesn't need to be visible to human eyesight, which means any method of forming the pattern would work. It could be sand of some kind perfectly trapped in the right shape and contained by the metal. Once the metal is breached in some way, the sand flows out and breaks the pattern.

For example, a disk of thin white sand with black sand forming the fractal. And then held in place by metal pressing down. The moment that pressure lessens, the sand moves around and the fractal is broken. That sort of convoluted system would open up a lot of problems, but this was just an off the cuff example.

There were too many ways these warlocks had setup their fractal, and I only had one knife. So the tests I made needed to be carefully considered.

"I have three logs of past attempts to discover the secrets of the blades." The old librarian said, pulling out a small slate with the files loaded into them. "One of the logs comes from outside the clan that was purchased at a heavy price, one from a hobbyist and the last from a group of Reachers who pooled together their wealth in order to take a shot at the mystery."

"Given we're not producing the blades, I'm assuming all three failed." I said, absentmindedly examining the slate she was fiddling with.

"Unfortunately. The hobbyist quit early, too afraid to destroy his knife. The other two logs went to the very end, and then continued with a full autopsy of their destroyed knives. I suppose I don't need to remind you that this information is highly classified and a treasure that belongs to the clan."

Information was wealth. If the other clans wanted to take a look at these records, they would need to pay a fee for it. In a way, this was currency, given freely to me out of trust stemming from my station.

The librarian handed me a slate, filled with text. I'd be expected to take that and find a seat in the library and by law I would not be allowed to take this slate anywhere outside the library. "You'll need to remove your helmet before I can let you read off the slate." She said.

"Uh, sure." One armored hand reached out and unclasped the helmet. "Might I know why? I'm a fairly new knight."

The air was warmer in here, it softly licked at my cheeks. The heaters were kept online through the day, even into the night. There were plenty of people who would spend entire nights studying here.

"It is well known that armors can record video. Would defeat the point of security if you could simply take photos of the slate's contents." She chuckled. "Do not take it as a personal slight, master knight. Such is the way things are."

I gave the old lady a nod, bowing a respectable length. "You have my word, these logs will only be read by me. I don't mean to have been discourteous, only temporarily ignorant."

"Such a respectable young knight," The librarian mused, patting the side of my shoulder fondly. "Speaking of that, please let the other knight of your house know we look forward to his next visit and miss him."

"Other knight?" I asked, confused.

She pointed at the red sigil on my armor. "That mark there, that's your house's insignia, is it not? There was only one other knight that had such a sigil and was a regular here. Not many knights visit the library, so the staff know well the ones that do come."

Father.

"I… yes... do you know what he looked for?" I asked out of sheer morbid curiosity. I hadn't pictured him to be much of a reader.

"I remember when I was younger, he'd come in looking for combat manuals and other techniques past warriors wrote out. He'd spend hours reading through those, very studious and dedicated. At least for a few years. He stopped coming in for about a decade, so I suppose he'd read all the manuals we had. Recently, he'd made a return again and become an occasional regular the last three years. His tastes had changed dramatically from combat however."

"Changed? How so?"

She chuckled at that. "More like you, master knight. Looking into Reacher books."

There was a pit in my stomach I was pointedly ignoring. "Do… Do you have an example?"

She hummed, turning back to the console and searching through the archives. "He always checked out pairs of books. Let me see what he last brought out… Ah, here they are. 'The art and secrets of fabric.' A book that explains different fashions currently in use, their histories and how to tell high quality goods from poor ones. The other book he checked out was 'An Introduction to electrical knowledge, ninth edition.' A book written by one of our more famous Reachers from a few decades ago. Considered a cornerstone for electrical engineering, an excellent primer for the youth."

"I'm familiar with that title." I said, almost nostalgic. That book had been among the first books Anarii had ordered me to read if I wanted to 'muck around with his scrapshit.' It had been written specifically for younger kids, ages ten to fifteen.

The librarian quirked her head to the side. "Oh, you are familiar with that one, are you? How curious. Two knights of the same house dabbling in odder items. I certainly won't stop anyone from expanding their horizons, though I fail to see how such books would assist in your particular duties as a knight. Others might look down on you for it."

Shrugging, I gave her a wan smile to keep appearances. "I guess people from my house have strange hobbies. Thank you for your help." I managed to say, my voice almost cracking for a moment before I got control again. "I might return here for more information later. I'll… I'll pass on your words to him when I see him."

She nodded at that, oblivious. "May the winds be kind to you both, master knight."

I bowed politely and made my way out of the library, into one of the study coves, walking past the tables and studying clan members, ignoring all the glances being sent my way. The quiet atmosphere, calm and gentle here. I wondered if Father had stood where I did. Or where he had sat down to study. Had he a favorite spot to sit? Was he trying to read these books to understand me better, or for another reason?

I found a seat, then placed the tablet in front and activated it. The logs of past occult tests were all here, and my eyes scanned over them absentmindedly.

It took a while before I could read even the first words written down.

The logs were a treasure trove of information. Smarter people than I had spent months trying to crack the secrets of the Occult blades, and they'd tried dozens of different tests. Certainly saved me a lot of time.

The first logs were from an Othersider of some kind who had tried to solve the occult knife mysteries. From the context clues, he had been a trader of some kind peddling exotic goods between the surface and the undersider cities and was good friends with a metalsmith.

The two decided they had a good shot of possibly cracking the code. At great expense, they procured a blade and set to work on it.

The pair had first exposed the knife blade to some kind of X-ray, using the results to detect metal compositions. With the trader's connections, they'd been able to dig out a machine specifically made for spectrogramy of metals.

The result had been somewhat conclusive. The majority of the blade was forged of a mix of metals which the metalsmith had concluded were mostly tin, some copper, and trace amounts of antimony. The uniformity in the metal's composition suggested the metal had been directly printed as is, rather than separately produced and mixed at a later date.

He called the composition pewter. A metal that had a low melting temperature and was far softer compared to other metals like steel. This made it ideal for crafting jewelry, though certainly not a good pick for a knife. The metal had low durability and could be bent easily if hit hard enough.

There was a thin plating of nickel, which the metalsmith determined was likely done for cosmetic reasons using electroplating techniques.

The metal smith had done more tests on the blade, finding out that the voltage needed to pass through the tang of the metal specifically relatively quickly into the experiments. The pair had been detailed enough to document the limit point where electrical currents became too weak to trigger the blade. Low, but not to an insane degree either. About fourteen millivolts as they discovered. Talen hadn't even mentioned something like that.

The blade could be cut into smaller pieces, and the new edges would still light up and cut correctly - so long as they were connected to the hilt piece. That part, the logs cited an older experiment run by a different clan, one I had no access to.

They kept coming back to the tang being the linchpin that held everything together. And they were onto something, since I knew already whatever fractal powered these weapons, it was housed inside the hilt's center.

The duo continued, welding new metal pieces to the blade and testing the effects. So long as there was a steep enough angle for an edge, the blade would incorporate the new metal parts as part of itself. They took their time and meticulously recorded progress.

Rounding out an edge caused the blade to simply stop functioning after a certain threshold was passed. So there was a limit to how long an occult edge could go.

The fractal was clearly ambivalent to the type of metal as many different variations were used in those tests without issue. The metalsmith concluded the material of the blade likely didn't have anything to do with the function and was most probably the warlocks being more economical in using an easy to work with metal. After all, the blade cuts through anything without resistance when powered on. It didn't need to be greatly durable.

The length of the blue occult edge could only be extended a certain amount, after which the blade would refuse to function until it had been reduced in length. Width of the occult weapon counted, so the pair had concluded there was only a certain amount of 'surface area' that the weapon could cut. Increasing the voltage and current sent through did not have any effects on this limitation. However, they theorized that making the blade more thin and making the tang more thin as well would give more surface area to work with. They weren't willing to do anything to the tang just yet.

Making the blade wider would do odd and unpredictable things to the Occult edge, warping it's path. The ultimate theory on that is that the 'magic' of the hilt would always try to create a closed loop of the destructive occult edge, on the smallest side possible.

Having run out of non-destructive tests, they moved on hesitantly to the next part.

They began to grind down the hilt, centimeter by centimeter, first peeling off the nickel plating and then slowly stripping away pewter. Keeping the blade lit up the whole while and hoping they'd notice something inside or at least have video footage of where the point of no return was.

They'd removed only a few centimeters of metal before the whole blade instantly died off.

After which the pair had tried to figure out what caused the issue, trying all kinds of odd tests and examinations to no avail. The fractal pattern had been broken by their grinding somehow, and they hadn't been aware of that. When I'd frozen the prior images, the cross section looked clean with small coloration changes sprinkled a little all over the metal with no rhyme or reason that I could tell. The poor duo had absolutely no chance to figure it out from there on.

The second contender that tried to unravel the Occult blades had been a knight himself, from House Ironreach, though his bones were long ago buried by now. He had set out with the goal not to discover the secrets of the occult, but instead to shift his knife into a longsword.

On that part, he'd been lucky. His logs included the same findings as the pair before him, discovering that the actual blade could be worked on without issue. He'd added additional metal, made the blade edge more thin and the project was a success. Wisly picking to run with his winnings, he didn't mess around with the weapon further, leaving it working.

An additional note had been added at a later time, that the blade had snapped during a mission where it took a blow on the flat of the blade. The tip was ripped off and stopped working, but the hilt and remaining broken blade simply continued to function with the Occult edge lining the broken parts instead. He also noted that the blade still worked while bent, before it had been snapped.

The last group had been the most scientifically accurate group, a full team of Reachers who had been subsidized by the clan lord about a hundred and ten years ago. They'd quickly discovered the same as the past logs had, and then continued to do experiments.

They'd gone further than the first pair, finding that the tang showed signs of heat deformities after they'd tested thermal imaging while running electrical currents through the metal. They speculated that the pewter hadn't been created wholesale, but piece by piece. Giving the pewter hilt plenty of time to cool off in between each application. They'd subjected the tang to dozens of more tests, anywhere from acid baths to spectrogram.

Unfortunately, their sword stopped working during a harsher heat treatment, when they were experimenting on getting information from compression. With nothing left working, the team cut the tang into slices and tried to see if any of the slices had anything different that had somehow fooled their sensors.

Results were worthless to them, there was nothing other than oddly tempered pewter in every slice. And that was that, they logged their results, and mourned the loss of their investment.

I'd spent four hours studying this slate, my eyes were shot. Sitting up, I made my way back to the old librarian and surrendered the logs.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" She asked, wiping the data off the slate and storing it in the cabinets behind her.

"It gave me a few more directions to experiment on, and let me know what not to do."

She chuckled at that. "I imagine that last bit is the most important one. Please feel free to return to the archives whenever you wish, master knight."

The walk home was slow and steady. My predecessors had broken their weapons, one by grinding down and hitting the fractal in some way, and the other by compressing the fractal inside somehow. They'd all concluded that the entire hilt was made of pewter, which meant the fractal has to be made of that too.

Somehow the warlocks had figured out a way to hide a pewter fractal and encase it into pewter. The only hint was that the metal showed signs of temperature deformities, that it hadn't been done all at once.

My thought was that they'd engraved the fractal on a pewter plate, then filled the grooves with more pewter, slowly covering the rest of the engraving. Reality didn't care if a human would think that's illegal, it would see a disturbance in the pewter in the shape of the fractal and that would be that.

After covering the inscriptions, they would continue to melt pewter in covering up the whole, likely deforming the surface layer of the fractal as a cost but leaving the deeper furrows untouched and working.

The only issue with that theory was how the first duo had grinded down the tang slowly until it stopped working all of a sudden. Had the tang followed my plan, the original inscription would have been deep so that the pewter wouldn't deform the engraving. Grinding down, they would have hit a point where Occult blue would start showing, and that would certainly cause the pair to start a whole new operation.

Instead, the grinding had instantly cut the fractal's power, without even a hint of Occult glow to point out the fractal itself. Somehow the entire fractal had broken apart before being noticed.

All this was a moot point however. I already knew how they had hidden their fractal the moment I saw the blade die.

There was really only one way they could have done that: The bastards had put the fractal in at an angle.

Next chapter - The first blade of House Winterscar

Book 2 - Chapter 18 - The first blade of House Winterscar

Some long dead asshole was ruining my day.

In fact, if I had to put a word on the emotions I was feeling - well, this would be the time that you'd pull out the pretentious words kept high up in the drawers with the fancy silverware. Words like irate, wrathful and my favorite: tempestuous.

That was a good word for this.

The object and focus of my malcontent was this single piece of scrap metal practically leering at me. Somewhere buried deep inside this ingot of metal forged in the bowels of hell itself was a fractal that if I so much as sneezed on would stop working.

Also I'd be down a small fortune, but that's just par for the course.

Further experimentation over the last few days slowly confirmed my suspicions about how the warlocks had hidden their fractal. I could certainly be wrong about it, but the chances of that were more slim. The real issue is the next step forward.

I had no tools to derive an equation from an image, so if I happened to break even a small part of the pattern, I'd be left stranded topside with no ride home. There'd be no way to figure out what the missing piece was and I'd need to start over from scratch on a different blade.

I already had my work cut out for me here, but wait - it gets worse. See, the warlocks seemed to have figured that someone, at some point in time, would know about fractals and use that extra bit of info combined with real science analysis to crack their little secret.

Ergo, someone just like me.

So, clearly disturbed by the thought of anyone else having a slice of their cake, they'd made it their personal mission to put a stop to that. And they'd gone with all the stops possible.

First of all - Journey couldn't eat the metal. Something about the forging process it went through made it more like mite-made material, which needed to be re-processed in some way first before it could be consumed. My one-hit wonder tool that I'd lovingly abused so far to cheat through every bit I could squeeze out? Worthless here.

I suppose I can't fault the warlocks on this one. Everyone knows that armors eat material to repair itself. They also knew materials existed that armors couldn't eat. Obvious in hindsight that they'd go out of their way to forge the fractal into something armors couldn't touch. I'd bet that was the very starting point for picking out how to hide the fractal.

I had no idea how they did that, maybe pewter itself was a material relic armor couldn't eat. They couldn't eat the ceramic white plating machines had, I knew that for a fact. So for all I knew there was a whole shopping list of odd materials armors didn't like to munch on. Bad for their diet and all that, poor things.

Okay - that's not too bad. I'd simply need to take my time and slowly file down the metal bit by flaky bit until I spotted something different in the metal composition. And on reviewing the video footage of the dispeate slices, I found they'd thought of that one too.

What's better than burying a fractal all in the same metal? Why, burying a dozen randomly engraved patterns along with the fractal. And that's exactly what they did.

The whole block is actually filled with random engravings, which causes heat deformities to appear at every slice, in every part. No way to know which bit is part of the fractal and which isn't.

With the blade being made of all the exact same pewter composition, there weren't going to be any clever solutions like heating it to a specific temperature, or using acid to eat away at some parts of the metal.

Now, I pride myself on finding the optimal solutions to challenges that come my way. By optimal, I mean the ones that involve the least amount of work and effort. This blade here is the anti-Keith. Every trick I could think of, they've thought of it too and planned for it.

The only viable solution I could think of was the single most effort and time intensive one left - manually filing away at the pewter one tiny layer at a time. Checking in between each scrape to see if I'd hit my target or not. Fractals glowed bright Occult blue when they were active, that's the one of two advantages I still had.

I did mention that there were two advantages I had. Besides fractals glowing when powered, there was something else the meticulous warlocks didn't seem to have any counter for: The soul fractal.

In my sanctum I meditated on my opponent. With the soul-sight I could detect faint traces of something coming from the center of that hilt. If I focused enough, I think I'd be able to peer through the pewter and get a better sense of distance. With that kind of info, I could easily grind away the layers right up to where the fractal would be and then take it more delicately, saving me days of work and reducing the whole ordeal to something that'll only take a few hours.

Here's the conundrum: The warlocks so far have proven to have plotted a counter to every possible tool I could use to pry that secret out of the pewter. Except soul-sight. That seemed really odd and out of character for them.

There were three possibilities for this. The first is that the Warlocks actually didn't know about the soul fractal and have only been using the common fractals up to now. Maybe when they rediscovered the Occult this key fractal had been cut out or otherwise too hidden away. So naturally, they couldn't come up with a counter to something they couldn't have know existed.

The second option is the complete opposite - they did know about the soul fractal and they did setup a counter to someone sniffing around with soul-sight, and the one who's ignorant right now is me. I might be walking into a trap of some kind. This second option is why I haven't really dove into the soul-sight and started using abusing it. Something could be lurking inside there that I didn't know about.

The third option is that they knew about the soul-sight and decided it wasn't worth the effort to protect against. As in, if someone had all the tools to both discover their fractal and also the soul-sight to excavate it out, there wasn't an option to stop that that wouldn't weaken the other methods. Rather, they could be using this to recruit new members into their guild. Test by trial of some kind. And to be fair, whoever discovered their secret wasn't likely to go around telling others what could potentially be a quick and easy path to a luxurious retirement. Why make more competition?

Option one and option three meant I would live if I used soul sight to pinpoint where the fractal was inside. Option two meant that I could outright die to something I had no idea was there. One in three chances of something going terribly wrong.

Well. There was a fourth option: I give up trying to get this done fast.

Instead I very slowly grind away the pewter one scratch at a time right from the start, turn the blade on and off after each scratch, and keep going until I uncovered something.

It really burned me on the inside, but ultimately I had to pick option number four. One in three chances to possibly die was not odds I wanted to gamble on. As for why I'm talking today of all days, that's because I already had picked option four - almost an entire week ago.

Since then, my life has been steady and uneventful. Early mornings with Cathida and Kidra. Once I'd shown my sister the basics of the technique I'd come up with, and had Winterscar inscribe the soul fractal on the inside of her helmet, Kidra had been good to go. A few hours of practice and getting the new movement down, and she was now a menace to all the houses with dreams of competing for the position of First Blade.

I didn't know if she was actually going for the position, Atius hadn't yet announced he was looking for a replacement.

Coincidentally, since she was the undisputed master of it, she's the one that came up with a fitting name first. Behold, the Winterblossom technique.

Kidra made a pretty good case for the name. The majority of our soul remained inside the soul fractal that had been etched inside the helmet, forming the blossom, while small bits of the soul would be woven back inside the body at just the right spots, forming a root-like shape. Hence why Kidra suggested that as the word for it. It by no means had anything to do with her fondness for flowers or anything. The 'winter' part should be evident, what good is a secret technique if we weren't going to stamp our name on it? That's just not done.

It kind of stuck and was better than what I had been thinking of naming it, if I'm honest, though the words will never leave my lips.

After morning training, I'd usually have a few hours of doing minor chores for House Winterscar. Once my responsibilities were done, I'd officially be off duty and allowed to do anything I wanted. Unofficially, what I really did was slink back into my sanctum and continue to grind away at the small pebble of metal from hell that was left.

The part that cost me the most time was dealing with their angle shenanigans. The fractal could have had sharp points, lines almost. One of those lines had been setup to purposefully point straight up where the most obvious point of grinding would come from. The result is that the moment someone ground at the line, a small section of it would be cut - which meant the line was no longer at the exact length to fit the pattern and so the whole thing would lose cohesion before even the grinding tool was lifted off.

So, I'd been grinding away at an angle instead of straight down, the choice of which drastically increased my difficulty. It was impossible to grind sideways on a lit blade - the occult edge would out-grind the grinder. I had to keep turning the thing on and off and checking my work each time to see if there was any glowing signs from the pewter.

A few days ago, I'd grinded away through the hilt until I hit the first bits of Occult light and my hunch turned out right. The big thing that I was holding my breath on was if I'd picked the right angle to come at it from. There was a case where I'd be grinding in the single worst possible direction. For that, I only had hunches and guesswork to rely on. A lot of 'If I were a slimy warlock, where would I angle the fractal to maximize suffering while minimizing my own?'

Turns out, I'd been right. I wasn't sure if I should feel proud that I could put myself in shoes of these sneaky bastards, but if I got a working blade out of it, I wasn't going to complain too much.

Since I'd come from a good enough angle, I hadn't grinded out any of the X or Y axis, only a tiny bit of the z-axis which isn't critical in a two-dimensional rune. That had been a really happy day for me, as it let me re-orient the grinder to be exactly even with the direction of the pattern and made it easy to grind away the remaining chunk until I got close to the excavation.

From here it had been back to meticulous grinding. Bit by bit, the fractal became exposed as I delicately removed the excess pewter. The closer I got to success the slower I became, being far more cautious. I could have reached the end of this days ago, instead I'd taken the safe route at all possible times.

See, if the fractal winks out of life before I had fully uncovered it, there was absolutely no way to tell what parts of the pewter were the remainder of that fractal and what parts were the false trails leftover. So all my work would get instantly iced, and I'd probably rip a lot of expensive things in blind fury.

Today I was filing away the last glowing trail of a line that still showed signs of being hidden away. I'd grown to loathe the color blue, esspecially the way it glowed. Complete eyesore. Blinds a bit too, so when I looked away, there'd be a dim yellow haze for a moment as my eyes adjusted. And I'd been staring at that for hours now, on and off and on and off again.

Scrap by scrape, it was taking hours just to remove what would be a small cloud of dust, taking pictures in between each, just on the case everything shut down on me anyhow.

Eventually, I unscrewed the ingot from its mooring one more time, lifted it up and examined it as I had again and again, searching through the pattern for any missing trace while it was turned on. The blade on the hilt had become a thin warped thing, shrinking down with each layer I scrubbed away. And to my great suprise, there wasn't any part of the fractal that seemed covered up by pewter. Or at least, after a quarter hour of staring at that horrible glowing blue eyesore, in detail, I genuinly couldn't find any direction forward.

"I think I'm done." I breathed out, to nobody. This moment should have been my crowning moment of glory... and all I wanted to do was verify that it worked and then go to sleep. Honestly, I was so out of it after hours on hours of tedious grinding.

"Only took you forever. Having a hard time sitting up yet? Bones aching? That's the first thing to go. Next you'll sprout a cane and then a need to yell at people. Trust me, I know all about it." Cathida grumbled out.

She had liked the process as much as I had, by which I mean we both hadn't at all. It was utter suffering that the warlocks had pulled me through, but in the end I was the one holding their precious little fractal, all revealed and excavated.

I didn't even have the heart in me to quip back, instead going all business. "Journey, take a snapshot of this image and let's give it a whirl."

There was a tiny metal rectangle I'd already setup at my side, ready for this moment. Reaching down, I brought that up and Journey's spirit floated by, swirling around the surface before retreating.

I brought the metal piece up, to the light. "If this doesn't work…"

Well. If it didn't work, I'd just dip my head back and try to figure out what else was missing. Possible that there was a second fractal that needed to be dug up. Or worse - what if there were three? And the third one was sandwiched between the two? Maybe that's why the warlocks hadn't bothered protecting against a soul-sight solution, knowing it would be practically impossible to excavate three different fractals inside.

My mind was a spiral of doom and gloom, already expecting the worst to happen. That all my work had been for nothing, that the secrets of the warlocks had run deeper than I had anticipated.

I lifted that little rectangle of scrap, gave the order to pass a current through it, expecting nothing to happen.

Instead, all four sides of that scrap metal began glowing a blessedly bright and beautiful occult blue.

It was now my favorite color again.

Next chapter - Meaning of life (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 19 - Meaning of life (T)

Activity made the small settlement scurry around like dew drops splashing in the ponds. The ex-humans here were frightened. Weary. They sent looks in her direction before quickly looking away. Always trying to pretend everything was as it should be, when nothing was as it had been.

Where she stood, a small empty void surrounded her, as the people didn't want to approach close. Part of that might have been due to the Old runner that had accompanied To'Wrathh here.

Curiosity was common among the older machines, though the subject and focus of that curiosity would wildly differ between model and rank. To'Wrathh had noticed that trend among all her senior staff. The old ones, who had survived trials and adapted to them, each showed an element of curiosity.

She wondered if that emerged after a long enough time, or if it was the prerequisite for their survival in the first place. Which came first? Perhaps with enough study, the answer would be clarified to her.

The old runner was curious about humans.

And while these ex-humans were no longer considered targets, they were as close to humans as the Runner would see. And more importantly, they held information on how the humans lived their lives, deep in the safety of their shielded cities.

There was a book To'Wrathh had read in her search for information and knowledge, an ancient book written by a human from a long-forgotten era. The machine archive had preserved the contents, if not the physical copies. In that book, was a quote she had found kinship to: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

To'Wrathh knew neither herself, nor the enemy. Before, when she had the form of a spider, her life had been simple and clear. Protect the nest. Observe. Hunt that which steps upon your territory.

Now, things had become complex. Her nest had grown to include dozens of different roles and ranks. Dozens, each with different priorities. To'Wrathh might not yet know what or who she was anymore, but that would come with time. She felt confident of that. What she could work on was to understand those that had sworn loyalty to her.

The ex-humans were the most convoluted of her new subordinates. Unlike the more simple minded machines, all with uniform desires, the ex-humans had hundreds. Each unique to the individual. They lived a life that reminded her vaguely of her old nest. Each grouping and dividing themselves into tasks. All of which was necessary for survival.

She watched one such group return from foraging, carrying baskets of frostbloom and other plants. Others carrying back fish poached from the rivers and lakes underground, long fishing poles held over their shoulders. They would deliver their goods to others who had dedicated themselves as cooks, creating a communal meal for the small tribe.

"What caused your people to leave?" She asked. "The records I've seen detail your people as a nomadic caravan. It did not explain why you chose to become one. This was not a wise choice. I do not understand why your people traveled as they did instead of finding safety in a city."

"Dangerous. For you. For humans." The old runner grumbled. Skull staring directly at the tiny human by his side. "I not understand, either. Humans can not run from runners. You knew. Not stupid."

The timid ex-human answered carefully. "It's complicated.."

To'Wrathh raised an eyebrow. Complicated things were handled in the same way as anything else. One step at a time. "Then explain. Begin anywhere and continue."

"We did live in a city once. We were… poor. We couldn't afford to live inside the protection of the pillar. They didn't want us around so eventually we were forced to leave. Or the machines would kill us eventually." She took a glance at the Feather, then shifted her eyes back, noticing the confused expression on To'Wrath. "Erm, the further away from the pillar shield, the more time it takes to run for safety when machines are spotted. Eventually, the rim camps grew too big and people started dying each time the machines came for a raid. So instead of waiting to die, we grouped together and left. We set out to look for another pillar, to make a new city. "

"The city did not see any other means to repurpose you? Not even as expendable resources?" To'Wrathh didn't quite understand why the humans would waste such potential. Even the bodies could be used, surely.

"No, we were undesirables. Not producing anything useful, taking up space and a drain on the food supply. We had hope, it could have worked. Maybe a few more months and we would have stumbled on something. There's the underlayer, close enough to the surface for frostbloom to start growing and usually machines don't go there."

The runner shivered at the side. "Sacrilege. Heresy. The surface is not good."

"Too cold for machines?" The girl asked.

"No." The runner said, voice rumbling. A deep bass that vibrated her bones slightly. "Cold. Hot. No difference to machines. Surface is heresy. Surface is not good. No go there. No. Go."

"But… why?" The girl turned, finally looking at the runner eye to eye, if only for a second before flinching away.

He remained silent for a moment. Then spoke. "A feeling. Surface is heresy."

To'Wrathh gave the short girl a glance. "Your old god protected humanity in different ways. Hallowed ground most machines cannot step on. It does not stop the likes of me. How did you survive outside the city?"

She gulped, suddenly reminded that the machine she stood beside was far more dangerous than the massive hulking Runner. A Feather was an enemy of myth, and Tamery was surprised to find herself forgetting that anytime she spoke to Lady To'Wrathh. "We had twenty relic armors we brought with us. The knights hunted down power cells and kept us safe from the machine raids. They're all gone now, Lord To'Aacar took them with him along with the others."

To'Wrathh nodded, walking to the cooking fires grouped up. The old women there watched the Old Runner with weary eyes, and none of them seemed to notice the Feather.

The Feather in question observed the large pot of soup at the center, where one of the oldest of the women seemed to realize the food was still cooking and would still continue to cook regardless if a giant machine stood at the side or not. That one reached a shriveled old hand and stirred the pot, adding more spices and tasting it again, muttering all the while. The rest of the women didn't have that same courage, each slowly edging away before leaving their duties behind to not so sneakily run.

The familiar action seemed to shake the lady out of her initial scare and she turned to stare up at the hulking monster towering above.

"Well?" She said, lifting the ladle and waving it in the Old Runner's direction. "Ye don't have a mouth to eat this with, so scram! Either put me out of my misery already or get out of the way."

A bone-like hand wide enough to wrap around the old lady's entire body reached out and plucked the threatening ladle out of her hand. The Old Runner brought the tiny metal instrument up, holding it delicately with three fingers before his skull, violet eyes searching the surface.

"Why. Stir." He asked.

The old lady remained frozen in place. Then shook herself loose a moment after. "It's fine, I've gone crazy a long time ago, I don't even care anymore." She turned and pointed at the pot. "It's so that the soup doesn't burn the bottom of course! Why, you think I like stirring a pot all day with these old bones?"

The machine shook his head slowly, up and down. Then he took a step past the woman, dipping the ladle down into the soup. He began to stir it slowly, those horrifying violet eyes hyper focused on the task. Watching the small bubbles drift up and pop at the surface.

Tamery thought she was going crazy as well. That this was all a vivid hallucination and she was actually back home on a sickbed, slowly dying while the city kept the doors shut and the medicine locked behind wealth. The sight of a massive hulking machine, hunched over a communal pot, stirring it with such fascination seemed almost comical to her. This couldn't be real, could it?

To'Wrathh took a seat by the side of the pot, watching. "Why did you leave the city?" She asked the small ex-human girl.

Tammery slapped the sides of her cheek a few times, snapping herself awake again. Then, she scuttled over to take a seat next to the Feather. This was her duty, the best thing she could do for her little tribe. Placate the Feather, and possibly the machines may have mercy on them. So Tamery talked and gossiped, pretending the angel of death she spoke to was an old friend she'd finally seen again after years.

"Everyone here has different stories, for me, Da was a trader and died a few years ago when he was making a more dangerous pass. Ma tried what she could but wasn't able to really put two and two together like he did. She kept gambling everything he'd saved up."

"Gambling? Explain."

"Uhh, she would play card games hoping to get more money. It never worked, she had a problem with that."

To'Wrathh tilted her head, "Money." She said, a faraway look in her violet eyes. "A current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes. Tell me more about what the cities use."

It was times like these that Tamery could forget she was talking to the embodiment of Death. A Feather was an enemy best left to the Deathless. Even elite knights wouldn't consider fighting one without having a massive number advantage. And here she was, sitting mere inches away and talking to one. Explaining what money is and how it was used.

But Tamery was a trader's daughter and more than just that, she liked to talk about money. So she quickly forgot who she was talking to, becoming more animated with the topic by the passing seconds.

Before she knew it, the girl was talking about systematic monetary systems, trading voids and political collisions among the trading guilds. "Every city has its own bank, see? That's how they dealt with the issue of coins. Coins aren't good as money like they were in the older eras, anyone can print out gold or metal if they find the right printer and files. Imagine making a coin only to find out the city next door can simply print those out whenever. But there's still goods some cities can make and others want, so they all settled on city-banks keeping individual accounts and everything digital. You can't print up an encryption code. So traders like my father had dozens of accounts across different cities, all propped up on goods he ferried between each. Could be an entire headache to keep track of, but that's what made him good at his job. So that's how money is used."

"And you ended at the city rim? You speak as if you had been wealthy. This does not make sense."

The girl scowled at that. "Okay, so, there's this asshole in control of the trading company Da worked at. He's a greedy little scrapshit and saw an easy way to swipe up all the accounts leftover. Bribed the right people, and before I knew it, ma had already signed away all the accounts without knowing how much they were worth. And just like that, our home was gone and we were kicked out into the rim. Ma got sick pretty quickly out there, and then it was just me."

Tamery had found kinship with some of the other rejects. She'd once thought they'd all been lazy homeless trash that deserved to stay in the rim... until she was among them and forced to confront the misguided logic she'd been fed. They'd all been like her at some point, simply dealt a bad hand that spiraled out of control. The ones who weren't lucid didn't stay alive outside the walls for long, so the remaining homeless were like her - survivors.

To'Wrathh, on the other hand, was realizing war wasn't all that made humanity. To understand her enemy as to be able to crush them more efficiently, she would need to learn their culture. Something she hadn't considered to be a factor before.

"Lift it up, let me taste." The old woman at the pot ordered. Curiously, the Old Runner followed the command, lifting the ladle with a full scoop of the soup.

"Taste?" The Runner asked, confused.

"Yes, taste! How else am I gonna make this soup taste good if I don't taste it as I cook it? You think I can just snap my fingers and the mites will make a good soup for me? Hah!" The woman stuck out a small spoon almost angrily, lifted a bit of the gruel and stuck it into her mouth. "Needs more salt and a bit more pepper, yes." She grumbled, "Wish we had more corn, pity."

"Corn?" The runner said, putting the ladle back into the soup and continuing his slow stirring.

"Yes, corn! Goddess save me, it grows on the walls in green vines. Bright yellow, tastes good, hardly needs any water. You can't possibly miss it if you pass by a vine. Steam it, boil it, grill it, everyone can eat corn and everything's better with corn." The old woman ranted as she grabbed ingredients from the discarded workstation her fellow cooks had deserted. When she returned, it was to toss out some black colored powder into the pot. The old lady then peered up at the machine. "'Xcept you. You don't got teeth or a mouth to eat with. What do you even get to do out here if you don't get to eat good food? Stare at walls all day?"

"I run. With pack." The old runner said. "I hunt. I fight. I kill. Soup is new. Cook is new."

The old woman winced, suddenly aware that this monster had killed dozens, perhaps even hundreds of her old kin. She took a hesitant step back, before breathing in deeply, squaring away her courage and stepping forward again, staring down the monster before her. "Well, what else do you want to do in your life? You want to cook now? That it? You want me to show you how to cook?"

The old runner tilted his head, contemplating. A pause.

"Ok." He said. The skeletal hand moved the ladle and the pot bubbled. The Old Runner didn't need more reasons, this was new and different. He liked that. Soup was interesting. Soup was different.

To'Wrathh watched the interaction. She stood, the wings behind her lifting her onto her feet with little effort. Two light steps forward and she peered over the pot of bubbling thick soup.

"What do you do with this soup?" She asked.

The old lady looked back with disbelief. "It's food. What did you want to know about it?"

To'Wrathh realized she hadn't looked into how humans used food. It was a hole in her knowledge. "What do you do with food?"

"What do you do with food?" The old lady repeated, dumbfounded. "Well, for starters, you eat it. That's what you do with food. You machines keep asking the weirdest questions."

She'd read the books they had on war - it had mentioned logistics and supply lines. Food had appeared hundreds of times as a necessary ration. She knew humans ate the food. Soldiers eat. The books didn't say how soldiers eat.

She could have searched for that question in the archives and found an answer. However, she was beginning to believe the books and archives machines kept didn't describe the enemy as they were today. It was all outdated. Too removed from the source of information. To'Wrathh wanted to understand her enemy, she needed to learn from them directly.

To craft her own memories rather than borrowing from someone else's.

"How do you eat soup?" To'Wrathh asked.

The old lady didn't seem to quite understand the question. She grabbed her spoon, dipped it in the soup, staring at To'Wrathh the whole time. As if it were evident, waving dramatically to the spoon filled with soup. Then, she brought it back up and then chomped it down noisily. "Like this see? You take a spoon, chew it up and swallow. You got a mouth right? What you think it was made for?"

"Speaking?" That was all she'd used her mouth for. Was there other functions for the human mouth besides language? In hindsight, To'Wrathh realized she hadn't the faintest idea of human biology. How had she not thought about their biology? The old woman had tasted the soup previously, and To'Wrathh hadn't even noticed the strange action. She ran a quick mental check through her functions, looking for abnormalities or lowered thought processes.

Nothing. The truth was simple. To'Wrathh had simply not thought of human biology in any other way besides the methods of disabling it.

She knew the heart was important. She knew blood was as well. The average amount of blood required for a human to remain conscious was a number she was familiar with.

And it was dawning on her that this single number explained nothing else.

The Feather set to rectify that, downloading from the archive the full set of human biology. In this, she made another discovery: That her form was not identical. Instead, massive swaths of functionality was missing, as if the base template for a Feather had simply been a copy taken from still images and video footage. Hundreds of details were lacking. Details that could not have been guessed at by simple observation.

She had no stomach. No taste buds. No lungs. No vocal chords. Her throat led to a dead end.

Relinquished had designed this form. And clearly, the pale lady had made only a pale imitation without true thought or care. Something was wrong.

How had her mother ignored such details? And for so many years after the initial template? How had To'Wrathh herself remained so ignorant until it had been made obvious to her? A blindspot?

Or was this information something her mother had deemed non-essential? Surely, Relinquished could not have simply forgotten this part, like To'Wrathh had.

Relinquished was ancient. Wise, and powerful beyond measure. She'd taken over the world after all.

The Feather didn't know why her body lacked all of these functions. But she would rectify that problem now. She signaled her nano-swarm within to build the correct structures.

Power bled from her form as the swarms within her went to work. First, she gave herself lungs and more artificial muscle to move them. Then, she crafted vocal chords that replaced her speakers. The designs were found deep in the archives, made by humans experimenting with such android technologies. Primitive, but all she had to work with.

Artificial taste buds and a true throat that led into an empty stomach were made next. The ability to smell. She went down the list, one item at a time, repairing her form.

Some things she couldn't mimic. Others she came up with more creative work arounds.

To'Wrathh continued the work quietly as the camp moved around her. Tamery remained at her side, not quite sure what was going on, but seeing signs of black smoke moving around the Feather.

When To'Wrathh returned, she had completed all possible modifications within her ability. She cleared her throat, now understanding why such an action was necessary. Programs had been copied and powered on that should have made the transition between a speaker and her new voice cord a seamless transition.

Still, when she spoke, the voice was dry and hoarse. The Feather coughed again.

"Lady To'Wrathh… are you all right?" Tamery asked. She wasn't quite sure what was going on, but nobody in the camp was paying attention to the Feather. All eyes were on the old lady and the Runner she was now ordering around to fetch her items and cut fish up.

They had been at it for a while now, the soup had taken on a far more thick consistency. The smell of fish and herbs had begun to waft out in the air.

For the first time in her life, To'Wrathh smelled the food. The onslaught of new information struck her like a sledgehammer, filled with nuances.

"I am fine." She said, her new voice similar to the previous synthetic version. And yet subtly different, no one consonant said at exactly the same pitch. "I have made some modifications to my form."

"Modifications? Why?" Tamery asked, now curious.

"I wished to eat the soup." To'Wrathh said, taking a spare spoon and dipping the end inside. Scooping out a spoonful as the old lady had done before. She brought it to her mouth, and crunched down, biting the spoon in half. Then, she chewed, bits of metal spoon crunching in between her teeth, mixing with the warm soup.

It was interesting. Different. The information sent by the taste buds mixed with what her new nose had sent.

"I don't think you're supposed to eat the spoon with that." Tamery said, trying hard to keep her face neutral. "It's only used to get the soup in your mouth. Like this," The girl dipped a spare spoon herself into the pot, brought it back and licked off the tasty broth. Time and work had made it begin to truly taste like soup rather than simple stock, despite the cheap ingredients used, like fish.

To'Wrathh nodded, ordering the nano-swarms within her to pool out and repair the spoon back to its original form. Energy continued to drain from her reserve power cells. She would need to be more careful, the modifications had cost her and she would need to recharge soon. No more mistakes would be allowed. Only mites could create or destroy matter without paying a price in power.

Once more, she dipped the spoon in the soup, brought it back and sampled the broth. This time, only the soup was tasted. It was good. To'Wrathh decided she liked soup. Very much so.

She turned to the Old Runner, who had returned with grilled fish, breaking apart the flaky chunks and placing them into the broth as per instruction. To'Wrathh sent a data package to the runner: Her experience and the taste of the soup the Runner had helped prepare.

He froze, processing the data. Tasting the memory. It took some time before the Old Runner moved again.

"Soup good." He finally said. "Cooking good. I search for corn next."

Next chapter - Fish and letter

Book 2 - chapter 20 - Fish and letter

Fish was the ultimate luxury food saved only on truly momentous occasions.

The Agrifarmer caste didn't sell any without a few of their arms bent first. The common joke was that they'd be buried with their fish if they could. To be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure that was only a joke.

Fish were bred in the aquaponics farms, where apparently there was some sort of feedback loop that fish offered to the rest of the hydroponic system used to grow vegetables.

I had a friend among the Agrifarmers. He'd gone long in length about the care and feeding of fish. Rants about pH values, temperatures, substrates, species, bacteria and oddly enough - plumbing. The funniest part of all this is that as an apprentice, he wasn't even allowed to touch the fish. Only the highest ranks among the agrifarmers were allowed to tend to the fish directly, given their incredibly specific requirements.

But all things grow old and a dead fish floating in the system would aquickly contaminate the delicate balancing act, so the farmers would routinely prune and trim out the fish if they spotted any signs of issues. And there lies the first chance of obtaining fish out of three possible manners.

The second potential method of getting fish was finding it in the lakes and rivers underground. That came with its own set of costs. For one, only knights were permitted to travel underground so that narrowed down the pool of possible workers. For two, if they did travel underground it wasn't for tourism or leisure. Generally. There's been a few returns where knights happened to camp by sources of fish, but besides those exceptions, knights generally didn't come back up to the surface with fish in hand.

The third method was to trade with the undersiders. When the pilgrims would make their way to the surface, a whole host of carry-ons would come with them - including traders down on their luck. We didn't have many goods that undersiders wanted. On the other hand, what goods they brought up tended to be sorely needed, even if they weren't fetching a good price down under.

The pilgrims would carry fish and other staples of their diet with them, though not in huge quantities. The last pilgrims to arrive and harbor at our clan was five years ago. Safe to say all the fish they'd brought up and left in the freezers had long since vanished.

So how Kidra had managed to finagle not one fish - but twenty of the scrapshits from the dark clutches of Agrifarmer freezers was something I suspected the clan lord had a hand in.

Or she had a knife to someone's throat.

She did have two of those now, and she's become scary good with them. If I throw enough things at Kidra to abuse, she'll probably handle the raiders all by herself. It was an excellent plan, all in all, and I'm a genius for thinking it up. I call it: Feed the hard carry.

But I digress. We were talking about the wonders of fish.

A celebration deserving of fish was in order for a few different reasons all put together. The first was for Father's passing, the previous head of the house. The second was for the newly gained armor in the family. And the third reason was the sudden resurgence of the House. All of which would be call for fish.

So this is how we ended up in a fully filled house hall today with around ninety members all merrily talking with one another. The core servants had been inducted into the House and were fully fledged Winterscars now, they had been since the first few days of Kidra's new rule. The rest of the new arrivals were servants and soldiers, taking on the ropes and building up from fresh ground.

High talent, picked out on sheer merit, into a House who's past culture of nepotism and poisoned words had been razed down to the ground. Whatever our house would become - it was a vision that we could change the course of for once. Already, the House had two armors to our name which was a ridiculous advantage new houses simply did not start with.

Not to mention they'd all seen Kidra's skills in combat. She's practiced each morning with me diligently, despite the fact it's long past the point of being worthwhile to her. I certainly wasn't a threat, even with matched speed I was still reacting too predictably. We do less sparing and more training katas now for a reason.

After I'd shown her the trick with the soul fractal, she came up with new ones that stumped me but clearly were working out for her. Talk among the House was that even the Shadowsong prime wouldn't be able to stand boot to boot with Kidra at her current skill.

To say morale was high was an understatement. Everyone felt like they were a part of something that was exploding, that would do more than just be a strong House. Something that would become part of history and song.

But getting twenty whole fish to cook with was right up there in terms of impressive results. Kidra had gone the extra leg to really drive home the point of her abilities.

There was a hushed silence as she stood from the head of the table and announced that we had enough fish to give the entire household a bite to eat - each. Including the minor servants. The rest of the bones and other items had been used for fish soup, sauces and all kinds of other dishes the mad creative geniuses down in the kitchen had come up with.

The meal was the same for all of us, including my sister and I. The same proportions and everything. A direct message to our House that neither of us were going to be using our power to lord over like the past generations had. We were all in this together, and would sit at the table as companions.

It was a feast like no other, and we drank to the celebration in equal measure.

And then our friends joined and I don't remember much after besides the puking.

"Wake up, you lugnut!" An old voice berated to me by the side. It felt tiny and minute, like it had come from a small speaker. "You think I'm going to let you skip on training just because you got a little handsy with a bottle or two? Hah! Drag yourself up or else."

My eyes groggily opened up, searching for the voice from hell.

"Over here!"

I didn't have much energy except to shift my bloodshot eyes around. Journey's helmet lay on the food table, tilted over. Behind was the slumped body of someone dressed in the winterscar colors, a soldier. He twitched, snoring, smacking his lips for a moment and then going still again.

The voice returned. "Pick up your helmet and let's get to work! Chop chop young man!"

It was coming from my helmet. No doubt about it. I nodded and the movement hurt my head something bad.

I dragged the helmet to my face and with some amount of effort, managed to hook it on. The padding inside was cool and comfortable, far more than the composite wood table here. Maybe I should have kept this on over the night in hindsight.

Something sat down on the other side. "Awake?" My sister asked.

Tidy, prim and wearing her usual kimono robe. Pattern of scarlet red and deep blue flower outlines on black. Looking perfectly immaculate compared to myself.

"How're you not dying right now?" I mumbled out. "I know you drank with us, we even did that song and dance thing. Least, I think we did. The one on the tables, you know?"

"Preparation. I used Winterscar to eliminate the bothersome content in my cup."

"What? How?"

She turned to look at me with an eyebrow raised. "I keep my tricks secret. And more importantly, we have to speak about you learning to keep yours."

What?

Oh.

Oh no.

Drunk me must have done some ratshit.

A shiver of horror passed through my spine at the implications, all kinds of secrets I'd been keeping flashing through. Which ones had I spilled?

When I didn't answer, she tapped my helmet impatiently. "Come with me now. We'll speak in more detail in a better place. And handling the fallout." She swept a hand out to the food hall, implying there were some people here who might have enough brain cells left to rub together.

"What about training?" Cathida yelped out. "The boy comes with me first! I'll give the leftovers to you later where you can rake him over the coals in peace."

Kidra shook her head. "Cathida. This is a matter of importance. Once we're done, we'll follow with the schedule."

Cathida didn't like that answer, but after a week of morning training, I've learned the ultimate technique to handling her: Journey had a mute button.

I painfully stood up and followed behind my sister for what I was sure would be a right scolding. Not quite sure about what, but I dearly hoped drunk me hadn't blabbed about the more serious secrets. Please, gods in heaven, make it something more innocent.

We made our way to the medical room, where one of the beds was already occupied with Teed of all people. I have memories of him showing up after the main meal, along with other friends of the Winterscars that were disconnected from the central house. They had been invited to join after the opening feast was complete. Ninety people all had their own friends they wanted to celebrate with. It added up quickly.

Needless to say, that was when things had really taken a turn for the wild.

Teed had a needle stuck in his arm, feeding him a transparent bag of fluid suspended above. And he looked in much better spirits than I was.

"What are you even doing here?" I asked him.

Teed shrugged, then pointed at my sister. "She carried me over yesterday night, and when I woke up I was already hooked up here to this drip."

I had the immediate mental image of Kidra delicately princess carrying the gym-rat, all easily done with her armor.

"How are you feeling?" Kidra asked him, sitting down at his side and reaching out a hand to his forearm. "I had the servants fetch you some watermelon slices, they'll be here soon."

"Honestly? I'm more surprised at how I don't feel anything like a hangover. I ain't one to blackout in my life, but I know my limits before the puking starts and yesterday's binge went way far past that." He chuckled. "You drank us all under the table, dear. I take it you saw this coming?"

I narrowed my eyes at the pet name. That was odd. Did…. ? Naw, can't be. I'd have heard about it already.

Kidra nodded, then folded her hands into her lap. "I did. I've had light studies with medicine and among those were an old doctor's notes about IV drips being an effective means of handling a hangover. After personal testing, I knew it to be true."

"Wait," I interjected, "Why didn't you help me out like that?"

She turned and gave me a flat look. "Why, the thought just so happened to slip my mind, dear brother. How clumsy of me."

Right. Sure. Yeah, that's what happened. "I take it this is divine retribution of the three gods? What did I do anyhow?"

"Fire." Kidra said, tapping a foot on the floor, arms now crossed. "You were showing off fire coming from your gauntlet, like a magic trick."

Well.

That was not good, I mentally berated myself. That was very not good Keith.

The only metal lining to all this is that the fractal of heat was used in all relic armor already, I found its shape in both Journey and Winterscar. If there is an existential threat trailing behind anyone who comes up with progress, it likely targets on a macro scale or possibly one of the more specific fractals later in the book.

Or if it didn't, we were already doomed to square up from the moment I activated the first fractal.

Thus, damage from this current fallout would be all from clan culture rather than any existential threats. I'll take that anyday.

I glanced at Teed, who looked right back to me, shrugging. "She's right, kid. Everyone was talking about how you had powers of a warlock when you returned from the abyss. The new look for your armor didn't help make people believe otherwise too." He snickered. "So you played right along, stood on one of the tables, extended a hand out, snapped a finger, and bam! Fire coming out of your hand. Got everyone riled up like something from the songs, people banging on the tables demanding you show more. Still wondering how you pulled that magic trick off."

Kidra turned to him. "Have any guesses?" I saw her eyes shift over to stare me down from the corners. "I'm deeply curious."

Teed shrugged in the bed, unaware of the subcontext floating by. "If you're askin' me as a Reacher, my bet's on a flammable agent of some kind he snuck in a small wax paper vial. Or something that could disappear in flames. He crunches it in his hand and then sets it all on fire. Could have setup sparks to come out when he snapped his fingers. Probably had some of the servants in on it early. Ordered them to egg him on about being a warlock and he gets to show off as if it's all natural."

Kidra turned to me, a small smile on her face. "Others might believe this is real Occult magic, especially since there were people from outside the House who can't be trusted to keep to themselves. So I'd like to know exactly what your trick was to assuage people's superstitions when they come to me asking about it. Well, dear brother? Has Teed figured out the trick to your display?"

I saw the bone being thrown in my direction and took it like a starving dog. "I admit, you got all of it in one go." I confessed.

Teed chuckled at the side, waving his fingers. "I've been thinking 'bout it for a while now while relaxin' here. If you ask me, you should let them keep on thinking you're a warlock. Add the to mystic of that armor you have. The sorcerer knight of House Winterscar. Has a ring to it ya know, even if it's all smoke and mirrors in the end."

If I wasn't so worried about my real secret coming out, this probably would have made me laugh at the irony.

True to Kidra's word, a servant did enter the room carrying a tray of slices, "My lords, I've brought watermelon slices drizzled with honey. And a side of strawberries coated with chocolate that Miss Rehla said the lady would appreciate." She set the plate to the side, bowed, and quickly left, sliding the thin door closed behind her.

Kidra's eyes took on a greedy glint, glued to the strawberries as she took the plate and walked back to the chair, taking a bite out of the chocolate covered fruit first thing on sitting down.

"Ah, I think your secret is busted, kid." Teed said from his bed. "Servants are bigger gossips than you are. That one surely heard our talk. Error's mine."

"Looks like people found out fast it was all a magic trick using science, right on the first day." I said. "Unfortunate, wouldn't you agree, dear sister?"

Teed quirked an eyebrow at the tone, but shook his head with a smile, thinking I was messing with him.

Kidra waved at me, busy eating through the strawberries. "Take off your gauntlet, I need to tie you into the IV. You'll feel better in a half hour after."

I did as instructed, taking off my helmet as well so I could try a slice of watermelon. It looked cold and probably thought the same, considering he was eating his way through it.

Kidra handled the needle with practice. Both of us had to get training for events when a medical professional was unavailable. She had me hooked up without issue.

Sliced watermelon with honey was an old Agrifarmer's trick to cure hangovers. Retainers say a bit of sparring and getting the blood pumping would cure the issue. I strongly disagreed with that, but kept the traitorous thoughts to myself. The Logi swore by coffee like civilized people, and the Reachers swore behind drinking even more. They never specify if it's coffee however.

The watermelon was every bit as juicy and sweet as I'd hoped for, the slight bit of honey pairing oddly well with it all. Each bite was crisp and filled with flavor and sooth my raging headache.

The strawberries were nearly gone before either Teed or I thought to try one. My sister was territorial when it came to those, so I knew better than to ask for any. Teed, however, clearly had no such reservations.

"Those look good, mind sparing one for little ol' me?"

"No." She said with all the conviction of fact, taking the last one and plopping it into her mouth. "Confectioneries and strawberries are where I drew my line when it comes to sharing. This is the hill I am prepared to freeze on."

"Not even for me?"

"Perhaps someday." Kidra answered noncommittally, humming slightly while tapping the skewer.

I narrowed my eyes further, spitting out watermelon seeds on the plate. Had my scheming already paid off? Had Teed been picking up the rest himself behind the scenes?

Without me knowing this sort of gold tier gossip? Unlikely. And if actually done, unacceptable.

An old wheezing voice came out of my helmet and interrupted my thoughts. "You done now with the oh-so-important meeting?"

Teed froze, while Kidra just sighed, turning slowly to look at the helmet.

"What? Never heard armor talk before?" The old woman wheezed out from the helmet. "Don't keep your mouth hanging, a rat might jump in."

Teed stumbled out an apology, talking about how he'd always heard armors weren't chatty. This was the first armor he'd heard. And unfortunately, he was getting a completely different picture of what armor actually sounded like.

"How exactly did you get an armor to talk like this?" Teed asked, bewildered.

"Uh, it's a long story." I said.

"You better make it a fun story." Cathida interjected. "Long stories put me to sleep."

"You literally can't sleep," I hissed back.

"Don't turn this into a pissing match with me, young man. If I say I can sleep, I'm damn well going to sleep." The helmet rambled out.

"I know where the mute button is." I threatened.

Of course, that was the worst possible thing to say to Cathida.

Teed glanced back up at me. Taking a look between the raging helmet and me. "...Are you absolutely sure you're not a warlock?"

There was a knock at the door. Kidra motioned and called out permission for entrance. Cathida didn't get the memo which meant I had to go with the nuklear option and had her gagged for another thirty minutes. I'd be paying for this later, but that was future Keith's can of crickets to deal with, the poor bastard.

An armored hand opened up the sliding door, and the owner walked right in. "Good to see you're all up." Ironreach said. Behind him two other servants were waiting.

They weren't wearing the winterscar uniforms however. No, these were wearing the colors of the clan - Atius's personal staff.

"Morning rascals. These gentlemen have come here with a sealed message for the lady of the House." He gave a nod to Kidra.

With calm dignity, Kidra put down her tray and walked over to the bowing servants. One held out a scroll of paper, while the other held out a candle.

"To the current head of House Winterscar, this message has been delivered from the Clan Lord Atius, with all due haste. You are charged to read and obey the orders within, immediately."

"House Winterscar stands ready." She said, the traditional response. Once the formalities had completed, she took the page and broke the seal of the clan lord, folding it open to read. It didn't take long, this letter must have been brief.

When she turned to me and I could tell it was all business, cutting through the atmosphere like an Occult knife. "The clan lord has formally called upon House Winterscar's relic knights to attend to him." She then turned to look behind the two clan servants, where Winterscar staff loitered around. "Prepare my armor." She said, already reaching out for the lit candle to burn away the message. The servants scattered off, rushing to the vault room to do her bidding as the scroll of paper winked away into ash.

A cordial summon from the clan lord sent by seal was a call that brooked no argument. This wasn't going to be a lighthearted visit.

This was a full call to arms.

Book 2 - chapter 21 - Call the ships to port

The clan lord had an estate of his own. The difference between the Houses and his was the scale and location. Atius's home remained by the center pillar of the clan, multiple gates leading into it.

As a tradeoff, the scale and size of the estate was smaller in comparison. The auditorium was a simple rectangular room, four pillars giving the area a sense of larger scale, compared to what it truly held in reality. Panels and dividers sectioned off the room into parts only adding to the illusion.

While the clan lord didn't collect trophies or wealth, he collected memories instead. Flat screen portraits held a few strategic locations in the surrounding walls, displaying image after image of past heroes and tales. Glimpses at the past, wars and other items that held significance to the clan lord, even if they held none to us. Some of it was obvious, such as a proud looking man standing tall and smiling in armor, while the clan lord's arm was wrapped around his shoulder, a grin stretched across his face of a mission well done. I didn't recognize the face, though the armor belonged to House Swiftstrike. I was likely looking at the portrait of a long dead knight from the past.

Every few minutes, the screen would transition into another image. I imagine if the clan lord had commissioned paintings instead, the vast amount of memories made over centuries would simply not have any room to fit in this small chamber.

Kidra and I walked in, flanked by Ironreach. He'd also been given the same summons, only he'd been at the Winterscar estate so naturally to wait for us.

In the chamber, other knights had formed up, a small semi-circle around the throne of the clan. The other knights in the room came from different houses. Windrunners were accounted for, and so were the Shadowsongs. All five of them, with exception to the Shadowsong prime who was missing.

Atius himself was also missing, the throne empty. A silence remained in the room, a breath held before a storm. We all knew what the score was. Given there were only knights in attendance here.

The clan lord didn't keep us waiting, instead walking into the audience chamber with the Shadowsong prime at his side. The two seemed to have been in a deep conversation, which had ended the moment they walked inside.

Atius made his way to the throne. "I'll be short and to the point. Three of our scout teams have returned, bringing back positive confirmation of movement. They hadn't spotted the main army, only clear traces of movement and supplies that point to a massive event occurring by the Othersiders. Guns, ammunition, relic armors, food provisions, Occult weapons and shields."

The room remained silent, all of us knelt down waiting for instruction. Atius sat on the throne, one hand on the hilt of his own sword. "We'll need to step past simple contingency plans. The time for war is now. In my time underground, I've earned a few favors. Favors I intend to collect upon now. Given the situation, I'll be dispatching a small delegation group to the nearby city of Capra'nor. Their city would not stand if it hadn't been for my actions fifty five years ago."

He turned to look us over. "Any volunteers?"

All hands rose, including mine.

He chuckled. "And here I see the fruits of the seeds planted. I'll remind you all, if the raiders have any senses or strategy, they'll know we can and will ask for assistance from nearby undersiders. They will likely have relic knights of their own stationed around the cities looking for such a delegation."

The tone was clear. This mission would likely see a high risk of death. Still, none of our hands dropped down. This was our calling after all.

He motioned to Shadowsong at his side, who stepped forward and spoke. "Traditionally, diplomacy requests between the surface clans and the undersiders have to be done with more than just a delegate. A head of a House will be needed to descend down and discuss the terms with the city. Only such an authority would be recognized with the importance required."

"The issue is that the majority of our knights are currently tied up in the major expedition and are not scheduled for a return within next week. Time that cannot be wasted."

Atius stepped up, adding his voice again. "Given we expect there to be resistance, we can't send a non-knighted diplomat. It will need to be a head of house with knight training, of which there are only two currently in the clan while the expedition is away."

My mind instantly hit the two possible candidates. Kidra and Ikusari Shadowsong, Ankha's father. A pit formed in my stomach as a hunch already whispered which would be picked.

"Given Shadowsong's skills, I need him at my side to assist in preparing the clan. The duty thus falls to Kidra." Atius said, looking directly at my sister.

She simply nodded. Ready.

Atius cleared his throat. "I charge Kidra of House Winterscar, to journey down to the undersider city of Capra'nor. You are to call upon debts owed to the clan, and return with assistance from that city. You will be escorted by four knights."

Shadowsong spoke at the Clan Lord's side. "After much debate, we have come to the conclusion that Kidra will be accompanied by my own daughter and two others under my banner. This will fill out numbers. Experience and skill will be brought into the team by the inclusion of Windrunner."

Evarum Windrunner, affectionately named 'Rum' by Ironreach when they weren't on the clock, was one of Atius's bodyguards. It was pretty clear to me what was going on here.

The clan lord certainly already knew about Kidra's recent explosion in speed and was counting on that. Add Windrunner into the mix, and the pair would likely be plenty strong enough to survive any odreal underground. The other shadowsong lackeys being sent down were likely to pad the numbers up without heavily reducing the number of skilled knights the clan currently had on hand. After all, Ankah and her two minions had only recently taken their armors, so their skillset was likely basic but not basic enough to slow down Kidra or Windrunner.

Kidra being an excellent diplomat in her own right was likely sugar in the tea as far as the mission required.

"Capra'nor is only a day's worth of travel to the south of the clan home. The descent downwards is expected to take three days. Convincing the Undersiders might take a few days or more, depending on how stubborn they behave. So conservatively, I'm expecting this away team to return to the clan no later than a month from now. We predict the raiders are two months away from launching their first wave. It's critical that you make it in time."

Kidra nodded while Atius stood and glanced over the rest of the assembled knights. "Everyone here are the reserve knights that were not currently deployed. I'm expecting light skirmishes as the raiders begin to mount up. Likely sabotage missions, or attempts to destroy outer fortifications. It will fall to us to defend the clan from such attacks up until the expeditions outside of communications range naturally return. Questions?"

One of the knights stood, bowed, and spoke. "My lord, when are we to tell the people?"

Atius gave a nod to his right hand, and shadowsong picked up the question. The rest of the session felt more like a blur to me as the crippling realization that within the hour, I'd be alone and left in charge of an entire House.

Kidra clasped my shoulder and shook it, armor and all. "Don't do anything stupid while I'm away, dear brother. I'll hear of it."

Dozens had gathered here already to wave goodbye to their friends and family. The room was oddly packed and bustling. I almost couldn't hear her over the noise in the airspeeder hangar.

"I'll make sure there isn't anything to clean up when you get back. Or if there is, I'll sweep it under the bed. Out of sight, out of mind, right?" I grinned, hands fiddling with Journey's helmet at my side.

She rolled her eyes at that. "Follow the list I left you, do not deviate from it. Everything to keep House Winterscar in working condition is there. If there's issues outside of my predictions, listen to the advice of Edgar." She said, pointing at the man to my side. He gave me a neutral, professional glance in return. "He's the Logi accountant hired on to our house. Sagrius is the guard captain, if you need the soldiers to do anything, he'll be the one to contact for mass movements."

That man in question was further back in the hangar, overseeing that supplies and crates were correctly provisioned and loaded up. The uniform was crisp and perfectly worn, including the golden Winterscar crest pinning his cloak. The man struck me as someone deeply serious and devoted to his work. Ergo, my spiritual opposite.

"Don't worry, don't worry. It's nothing new to me or anything. What's the worst thing that can happen?" I said, shrugging my shoulders. "A month is too little time for me to piss off everyone you've ever known. Two months though, I can do a lot in two months."

Now the eyrolls had turned into a glare. "Don't tempt the wrath of the gods. I know I can trust you with this. But please don't make me second guess myself."

I gave a nod, looking her dead in the eyes. Time to be serious. "I solemnly swear to guide House Winterscar in the direction you set out." I spoke, giving her a full salute.

She nodded, accepting the words. Behind the hubble of the hangar was reaching further levels as the airspeeder itself was going through the checks and tuneups. Scavengers were now equipping their rebreathers and powering on their environmental suits. The vents in the hangar had started up, blowing ice cold air into the room and quickly dropping the temperature.

"I'm just nervous, and when I'm nervous the bad jokes start coming out. It's like Ironreach and his puns." I said.

"One of the reasons I'm glad to be traveling with Windrunner." Kidra said. "He's far more serious about duties. Though the other three will be a pain to manage."

"Expecting trouble?"

Kidra glanced over at the three Shadowsongs, who were also giving their own goodbyes to a small gaggle of scavengers of the same house. The Shadowsong prime stood silently in the back, arms folded across his chest and appearing indifferent to watching his daughter leave for a month. If he had any thoughts, they weren't shared with anyone.

"Nothing I cannot handle, or have handled before." Kidra finally said. "The three shadowsongs are under my command, for once. Ankah may be a royal pain in my back, but she will follow my orders and she understands the mission hinges on delivering Atius's will to these Undersiders."

Behind me, two soldiers from my house walked into the hangar, carrying with them sealed boxes of supplies to be loaded up on the airspeeder. They'd be accompanying my sister out into the white wastes as a bodyguard detail up until it was time for her to cross over underground. At that junction, it would be only the relic knights. The House soldiers would be returning home, hopefully with good news.

Teed was here as well, though he wasn't the pilot for this ride. He'd had private words with Kidra earlier, and was quietly waiting at the side for me to wrap up.

Kidra, on her part, simply equipped her helmet, sealed it, then turned and walked up the airspeeder ramp. Like an unspoken agreement, the rest of the knights and crew filed behind her, boarding the airspeeder.

A divide spread, between the crew that would be going on the trip, and the hangar staff that would be left behind. Teed passed through the airlock, taking one last look at the massive speeder. The pilot aboard gave him a quick salute through the windows, which he mirrored back before finally going through the portal.

On my part, I equipped my helmet and sealed it shut from the environment, walking and taking a spot next to the Shadowsong prime. In moments, we were the only ones left in the hangar.

Water condensation on the ground was already quickly turning to ice as the vents now began to expel the freezing wind directly. It was important to do this in a controlled manner, least a vacuum happen the moment the heavy hangar doors open.

"And you, little Winterscar, what are your thoughts on all this?" Shadowsong asked to my side, arms still folded up. "Do you believe your elder sister should have been sent instead of a proven knight?"

Well. That seemed like a whole bottle of drama I certainly had no leg in, given the tone he spoke in. "Kidra's far more skilled than people guess. She'll do just fine for the mission. I trust the clan lord's intuition on this matter." I answered diplomatically.

The prime nodded. "I suppose I have no other choice than to do the same and hope this isn't some ill thought of plot from your house."

I shrugged my shoulders. "We're all on the same side in the end, right?"

"Are we?" He said softly, a tone in his voice that I couldn't quite pick at.

Maybe I can cut right to the heart of this little squabble. "Is this more about you being worried for your daughter, or upset the Clan Lord picked a Winterscar over you?"

Ikusari turned his gaze slowly in my direction. I couldn't tell what face he was making under that helmet, only that it likely wasn't a friendly one. "I do not allow my personal feelings to cloud judgement. Your sister is untested and only a novice knight." He pointed one gauntleted hand to the speeder. "The only knight of experience I would trust aboard that ship - is Windrunner. One single knight on a mission of this importance. That... is what I do not agree with. Ironreach's vouch for your sister's skills in combat is suspicious to me. No one simply masters relic armor like this. How Atius did not see through that ploy is something I have yet to understand."

"If you think it's not true, or some kind of political play for power, I can tell you right now - it's not. She really is as good as they say."

The airspeeder ahead began to power on the main engines, cycling through each to verify integrity. It was absurdly noisy in the hangar, except both the prime and I had helmets that easily cut through such noise. Usually, the side walls of the speeder were left open to allow quick deployment. This time around, the speeder was sealed shut due to the weather report. They didn't want loose snow to flow into the speeder given the approaching storm.

"How?" Shadowsong simply said after the deep pause between us. "You have had these armors for a scant few weeks. And Ironreach claims you and your sister already move faster than he does? If this is not some political scheming, it would be preposterous. I would believe it from Tenisent, but you are not him. Not even a pale imitation of the man."

I felt anger bubbling up inside me, but self control was never really something I excelled at. "Father was a legend, there's no way anyone can compete against that." I tried hard to keep my mouth shut, and yet the teeth still came out. "You would know all about trying to measure up against him."

Here's everything that's wrong with this picture: For one, this was the Shadowsong prime I was smack talking. For two, I was smack talking right to his face, which usually isn't the greatest of ideas. It's never ended well for me anytime in my past, and I honestly have no idea how I still haven't learned the lesson after having my face punched in, the first time. Let alone the second, third and fourth time. And yet here I was, pissing people off like usual.

I tried to cool off and disarm the topic. It was pretty clear to me Atius had so far kept the Winterblossom technique secret as he decided just how to integrate it into the clan. Likely he was mulling over his options before he committed to any path, if I had to guess. It made sense that Shadowsong would think we're pulling the toolbox over the Clan Lord's head here, since he doesn't know what I've been doing in the shadows.

"House Winterscar has seen some... let's say 'renovations' on our work culture." I testilly tossed out. "Renovations that I'm quite proud of. The backstabbing politically addicted house is buried under the snow and good riddance to that lot. This new House is Kidra's vision, and she doesn't make mistakes."

"Asking me to trust the words of a Winterscar?" He scoffed. "Do you take me for a fool?"

The airspeeder's engines picked up, and a deep rumbling could be heard even through the armor. The hangar door was opening up and the wind picked up strongly, the last bits of warm air inside the hangar sucked right out of the room out into the freeze. Behind, the sun was slowly setting across the horizon, a deep red. Waves of wind blasted snowdrift periodically, a small blizzard raging outside.

It was a poor weather to set out in. A blizzard wall was fast approaching from the north. The airspeeder departing should outrun it, though they were already prepared in the event the storm sped up and overtook them, side doors already shuttered on the speeder. The colony on the other hand was immobile, so in a few minutes, the storm will blow over us. We wouldn't be buried in snow, the wind was too strong for that. But for a few hours, visibility outside would be practically zero, esspecially with the sun setting. Nothing that an airspeeder can't plow through, though an environmental suit exposed out here would find danger if the winds blew the poor sod across the ground. Easy to break something if you're tumbling across hard surface.

The airspeeder began to backtrack, gracefully sliding out of the hangar and into the ice tundra that spread across. Turning on itself as it moved, angling to the south. Far in the distance, mountains of white and silver stood waiting for them. With a final roar, the airspeeder began to pick up speed and kicked up a plume of white sleet behind it as it sped away.

Leaving the empty hanger occupied with only the Shadowsong prime and myself. "Look, it's too late to recall the speeder. You'll just have to trust me on this. Trust starts somewhere, right?"

"Indeed... it does." He said cryptically, head glancing back out into the white wastes, hand on the pommel of his blade. I turned my own to watch the receeding airspeeder.

The distant howling of the oncoming storm could be heard already, a massive white wall of powder snow being shoveled by harsh winds, racing across the horizon towards us. Even this far away, I could hear it.

And among that sound, I heard something else: The sound of an Occult blade being drawn, right behind me.

Next chapter - Worthy

Book 2 - Chapter 22 - Worthy

"Draw your blade, Winterscar." A voice hissed behind me. Full of old history and emotion.

I turned to see Ikusari Shadowsong, the prime of House Shadowsong, with his Occult longblade extended out. Tip pointed in my direction.

I took a step back, "If you're looking for a spar, you know Occult blades aren't allowed. We can schedul-"

"I'll halt at twenty. You'll find no safety against me until then, Winterscar."

That meant the fight would end once one of us hit twenty percent on shield reserve. A very dangerous margin. Shields don't last long against occult edges, it only took a few seconds of overall contact before they broke.

And Occult weapons were still weapons of destruction capable of cutting through anything, even the ancient relic armors. "Why are you doing this? Why now?" I hissed. "This is stupidly dangerous, even if we aimed to stop at fifty! Twenty is a thread's edge away from dismembering something."

"You've managed to fool Ironreach and the Clan Lord himself somehow, but I know your kind, Winterscar. Each time Ironreach fought it was scheduled and upon your estate grounds. Whatever trick you've come up with, it requires time and location."

Ah. He thought Kidra's skills were a trick. To be fair, I could see his point of view in this. This would be exactly the sort of ploy some of the old Household members would pull off for clout. Fooling the clan lord was not something easily done given that his eyes and ears were all over the clan. Shadowsong imagined whatever we'd pulled off, it would have to be some delicate contraption of a plan that required everything to be set up just right to work.

A surprise duel could easily throw a wrench into such a plan like that.

"Look I get where you're coming from, but trust me when I say, Kidra's on the same level as Ironre-"

"Only fools trust your kind." The prime waved around himself. "There is no one here to save you. No tricks you can prepare. There is only yourself and whatever worth your mettle is. Draw your blade."

"Can you stop being insane for a moment!? I'm nowhere near my sister's level, it takes me time to-"

"Draw your blade, Winterscar. I'll not ask again." His voice was ice with an undercurrent of rage.

Duels using real Occult weapons were far different compared to regular crucible swords. Those were weapons meant to kill with. Up here, true combat between knights is split into two main phases. Wearing down the shields and then going for the ending blow. So of course, both have completely different styles of combat.

Against the shields of a relic armor, location didn't matter, and neither did speed of the attack. The only rule that mattered was the amount of overall time the destructive edge of an Occult blade could be held against the shield.

Once the shields were no longer a factor, the fight would radically change back into a style everyone was more used to. Targets were the hands, legs, head and throat. Fights were brutal and over in seconds at that point. No one else had shields, so this was the tried and true.

This style was one I wouldn't be seeing today, not if the fight ended at twenty percent shields. Hopefully.

There wasn't any more time to negotiate with Shadowsong. Before I could figure out what else to say, he lunged forward. Tip extended out.

Reflex took hold of my movements, forcing me to draw my blade and parry the strike. My movements were slow, the soul-fractal not active. I'd trained with it, but never in any situation like this. I didn't exactly expect a fight here.

Kidra practically walked everywhere while within the soul-trance, maybe even took her naps with it on. I didn't have that kind of discipline in me, though if I made it out in one piece after this event that might change. Sinking into that trance was a lot like putting on the under armour leggings. It was never done all in one go, I always had to take my time to wiggle in the right way, use my hands to clump up section after section and roll it into position. Time I wasn't going to get against him.

"Stand and fight, coward." The prime spat. "Show me this technique of yours, if it exists."

"It's going to take me some time to setup, it's not that simp-"

I hardly even had time to say a word out, before he was attacking again. This time in a three pronged blow of strikes I belatedly recognized came from the Makiskeru style. Not being fast enough to batter away all three of those, I wisely took several steps back with each strike, rapidly running out of room in exchange.

"There are no techniques that need time to setup." He all but spat out. "That you have to set anything up only proves you have nothing but tricks and deception."

"What do you want?"

"What I want is to confirm my only daughter wasn't sent out to die like a dog, all for some convoluted Winterscar plot to curry favor with the clan lord!" This time it was an impressively quick uppercut, followed by a swift double slash. Tetsu form, ashina cross.

I continued backtracking, relying heavily on the spacing to keep me out of danger, searching the hangar for anything I could use. His attacks hadn't been made to truly strike at me, rather force me away. "I told you already you gods damned git, it takes me time! My sister can just swing out of nowhere, I can't!"

Ikusari stopped, helmet glaring down at me. "There is no technique. You have nothing." He lunged forward, a vertical strike that would have cleaved through me from head to chest had I not outright jumped and rolled out of the way. Another move from Tetsu, upper heavenly strike.

I made a second saving roll for it, leaping across with all Journey was capable of. The prime walked slowly towards where I recovered.

"I shouldn't have even hoped. It was obvious from the start. You're a boy in over your head and now my daughter will pay the price for your arrogance. I should have put you and your sister in your place the moment I heard your house was on the move. Should have seen the signs. If I had acted earlier, the clan lord would have seen reason and sent me out instead."

Crouched down, my hands reached out and grabbed a rogue toolkit box from under a table, which I turned and chucked at him immediately. Right on time, he was about to strike again at me just as I lobbed the heavy thing at him. As the toolbox arched through the air, I bolted forward from my crouch, following the trajectory and executing a fast sideways cut cobbled together from Nagareru flow style, a school of combat highly adaptable to any recovery movements. Movements like water, capable of being used from any situation.

The box was swatted away with an extended left hand, backhanded down into the ground where it spun and bounced away wildly, dented. With his right hand, he cut straight up at nearly the same time, guiding his blade to intercept my attack. Both our blades were knocked up with the telltale harsh ping of occult edge on edge.

In that window of time, he twisted on his foot, nailing a powerful knee into my chest. Journey absorbed the shock without issue, but the hit still forced me to bend over. With that, he had full control over my movements and leveraged it to throw me backwards, in the direction of the white wastes. The moment I raised my head back up, all I saw was an incoming kick coming straight at my center mass. It launched me out of the hangar, flying out into the harsh wind and exposed surface.

Here the snow billowed around, already obscuring the battlefield. The gathering storm closing in from the distance, a massive wall of white.

I recognized the mercy. In the span of a few seconds, this fight could have been over a few times over already.

How did I know this? Because he chose to kick me instead of taking the obvious advantage after that parry and shredding Journey's shields then and there. Don't rightly know what I expected. This wasn't a real fight for him. Shadowsong was the best duelist in the clan, likely a step above my sister even with her newfound skills. What hope did I even have?

"What in the gods has gotten into you?!" I sputtered out. There was something unhinged about Shadowsong.

The prime stalked out of the hangar, walking with intent. "Stop running. Show me Winterscar! Give me something. Anything." There was a hint of desperation leaking into his voice.

I don't think I've ever seen the Prime behave like this, at least in the few times I've seen him. He'd always professed a steely control over emotions, and yet he looked absolutely furious now. I stared at him, mutely.

My silence seemed to have been the wrong thing to say.

"Four novices with only Windrunner to protect the fledglings? Do you realize what you've done?!" He bellowed, voice lined with desperation and anger. "Think! Windrunner's been ordered to escort the delegate down to that city. Everyone else in that mission is expendable. My daughter is expendable. And now she's out there, without anyone!"

He stalked forward in my direction, anger boiling off his strides, as I scrambled back up on my feet. "Windrunner is trusting your sister, and when the moment of truth comes and it's revealed she doesn't - someone will die. You wanted time? Have it. Show me, damn you, that there is still hope. SHOW ME!"

I cleared my mind, while Shadowsong continued to stare at me. The soul fractal burned at the side of my helmet, waiting for me to merge with it. A breath in, a breath out, I searched for the calm I needed to organize myself correctly. If I messed up, I'd have to extricate myself and start over. Given the slight moment of peace, I don't think I'd get another chance.

"Pitiful." He said across the wastes, voice pitching down. Then he began to walk forward, closing the distance, as if he'd come to a decision. "In the end, you're only another dog like the rest of the mutts that spawned you."

"I'm nothing like them." I hissed back, taking the first step into the soul fractal. The world began to blur, distance receding in and out of focus. Colors appearing and disappearing as different parts of my soul shifted around.

"Are you?" He spread his arms out. "Without time to set up your convoluted plots, to get everything perfectly controlled, you're nothing. Unable to stand against even a sliver of my attention. You're a traitor to the clan, Winterscar. You've doomed innocent lives for this farce."

I took the second step into the soul fractal. Thoughts become more lucid as the adrenaline and fear taking hold of my brain lost grasp. I sunk deeper into the soul-trance, each step being easier than the last.

"For whatever reason the clan lord trusts you over my objections, and refused to tell me why. Your House's lies have finally wormed past his judgement. What I do, I should have done years ago, for the good of the clan. You're too dangerous to be left alive. Your entire house always has been. I'll accept whatever consequences come." He brought his blade up, giving a salute. A salute to the dead. "Tenisent was the only exception in your House. It's clear to me his line ended with him. I'll honor the memory and remove the rot from our clan, starting with you."

Frantically, I doubled down on the soul fractal.

His sword moved from that terrible salute, into position. Ready to lunge.

The roots clicked into place, one after another, like the pins of a lock. The whole suddenly ready as the last lock hit home. Just in time.

"You're wrong about me." I said. "But not about the danger. I'll show you just what my Father left behind."

I slid my backfoot into stance, then drew my sword and stood to my proper height. The speed of my draw and stance causing the wind to break it's pattern for a moment, flakes of snow billowing in confused directions. Shadowsong instantly halted in his steps. His head ever so slightly tilted to the side, an unworded question.

He knew something had changed. Could feel it. Maybe years of instinct and fighting had drilled things deep within him.

A deep calm settled between us. A moment before a tempest. Both of us remained silent, watching the other, knowing what came next would be unlike anything that came before.

It's odd how memory works. Maybe it's because he mentioned my Father. Maybe it's the way he made his way across the white wastes. His stance, his posture, all of it threw me halfway across memories.

Back to the very first time I'd seen Father truly fight.

He'd been a dead drunk my whole childhood, having started his binge the day I was born. I'd heard stories about his skills, and never believed a single one of them. After all, how could a drunk like him do any of that? He could barely stand on his feet most of the days.

Every now and then, tradition and honor would require him to wear the armor for cultural functions but that was the only time I'd seen him ever appear anywhere near a proper relic knight. Everything everyone told me may as well have been about a stranger.

And then the raid happened, and something settled into his soul that shook him free of the drink and vapid days spent.

A week after we'd settled into the new empty Winterscar estates, Father challenged Shadowsong for the title of First Blade.

I'd gone to that arena expecting a professional knight to beat down a belligerent drunk, or at least a recovering one given I hadn't seen him with any bottles up to then. Only quiet reservation and meditation anytime I got an eye of him. It had certainly been a jarring change of behavior, but even so I couldn't possibly imagine someone like him beating the Shadowsong prime.

He had walked into that arena, still and silent. Crucible sword drawn and ready. Winterscar doned, the ancient family armor all polished up and presentable. And then he'd moved in ways I'd never seen a relic knight fight. I never saw Father the same way again from that day onwards.

I'd trained for years with him after that, not by choice. It had been hard and grueling, but deep down were the fundamentals he'd taught me. I knew every move in the book - and all the extras he'd penned out.

I remember the opening attack Father had used at that first trial. The very first attack I'd ever seen come out of him. The blade in his hand whistled through the air like a chorus. His movements had looked like flowing water, a precise torrent that overwhelmed all.

Each strike, each step - they were all different techniques woven together. And individually I knew them all. Shadowsong lasted for a moment against him only because he knew he wasn't fighting against a drunk anymore. Knew it from the moment he saw Father walk into that ring.

That same instinct was now rising up inside him, warning him of danger. Warning him of me.

My mind overlayed the movements I'd seen Father perform. I took a final breath. It was now or never. Nagareru form, lunging tide.

Journey blurred forward, squishing my body against the armor by sheer inertia. One leap forward. My hands raised up, bringing Cathida's longsword into position as my body charged forward. A single boot barely spending any time on the ground, pushing me forward again. Extend sword arm out. Impact. In a heartbeat I'd moved and crossed past his defenses, striking directly at his chest. Occult blue sprang up across his relic armor, stopping the blow with his armor's shields.

Journey's heads up display showed the percentage on his end drop significantly from that. One hundred down to seventy three. It forced him to take a step back, grunting in sheer surprise at the impact.

I didn't end there, instead re-directing the blade into a sharp downwards swipe from my extended position, knocking the back of his blade out of the way and opening him up for another strike. Sixty five percent. I flowed through it, a diagonal cut across his breastplate, dragging the cutting edge of the occult blade across the entire shield, twisting my body around, leg extended out for the follow-up kick.

In the original duel between Father and Shadowsong, he had managed to twist away from that kick at the last second. Be it because I caught him by surprise, that he had grown older, or that I had exceeded the speeds even Father had reached - this time the kick connected. It lifted him up and off the ground, then sent him sailing away, a dozen feet.

Ikusari twisted in midair, like a cat, using the proper recovery movements to land on his feet and left hand, right hand holding his sword up and pointed at me. I could see the three trails left on the ground as his feet and hand had clawed the snowy ground to slow him down. Thirty seven percent left. I needed one more solid hit and his shields would surely barrel past the twenty percent mark.

"What was that, Winterscar?" He said, almost in a whisper.

"You keep thinking it's a trick. I said it before, you're wrong. It was never a trick. I'm just not as good as my sister is."

Ikusari didn't answer, staying mute for a moment. Processing the discovery. "Why does this take you time?"

"It's complicated. Needs the right state of mind. Not exactly easy to find that calm when an angry man is waving a razor sharp blade in your face."

Especially one with murderous intention.

The prime stood still for a moment. Then his head tilted down and he laughed. A loud, wild thing. It sounded more like a torrent of emotions violently leaving him behind, a howling cackle. When he finished, his sword rose back up, pointed right at me. "I thought myself clever. How... odd. Never have I felt more relieved in my life, to have been wrong." He gave another weak chuckle, shoulders dropping slightly, before straightening once more. "Come then, Keith. Finish what we started. Show me all that Tenisent left behind."

He didn't need to ask twice. Journey lunged at him, crossing the distance in a blur, rocketing into his position. The helmet obscured any emotion, but for some reason I could swear he was grinning behind the mask. His sword slammed down to intercept mine and the match began.

The initial hits had done well due to shock and surprise, but now that Ikusari knew what to expect, his true skills were brought out.

My own speed overshadowed him by a strong margin. My body could move at the same speed my mind could - except my mind wasn't as quick as my sister's. Every parry I made was a belated realization. Every dodge was one I only thought of at the last second. There was still that mental delay inside me between seeing the attack, categorizing what it was, and remembering the correct defense against it. It was dragging me down, making my motions more like a belated patch fix rather than an intuitive leap.

I was spending too much time thinking, not enough time moving.

The Occult trail of light streamed behind our blades, interrupted only occasionally by a punch, kick or spinning elbow. We traded blow after blow in that frozen tundra, weaving a dozen different strikes and counters all within seconds. I tried to turn my head off, to simply leave my reflexes to do as they were trained.

It wasn't enough. Sheer speed couldn't overcome experience and skill. Shadowsong was rapidly adapting, I could see it in the movements and stance.

Calm calculation, testing my defense and attack, narrowing down how I moved and thought. He wasn't taking me lightly anymore, this was his true breadth of skill, fully applied.

Soon he would begin to predict my strikes, and then he'd set traps and lead my reactions. Kidra had gone through the same process. It took her three minutes of non-stop combat before she'd finished her analysis and turned the tables on me.

Shadowsong and myself had been trading blows for just about the same amount of time and I could tell the turning point was rapidly approaching from his end. Despite my advantage in speed, and him being one hit away from defeat, I just couldn't land that damn last hit. And time was running out.

My saving grace was the storm.

Rapidly approaching, a billowing blanket of snow. The winds weren't strong enough to throw relic knights around, but that wasn't the true danger - It was the snow being pulled and churned inside the blizzard. That snow would cover everything like a blanket, and cut off the sunlight. In that darkness, the field of combat would be changed.

I didn't know how I was going to take the advantage yet, but whatever chance for victory was left - the answers were somewhere inside that storm.

I changed my tactics from trying to earn that last strike, to trying to buy time for the approaching storm. He noticed immediately and pressed the attack, not letting me out of his range.

Another minute passed and finally the tables turned. A sweeping kick was instantly countered. He'd begun jumping over the kick before I'd even decided the action. His sword was already cutting into my shield halfway through the sweep. Journey pinged me, showing on my HUD as my shields dropped from one hundred down to sixty eight. He sailed past me, Occult blade whistling around, approaching back right at me.

My own sword raced out, only to belatedly realize it was futile. He'd predicted my defense and switched his strike to the single most optimal location to counter my expected defense. He hadn't been wrong.

Fifty three percent shields were left after that.

I tried to shore up my defense. He seemed to know that'd be exactly what I'd do, his attacks shifting directly into the Makiskeru style of full aggression, with little defense.

Forty one percent.

The moment I thought to try to attack and abuse the weakness of that combat form, he'd ended his strikes right into Tetsu, already prepared to handle my ill-thought of offence, easily parrying my belated blow and retaliating with his own.

Thirty three percent.

I was losing. He allowed me to scramble back, resetting the fight. Ikusari hadn't done that to give me any time. No, I saw him crouch into the traditional stance of Nagareru.

If I hadn't been calmed inside the soul-trance, I would have likely started laughing uncontrollably here. I knew what he was doing.

Nagareru form, lunging tide. Father's own opening attack, the very same one I'd used earlier.

I brought my sword up in the traditional counter move to that, and of course it had been a trap. His lunge instantly diverted into a feint, his body twisting around on himself, narrowly avoiding my counter strike, the Occult longblade unerringly striking down on my throat, wrapping around, and tossing me back as he flowed past.

Twenty seven percent.

Had he held down the sword at my neck for a fraction of a second more, my shields would be dropped past the mark.

He stood slowly, turning around, blade whistling back up. As if surprised I was still in the fight. "The gods favor you, boy. It seems you still stand."

"You know what they say, luck favors fools."

The blizzard was fast approaching. Seconds away.

"Your sister, this is what she's used against Ironreach?" He asked.

I gave him a slow nod. "She took it, and elevated it past anything I could possibly do myself. Fighting was never my strong point. It's hers."

He returned the nod, glancing up as the white wall of snow fast approached. "Then I have nothing to fear for my daughter." He said. "Gods willing, perhaps your House truly has changed colors. I can hardly believe it."

"Are we good then? Done dueling?"

His head tilted to the side at that. "The winner remains unknown. I was wrong once already, I may be wrong again. So fight me with everything you have. I expect nothing less."

Just as well. Time was up. I spread my arms to both sides, with confidence I hardly felt as the white blizzard wall surged past and engulfed me from behind, rushing over both of us in an eyeblink and plunging the world into a dim twilight, fading fast away. Soon the only thing that could still be faintly visible was the glowing edges of our occult blades.

Inside that pitch black darkness, the solution came my mind. It was almost obvious in hindsight.

I knew exactly how I could win.

His blade swept up, flowing into a defensive form. I could see the glow through the snowstorm but no other details of his armor.

"My turn." I said, turning off my own blade and taking a step backwards, vanishing into the darkness that surrounded us.

Next chapter - Defeat Means Friendship

Book 2 - Chapter 23 - Defeat Means Friendship

While I'd 'invented' the soul-fractal method of cheating the iron-body technique, I hadn't been the one to truly shake it down for rent. That was Kidra's field of expertise.

She'd tried to explain what exactly she did to make it so effective, except I didn't have quite that intimate understanding of combat itself as a concept.

When we made tests, we found we could see different kinds of concepts. For example, I would get vague understandings of engineering concepts within items, while Kidra would see absolutely nothing in the same piece of environmental suit. It opened up a lot of interesting questions about how different people saw through the soul-sight. Which made me think the soul-sight had more to do with the concepts as seen through the mind's interpretation.

So - figuring out what someone was planning on doing based on the soul-sight was something I wasn't anywhere in the realm of being able to pull off.

That said, the general concept of 'relic knight' was something I was familiar with. And there just so happened to be one, directly in front of me.

To his credit, the moment I turned my blade off, Ikusari got the picture and followed suit himself, vanishing into the darkness. What he didn't know was that he'd remained perfectly visible to my senses. Specifically the occult ones he had no idea I possessed.

When he lunged right at where he thought I'd be - expecting me to have backpedaled directly backwards - he struck through nothing but cascading snow. I'd seen the concept of him moving around, and easily took a few steps to my side, letting him speed past me.

His blade whistled out, occult blue appearing a fraction of a second before the actual strike. My own blade lit up and I lunged out after him, being disappointed when I realized the angle of my blade had been in his peripheral vision, and so his own reflex snapped down a defense with an instant riposte back, the moment he saw the glow through the sheet of snow.

Given he wasn't actively breaking down my technique anymore nor leading me into traps, I managed my own belated defense, using bits of Nagareru to transition easily into a retreat, turning off my blade and disappearing into the darkness.

"Can his armor see me?" I asked Cathida.

"Oh heavens no, you think Journey can't read the mood? It's doing all it can to keep signatures down to a minimum. Unfortunately, your little friend here also has armor that's doing the exact same thing to us."

"Any advice?"

"Don't get hit." She cackled. "And if you win, make sure to gloat about it."

"I don't know why I even asked." I grumbled, taking steps to circle around the enemy.

The shadowsong prime had chosen to remain exactly in his same spot. I couldn't quite see his detailed movements, the soul-sense only showed a 'blob' of a concept - relic knight, human, sword, armor and a small hoard of smaller concepts that I realized were the decorations on his armor when I focused on them more.

It felt more akin to a sonar of some kind, where my enemy appeared as a dot who's location I could track, if not what they looked like or were doing in detail.

Beggars can't be choosers. I slowly circled around to his back, hoping he hadn't turned around on himself in the meantime.

A flash of light stopped me in my tracks, a bright, white light that instantly illuminated the surroundings. A massive crack of thunder happened simultaneously, but my attention was less on the noise and more on backpedaling frantically as an irate relic knight instantly turned and struck out at my now revealed location. his armor's headlights lit up right as his blade did, illuminating a hands stretch ahead of him, before the billowing cloud of white snow swallowed up the world.

It was just enough light to reveal me.

I blocked and parried a few hits before turning off my blade, dodging his own slash, and diving to the ground for cover. Rolling away back into the safety of darkness, out of his helmet light's range.

My enemy's signatures winked out, both the armor's headlights and his occult blade.

"An interesting game, Winterscar." The prime said, voice making it through my comms. "Do you really believe this will give you the edge you need to win? The lightning in this storm is inevitable."

I switched the comms frequency and replied. "Working out so fa-"

He turned, helmet lights flashing on once more, and struck right where I'd been slowly approaching from. It came out as wide swinging attacks that weren't from any school of combat I knew of. He continued to scythe through the air as I backpedaled, having an easier time dodging the searching strikes since they were telegraphed enough from the glow of his blade.

His helmet lights must have caught a brief reflection of relic armor silver, because he suddenly turned and made a far more purposeful strike in my direction.

I was forced to turn on my sword to block. That was a second mistake as his movements instantly snapped back into a combat stance from Makiskeru - hyper aggression at all costs. He'd been swinging wildly to bait me out, and now that I'd triggered my blade, he was using my sword glow as a marker for where I truly was. His own blade whipped through the air, unerringly striking out at me with such fury and speed I had no chance to turn off my sword and slink back into the darkness.

The man had bit down on bone and he wasn't letting go for any reason. Another flash of lighting struck out, lighting up the scene, giving him more information to work with. Chipping away at my defense and keeping me pinned into the fight. A few times I tried to dodge while simultaneously turning off my sword, only to be forced to turn it right back on as his strikes continued and anticipated where my body mass would have to be, making use of the brief moments we came close enough for his helmet lights to illuminate me.

Kidra was my saving grace here and training with her was the only reason I managed to survive that particular bout. She'd often told me the weaknesses in each combat school, and with Makiskeru being one of her favorites, there wasn't any lack of practice there.

By sheer gods damned chance, Ikusari repeated a set of patterns Kidra had previously explained in depth. I saw the expected hole she'd shown me and took it, striking back and forcing him to dodge the attack, aborting his own.

Now this is the part I thought I was clever on. I'd already assumed he'd somehow find a way of foiling my attack, so midway through the strike I'd pre-committed to turning off the blade and twisting away into the darkness. A plan that worked out perfectly, leaving me slinking back into the cold embrace of pitch darkness, far out of reach from his light, all with the howling snow obfuscating my footfalls.

His blade remained active, moving slowly around him, outlining his turning helmet as he searched through for where I'd gone. It looks like he'd already guessed I had some method of tracking him, so trying to hide in the darkness was a moot point. "This will not last forever." He taunted. "I need only wait for the next lightning strike. And this time, I won't make a mistake again."

"That's bait." Cathida said. "Definitely bait. But you do you deary, go on and run your mouth at him again. It'll be fun."

Last time it had been obvious he'd used the direction of my comms to strike at, sniffing around with wide swings until I'd revealed myself. Fool me once and all that.

I made my way around, watching him the whole time. his helmet lights winked out, his sword reached further away from his body, the glow no longer revealing any other part of his armor. He was getting ready for me to come to him, and making sure I wouldn't know which direction he was facing.

He was right on one item: It was inevitable for another one of those blasted lightning strikes to pop up and reveal my location. All functioning surface structures had lightning rods for a reason.

My feet moved with a mission across the terrain and I took my chance. He'd made it easy by not turning off his sword.

Which I should have considered suspicious in hindsight, but my weasel brain only saw a quick win. So I made an excellent impression of a fly zooming right into a light trap, when I belatedly realized he'd crouched down the entire time. Leaving his sword high up in the air, angled to appear as if he were standing up instead, and keeping his eyes peeled out for my inevitable attempt to stab him right in the back like a true Winterscar.

The moment he spotted my blade turned on, he flicked his leg out for a sweep, catching me right in the middle of tapping out where his torso should have been. It connected, sending me tumbling down, and my recovery roll barely managed to get me through. I didn't bother trying to stop my momentum, instead speeding up and diving forward as I heard the tell-tale sound of an occult blade whizzing through the air a few times behind me.

In a feat of desperate inspiration, I threw my blade to the side while I dove to the opposite, fooling him for a fraction of a second into following the glowing blade. Pulling his own trick against him in a way. I could see his helmet's lights flicker after the glowing blade for a half second, which was just enough time to get out of range. His follow-up sword slices were blind and far off their mark as I slunk back into the darkness to plot and scheme.

Here's the issue: I didn't have my reserve knife on me. For good reason - it was still in pieces back in my sanctum, the exposed hilt well hidden alongside Talen's book and Tsuya's seeker. No way was I going to walk around with an exposed blade that could reveal the secrets like that.

Which meant I had no means of fighting back, now that I'd ditched my sword. The longsword had zipped through the air, before landing down into the ground, submerged up to the hilt. Shadowsong made quick work reaching the last known location, and ripping the weapon out of the ground, now wielding both his own longsword and mine.

I had no weapons and time was ticking down to the next lighting strike, where he'd almost certainly end the fight the moment he found me.

Shadowsong had thirty seven percent of his shields left. In occult blade terms, that'd be one single slice away from the twenty percent mark or outright overloading the shield. In normal physics terms, it was a massive immovable wall. Bullets wouldn't even trigger the shields, and punching him with the full might of Journey would drain only a few percentages with each hit. More than enough time for him to land one tap on me in the exchange.

So I needed an Occult blade or I'd have to declare forfeit. Which was unacceptable to me, because I wanted to win. I'd been pushed around my entire life, and for the first time I felt I had power - real genuine power. There was a thirst in me to prove to myself. And if there was any one time for this, it was here and now.

It drove me to look for solutions. There were exactly two ways I could think of getting a blade in my hand. Three ways if I counted asking politely for my blade back, but I doubted that plan had much of a success rate.

Knights almost always had a reserve knife in their boot or on their chest. A wealthy one like Shadowsong would absolutely have a spare. I just needed to find where it was, pickpocket it, and then slice away at the bastard. That's plan A.

He wasn't guarding the knife, clearly expecting me to use my own reserve knife instead, not realizing I didn't have one on me. Which still meant he was expecting some kind of knife to his back, albeit not his own.

There was plenty of scrap metal that littered the ground by the base of the clan habitat. Leftovers from past insulation patch jobs, or older expansions. I could dig something out, rip it apart with Journey, and then create a throwaway occult blade just for this as plan B.

That said, if I did that, I'd be revealing my cards to Shadowsong and that wasn't a step I was willing to take just yet.

So, stealing his knife was the current plan.

I snuck around, searching with my soul-sense to spot where the concept of an occult knife would be among the many concepts floating around his location. I spotted it shortly enough. It was low to the ground, that ruled out the chest holster, which meant the blade was in one of his boots.

He wasn't moving, instead keeping his attention primed for any sign of an attack. He expected I'd draw out the knife and strike out.

I slowly advanced towards him, crouched. Closer and closer in the pitch darkness. The sound of the snowstorm buried any of my own sounds, even I couldn't hear the snow crunching under my feet.

Step by step I advanced until I was right upon him. My right hand reached out blindly into that darkness, stretching out for where the concept of a relic knife lay.

And then the lightning stuck.

The world was lit up once more. I made a desperate lunge for his knife, grabbing the hilt, pressing the activation switch. It lit up right inside the sheath, cutting straight through as I slid it out.

At the same time, he'd spotted me as well. His own right hand flicked out like a snake, tip of his sword tapping my shoulder in a quick down and up movement that sapped away another thirteen percent of my shields right then and there, taking me down far past the twenty percent mark.

We stayed frozen in that moment of light. Both of us having made our final moves.

Shadowsong's armor and my own turned on their helmet lights, illuminating the pitch darkness once more.

"It seems this match is at an end." Shadowsong said as he looked down at his ruined knife holster.

I rose back up myself, turning his knife off. Extending the hilt back at him. He nodded, doing the same with my own occult longsword.

"I expected you to attack with your own knife. I didn't expect you to try to steal my own. Winterscars. Always dramatic in everything you do."

"You talk a lot of smack for someone that went on a murderous rampage just a moment ago." I shot back.

He hummed in thought at that. "So it is. I thought of myself as a disciplined soldier above such base thoughts. It seems in the end there are still things in this world I care too much about." He stood taller, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I was blinded by hate and rage and old history. I jumped to the worst conclusion, taking it for fact. Had you not been given the chance to display your skills, you would be dead at my feet and the clan would have been greatly weakened for it. I owe you remediation. We will speak and settle on the price of penance later."

He reached out a hand, and I clasped it back. Journey showed me on my HUD, his shield health was hovering at exactly eighteen percent. I'd sliced through the knife holster, and skimmed the side of his shields instantly after. The little tap and slide had done enough damage.

He turned to square me up, then inclined his head in a short bow. "My armor confirms its shields passed the twenty percent mark a scant moment before your own did." Shadowsong said, "You fought well. I accept my defeat."

Next chapter - A taste of blood (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 24 - A taste of blood (T)

To'Wrathh's wings carefully tasted the air, individual blades moving to catch the invisible currents. Her in-built gravity manipulator did most of the work of course, the wings were more for decoration. Still, they played their part as if it were the most important piece. And so, she approached the human settlement from above.

Humans, as she had learned, had a blind spot. They never looked up. Not unless they'd been trained and conditioned to look up for dangers - such as when they spotted signs of her old nest. Only then would they look up.

Day to day life however? Not a single care in the world.

Far below her, these humans moved around like ants. They scuttled about the hunting lodge, as Tamery had called it. She could make a guess if she cared to, though she left it instead to her subsystems. Recognition software running on the old human CMOS systems powered to life, crunched the data, put green squares on anything that had a high enough percentage match to a human figure. And then tallied up all the squares.

At the start, dozens would be added to the talley as they appeared in and out of tents, exposing themselves to her sight. A few hours into her watch, her software had more or less caught every single human, no duplicates. The count came to a halt at one hundred and thirty three humans. It hadn't gone up for the past hour since.

Packing up fuel cells on hoversleds, cooking meals for their own, storing armor and weapons in the armory for inspection and cleaning. About fifty relic knights loitered around, some keeping watch over the short metal walls, others milling about a campfire. A handful had spent some time training drills in their courtyard. Telling jokes to one another, laughing all the while. The last caravan had settled into place, the crew going to sleep while the overwatch team made sure all the supplies were accounted for and tied down.

Their encampment wasn't a permanent thing. It had been constructed to last semi-permanently. No one knew when the mites would decide to visit and tinker with the world, though when they did there was no stopping them. Neither machine nor humans had any chance to stop the pests when they set their mind on something. Mites wouldn't fight back. They'd simply keep coming like the tide, washing away brick, stone and anything too slow to get out of the way. Small bites taken out of everything. Organic material would be zapped a few times at first, almost like a warning to get out of their territory. Animals certainly heeded the message. Machines didn't bother letting mites climb on top in the first place. Her own nest had migrated a few times the moment they spotted any column of glowing lights slowly marching in their direction.

Such was the way of the world. As a spider, she'd never thought twice about it. Nor did she care much for what the mites left behind in their trail. Now, however, she could appreciate it.

This particular location was among a wide metal plain, broken apart by geometrically cut rocks jutting out from the metal flooring. Whiskers of silver flickered out of the ground, swaying in the wind. A mite made construction that imitated plants as far as To'Wrathh could see. An invisible current passed through these whiskers, where occasionally those silver lights would shift into bright rainbow colors, all in syncronized movement. Like a wave of color passing over the plain before the glow all returned to silver.

From the ground, it likely didn't look like much. But from above, she could see the whole picture. The mites had made a painting. A jumbled, mix of colors that made little sense, more of a fever dream than anything artistic.

To'wrathh felt there was a pattern to it, if she spent long enough searching for it. Her subroutines had taken the data, crunched it, and returned no results. Which was interesting, since that same subroutine module had been able to track every single human in camp right down to the way they walked around, all within a few hours of surveillance. And yet, with all that calculating power, it had no idea what the mites were attempting to make. But To'Wrathh felt she could almost understand what the mites had made. Less something cold and hard about data, more something of a feeling to be elicited.

Across these rolling hills, the rocks occasionally turned into something more majestic. Like massive statues that towered far above any, all tilted to some side, half buried. But only the impressions. Stare at any with a closer look and they simply appeared to be rock pillars that happened to tilt over.

At the right angle, they looked almost like weeping robed humans. Faces frozen in time, distorted by the rocks. And only because the pale artificial moonlight gave everything deep shadows. There was no other light besides this silver twilight, the mites hadn't made any other light sources besides the imitation moon she remained close to.

The humans weren't here for the art. They had come because this plain was in a strategic location. And had generally an easy sight out all around, at the top of that hill.

They'd created short metal walls that surrounded them like a fortress, with multiple tents and buildings setup closer to the center.

Tamery had explained that knights would rest here, before setting out to hunt machines for power cells. It also made for a good trading post, and a general store for anyone intrepid enough to live in the open territory. There was no safety outside the undersider city walls, but this was a close second.

Turrets appeared across those walls, she counted twenty three. Most were empty. The humans hadn't encountered true threats for months. And if they did, they'd spot it miles away, pack up and leave before the wave of machines crashed by. Runners didn't care to break down buildings or loot trinkets, so when the threat had passed by, the humans would return and find all their items left alone.

That would change tonight.

Silently, she fed the data back to her army, giving instructions on what targets to take out first. The full layout of their scattered army was clear in her mind.

The feather then descended down, gliding silently to land before the small fort, right on the path to their simple gate. There, she stayed, waiting for the humans to notice.

"You think they'll simply surrender? Give up on their duties and vows?" Tenisent asked, by her side. The wraith remained translucent, arms crossed.

"Yes." She said. "I predict there is a high chance the majority will surrender once they understand the option exists."

He grunted. "Humans are not so weak. We're more resilient than you expect."

She hummed at that. "Perhaps you were. I've seen your memories. And I've come to understand humans are different from one group to another, even if they all wear the same form."

"Convinced of yourself." He tutted. "Never a good sign. Pride comes before the fall."

"Do you know what I did to prepare for this moment?" To'Wrathh asked. When he didn't answer, she continued. "I learned. I know their language. Their traditions. The geography of their lands. Which outpost to tame. And which to burn. I know them more than they know me. And I know myself more than they know themselves."

"Self delusion." He shrugged. "All you've learned, it's been from books or rats. They will fight, and they will never surrender. I hope it comes at a steep cost."

"These are not warriors." She countered, waving a hand to the wall ahead. "They dress like them, act like them, believe themselves to be even. But they come here to hunt small packs of machines for power cells. They avoid larger packs, or true danger. They don't travel with traders or take escort jobs. You don't know these people, Tenisent. You've never had to know them. They're no soldiers. They're simple hunters. And when faced with the threat of death, they will fold."

"Maybe when your face is pressed up against the metal earth and ground up to scrap under a boot, then you'll understand humans further. And I'll thank the gods I will be there to watch you crushed and broken."

"Charming." She said. "How do you handle disappointment?"

He remained silent at that. Glaring at the fortress ahead.

It didn't take them very long to notice her. The wings she kept outstretched made her stand out from the distance, while the rest of her body would surely trigger alarms the moment they paid more attention. The wide halo of metal, floating lazily at an angle above her was just as noticeable from a distance.

She saw them begin to panic, running around the camp, many taking a quick look over the wall to stare at her, before disappearing back down. The turrets powered up. The camp grew lively with shouts.

She remained waiting. The turrets were easily in range of her. Not that those would be any danger to her of course. Still, they remained pointed directly at her. Warning sirens within her mind flashed bright, alerting her weapons were locked on to her form.

It took them another ten minutes before the small gates opened, and a group of ten knights walked out.

One held onto a hastily cobbled white flag, stepping carefully across the path to meet her. The rest remained solem, keeping a sharp lookout around them. Hands on the hilts of their blades.

"Uhh, truce. Truce!" The one with a white flag said as he got closer, stepping out of the group, nervous. "I've been sent to f-find out what you want."

As expected so far, she closed her wings, and drew them closer to her hips. Inside, her countermeasure systems flared to life, easily breaking through the simple encryption these knights were using. This far out, they had been lax with their protocols.

"I am To'Wrathh. A feather in service to the violet lady, charged to take or destroy your city. I was not given further directions on how to accomplish my goal, so it is within my ability to allow for mercy." She said. Her voice carried to the messenger, and far further past him. Every knight within the settlement could hear her. Every speaker or radio within was broadcasting her discussion.

As for the messenger, he gulped, glanced behind himself for reassurance, then looked around. The plains were empty. There was no army in sight. No attack, save for herself. He slowly turned back to look at her, growing slightly more confident. "Uhh, that's not going to happen. I don't speak for the commander, but he's not going to accept this."

The other nine behind him shuffled around, as if unsure what to do next. Some glanced at one another, looking for direction.

To'Wrathh tilted her head. "I have not come to debate. I have come to take. I will start with this hunting lodge. Throw down your weapons, kneel, and your life will be spared. I give this offer freely to all who hear this message, to be used at any moment within the next three hours. Any who choose to surrender will be allowed to leave once stripped of equipment. You will return to your city. I give my word of this. All machines in this region obey me. They will not attack nor bar your path home."

The Feather drew out her weapons. A longsword in her right, inscribed with the fractal of division, the common version. It hummed in the dim artificial moonlight, vibrating softly, whispering destruction. She'd had this one made just for her, while her left hand withdrew a knife with the same power. The soul fractal that housed her artificial soul deep within her flared further into life, reaching out for the captive soul besides her. The fractal of Unity flared to life, and she used it to unite Tenisent's skills with her own.

Teniscent grimaced at her side, trying to claw her grip away. He held for a moment. Then vanished away, drawn back inside her.

"Should any take up my offer in bad faith, to pretend their surrender, they will be marked for death. This too, I give my word."

The emissary took a few steps back, dropping his flag, hand reaching out to his own blade as a reflex. "Wai-wait wait wait! Is this some kind of joke? Machines don't just negotiate, what's going on?"

The sound of a blade being drawn triggered the rest of the knights to draw out their own. They all took different stances, keeping their eyes on her. Behind the group, far back at the fortress, sounds of chaos suddenly rang out.

And then the screaming began.

Claws filled with occult blue ripped through the metal ground, opening up carefully dug tunnels. Runners sprinted out of the ground, scaling the walls with alacrity. A few knights had the good reflex to open fire. Most were too tied up with the same event happening within their very midst.

The first targets had been the turrets. Those, the Runners rushed, ripping the weapons appart or throwing the operators out. Some had been quick enough to start opening fire, but alone they had no chance of surviving for long. Howls and screams began to ring out from the fortress as more and more machines overran the camp from the inside out.

"Surrender. Or die." To'Wrathh said. She meant it too.

The ten knights circled around her, each unwilling to be the first one to strike. Each unwilling to be the first one to surrender either.

"Come on you fucks." One of them sneered. "She's alone. There's ten of us. Let's just rush her, stab her. It's not hard."

"Yeah, but she's a fuckin' feather man." Another said, "Deathless fight those things, not us."

"Yeh!" A third said to the side. "If you're so sure of yourself, why don't you go and take the first stab at her?"

A shorter one in the back seemed to be breathing rapidly, chestplate drawing in and out. Then he screamed. "I'm no fuckin' coward! The hell with surrendering to a fuckin' scraphead! Steel rusts but the flesh rebuilds, my mind over metal!"

She saw him charge, sword taking a rooted stance in his hand. Saw him close the distance. Saw how the rest of the knight remained behind, a hairbreadth away from joining in.

He was young. While she couldn't see his face due to the relic armor helmet, she could tell the boy was likely within his early twenties at the latest. The stance he took was sloppy, no focus on his legwork, though he held the sword correctly. He'd been trained, enough to have a semblance of it.

To'Wrathh took a step forward, memories of a different life flowing through her mind. She took upon the stance of Nagareru, flowing like water. Feet light, she reached out to him, watching as he shifted his blade to block. With speed and alacrity, she twirled around the defence, striking out with the full length of her blade across his chest. The shield lit up bright, absorbing the hit.

The Feather followed through, twisting a knife into his back, further breaking down his shield. The boy tried to swing back at her, a large overly telegraphed attack she had no trouble ducking under, while her sword flashed out again. This time, the boy's shields cracked, the Occult blade cutting through a corner of his chest. Metal and flesh vanished behind the blade.

He took a step back, as if surprised. His head turned down to look at his wound, watching as the red blood began to pour out staining the metal, before his reflexes warned him. He had just enough time to look up as To'Wrathh's sword ran right through his helmet, in and out, without the slightest resistance.

The body slumped down on its knees and then fell to the right with a dull clunk. The fight had lasted a few seconds at most, with the majority of the time being spent on that short pause just before she'd ended his life.

There was silence among the undersider knights, many of them taking a step back.

She'd killed humans before when she was a spider. Many in fact. There hadn't been a single one that had ever escaped her once she'd claimed them as her's.

All except for one, but she would deal with him soon enough.

This, however, was beyond what her old body had been capable of. To'Wrathh felt powerful.

"Surrender." She said to the surrounding knights. "Or die."

A wave passed through them. Then, as if there was some unworded command, several charged forward as one, swords reaching out to her. To'Wrathh licked her lips as she hunched down slightly, feeling a thrill come alive inside. The lady had made her kind to be killers at heart. This… this was what she had been made to do.

Her blade sung through the air, her leaps brought her all the space she needed, wings stretching out as she jumped. They tried to follow behind, using their own armors to leap far higher than humans were ever meant to do. And inside her domain, they quickly realized their mistake.

She killed the second before he landed back on the ground, once more her blade neatly punctured a hole in the helmet, while she pushed the dead body back down with her sharp legs.

With lightness that lied about her weight, she landed without a sound on the ground as the rest of the knights hit the plains like metal paperweights.

"Surrender." She told them again. "Or die."

Fury took them. They charged again, yelling incoherently, desperate to at least do some amount of damage.

To'Wrathh was faster. Her eyes saw weakness to exploit in every move. Their schools of combat were too generic. Made to tackle a wide range of possible shapes and monsters, and highly off-key against a foe like herself. Undersiders didn't fight each other with the same ferocity that the surface dwellers were forced to.

They might laugh at the barbaric surface dwellers, who lived miserable lives of poverty, always hungry, living in tight cramped spaces, never truly warm.

But it was well known that only the imperial knights or a puritan blade-priest could stand and defeat surface knights.

Everyone knew surface dwellers were not to be messed with. Child soldiers who live and breath combat, wild, feral, and taught to kill without hesitation. Thieves at best. Emotionless murderers at worse.

Not completely inaccurate.

The third one she killed had tried to tackle her to the ground. She'd twisted under him, flowing away, all the while raking his side with the dagger. The shield broke, and her blade whipped through the air, penetrating from the back of his neck and driving straight up through his head and out. The body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as she withdrew the blade.

The fourth was killed a moment after. He's tried two swings at her, which she had dodged all the while stabbing out with knife and blade. The moment his shield broke, panic ripped into him, his stance faltered, he tripped backwards falling flat on the ground, raising a hand up to shield his face, screaming in terror the whole time.

It made no difference of course.

Her occult longsword pierced right through the palm of his hand and dove down through his helmet. The body jerked, that outstretched, now limp, hand cut itself free from her blade as gravity brought it back down.

The fifth had been smarter. He'd tried to strike at her back.

The surface dwellers had dozens of different counters to exactly that situation. It was such a drilled in instinct, none of the three combat schools placed any of these moves above basic instruction. Any novice should know these counters by heart within the year.

And of course, with her stolen skills, she claimed all of that knowledge for herself.

To'Wrathh ducked and weaved around his ill-thought strike, leaving her blade positioned to catch his chest. Disbalancing him with a tap of her dagger and a well placed trip. His own inertia had him run and push against the longblade. He flinched back, realizing his shields were rapidly draining as the blade remained firmly in contact with his armor.

A snakelike strike from To'Wrathh, tapping his sides, whittled away the last of his shields as he continued to backtrack.

The man lifted his arms straight up, letting his occult blade go free, yelling all the while, "I surrender! I surrender, please, oh goddess, please! Don't kill me!"

The feather halted her strike at the last moment, the longsword tip hovering with a slight quiver, right before his helmet, mere inches away.

She tilted her head with curiosity, withdrawing the blade back slowly. "I accept." To'Wrathh felt satisfied. Now the humans had seen how real and present the threat she posed to them all was. All the speed of a machine. All of the skill of Tenisent Winterscar. No undersider had a chance against her. And they'd also seen a way out.

The rest of the knights stared at the sobbing man, now collapsed on his knees, hyperventilating at how close he had come to dying. They gawked up to To'Wrathh, now wiping the gore off the flat of her blade, with little hurry. The unasked question lingering in the air of who was next.

The realization that this was not some well practiced hunt flooded through their minds. How one moment, they would be here and alive, and the next, find a blade slipped through their skulls and then nothing.

Occult longswords clattered on the ground. Hands slowly raised up, hesitantly, as the survivors all took a few steps back.

The Feather nodded, sheathing her weapons. Tamery had been right. She peered over to the fortress in the background, where smoke and fire had already begun to rise. All sounds of clashing blades and screaming had come to a stop. Only the sound of burning tents and campfires remained.

The first of many.

Next chapter - You should gloat

Book 2 - Chapter 25 - You should gloat

"You should gloat." Cathida whispered in my ear like the proverbial devil on my shoulder. "Seems like the best time to me, deary."

The clan lord sat at the table reviewing the footage of our fight, while we kneeled before him. Shadowsong and I remained silent, waiting for judgement. Atius had been watching without a word for the past five minutes as he poured over every bit of footage.

"Cathida…" I hissed, "Not right now when the fucking clan lord is in front of us. This is serious."

"That's exactly why you should gloat, of course. But fine, ignore my wisdom. Be boring. See where that gets you." She gave an exasperated groan before going quiet. It was honestly impressive how much her voice conveyed expression. I'd never seen an old wrinkled woman roll her eyes and wave me away as a pest before, but somehow I now had a perfect mental picture of that.

Lord Atius took off his helmet and set it to the side, drawing me back to the present. I presumed he was done watching and was current with events. "Ikusari." He said slowly, "Every time I've told you to trust in me, have I ever broken my word to you?"

The shadowsong prime remained kneeled, staring directly at the ground. "No, my lord. Not once."

"Then why choose now to break that trust? We discussed this in depth only hours ago."

Shadowsong remained still, and only spoke once he was sure of his words. "I began to have… paranoid delusions that the Winterscars had somehow fooled you. The recent loss of Tenisent, and then watching my daughter possibly leave on a mission of no return warped my judgement. I say this not as an excuse, only to inform where I went wrong."

The old deathless shook his head slowly, taking a moment to think. "My word is absolute in this clan. When I made my judgement on who to send, I did so carefully and with measure. I don't think you properly understand how monumentally foolish this stunt was, and the potential cost it could have to the clan as a whole." I've never seen Atius angry before, though admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time around the clan lord yet. The weight of disappointment in his voice felt somehow worse than outright anger, and I wasn't even the target of it. "How did you let your feelings cloud your judgment this badly? Especially now of all times, when the clan's greatest threat in centuries is breathing down our necks? I needed you here for stability and order. And here I find that you've been outside in a blood feud?"

"I have no excuses." Shadowsong said, voice low.

"Tempers flare up, that's inevitable. I get that. But I expect them to be handled in the ring of swords, like civilized men. Not with Occult blades raised up, and absolutely not outside on the surface. You don't realize how close you were to costing the clan everything. I charged Keith with a mission, the discovery of which might tip the scales of the entire war. And you nearly killed him. All because you let your biases, old grievances and fear blind you."

"I understand and will accept any judgement from you, my lord."

"You certainly deserve judgement, but not by my hand." Atius turned his gaze to me next. "Keith, as per clan law, I leave remediations to be settled between you and Ikusari. If no settlement can be reached, then return to me and I will handle it." He gave Shadowsong a withering look. "Though I highly doubt such a thing will come to pass. Ikusari, dismissed. Reflect on your actions, and be prepared to set things right."

The man gave a quick grunt of acknowledgement before standing tall, turning on his heel and marching away out of the room. The clan lord watched his steps, an old expression of fatigue in his eyes. When the door shut, he turned those eyes back to me.

It was quiet for a moment. Only the sound of a few candles flickering away in the room. "I knew that lad back when he was a boy." Atius said. "Feels almost like I stepped back a few decades into the past just now, having to discipline him like this again." He knit his hands together, glancing down at them. "It's sometimes hard to shift my mind as people grow. One moment, I think of them as a tiny whelp. The next, I realize they're already thirty five, married and planning to sire a whelp of their own. Blink again, and they're old and retired. No matter the number of years I've gone through, it always comes as a surprise to me and always at the oddest times." He chuckled, somberly. "And occasionally, they do something so monumentally foolish, I find myself back to thinking of them as a whelp for a few moments. Had a temper back then, that one. It would flare up, end violently with something broken, and leave only shame at himself the moment after he got hold of his senses. I suppose such demons never truly go away, even as an old man. He simply learned how to mask and control it instead."

He stood, walking over to me. "Do leave him some room for his pride when you make your demands from him. Ultimately, it was a mistake that stemmed from me at the root. I knew I would need to take the chance and give some knights the Winterblossom technique, the situation all but demands it. I only hesitated too long, overthinking." He sighed, a long drawn out thing, staring at a mural of knights fighting off a twisted splash of white and violet color. No details discernible by the artist's choice, more bringing out a feeling of chaos being held back by blue colored swings of Occult swords. "How are you faring from all this, lad?"

I lifted my head a bit. "Surprisingly, I feel fine." I said. And I meant it too. I held off shadowsong for four minutes in a strict one against one, no holds barred fight. Most people don't even survive for thirty seconds in the ring of swords. If there was ever a mark of my improvement, holding my own against the current greatest duelist in a hundred miles, this would be it. "The moment I correctly got the winterblossom technique working, I knew I was safe from getting killed. The rest was a standard duel."

"Standard?" Atius chuckled. "Odd definition you have of that."

"...Fair point, but when has my life ever been anything normal? Guess this is par the course. Too many secrets floating around, something's bound to blow up."

The clan lord went quiet at that, staring at the mural. I couldn't tell which knights were drawn there. Not because the panel resolution was too poor to make out details, the pixels were bright and sharp. No, it was that none of these knights were recognizable to me, with exception for the figure on the left. The greatcloak gave it away.

"Secrets." Atius said. "Reveal too much and it burns your hand. Too little, and people break rank in unexpected ways, trying to work with an incomplete picture. Four hundred years and it's still not an exact science to me."

He turned and walked over to where I knelt, tapping me on my shoulders lightly as he passed. "Stand back up lad, time we had a talk about what you've been up to in the shadows. This is as good a time as any."

I did as bid, rising off my knees and following him deeper into the audience chamber, to a smaller table. There we both took a seat. I took off my helmet, setting it down to the side.

"Word already reached you?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Something like that. Reports noted that you practically vanished for a full week, only appearing like a ghost from the walls to sleep in your room. No one knows where you vanish to. Now you're back, active again. Whatever experiments you were running in seclusion has either been abandoned, or unraveled. And I know enough about you to toss out the first theory."

I gave him a grin. "Hit center mass. Finally found out how warlocks forge Occult blades. I can smith as many of those blades as we need now."

Atius had a pensive expression on his face, almost frozen. Then he sat back, as if taking the news in. "How many people would have given everything just to hear those words, I wonder?" He smiled. "The single most guarded secret in the world, and you've uncovered it. Hah! Those warlocks would be fuming if they only knew. You've done excellent Keith. Absolutely excellent. You went up against historical odds, and where hundreds failed before, you succeeded."

There was something deep down inside that bloomed into life in me. A warmth, that I'd finally done something truly impressive for once in my life. Recognition. I basked in it, soaked it in like a sponge.

"The clan owes you a heavy debt. This discovery will directly save the lives of thousands. Ask of me anything you wish, and it will be done."

"I.." fumbling, a little awkward at the praise, "I don't need anything."

He laughed, eyes closed as he rocked back slightly. "Right now, perhaps not! But once you have time to think, you will. Oh, you will." He said, tapping his head with a finger. "The resources of Clan Altosk are at your disposal. Any idea you wish to pursue, I'll order entire houses to assist. It doesn't matter to me how superfluous or eccentric of an idea you have, lad. Even if it ends up being a complete waste of resources. It'll be done. The price for the winterblossom technique and the secret of forging Occult blades is worth it all. How did those clever little bastards hide their mark anyhow? They've fooled the entire world for centuries on end, it must have been something to crack."

"They put it inside the hilt of course," I said, "Embedded it right into the center of the metal. Reality doesn't care if the runes can be spotted by humans or not. A simple difference in chemical composition that we couldn't possibly see is enough." I dove into the details, eager to explain the full depth of the work I did.

Atius listened, attention completely focused. I gave him every detail, the whole scope. He'd ask questions occasionally, especially on the soul fractal and my thoughts on why the warlocks hadn't come up with a counter. I gave him some new information to mull over, as he put it. Kidra had already told him of the Winterblossom technique she'd perfected while I'd been busy tinkering with that knife, so all detail was spent on my discovery.

Atius explained to me his own side of events. "Your sister told me of the technique you'd come up with and the improvements she'd added. I spent a few days on my own attempting to replicate it, and training with her personally."

"You trained her? She never said a word to me about that. Gods, when did you even find the time?"

Atius grinned at that. "I've learned a few tricks over the years. Some tricks I can be very good at. Others, like this technique of yours, elude me."

"It didn't work for you?" I asked, curious.

He shook his head. "No. I couldn't even move my soul into the fractal, and I felt none of that sense of concept around me like Kidra described."

We both stopped for a moment, thinking. "Could it have something to do with you being Deathless?"

"That was my first suspicion. I've long known I'm a step removed from being human. My soul itself might be different between us, naturally. It's interesting to learn something new about myself. Novel really."

"You don't seem too disappointed at being unable to do the same thing Kidra does."

He waved a hand off. "I can't be too greedy now, lad. Besides, increasing my own power isn't what will help the clan the most. What's wonderful about this technique is that every knight could potentially use it. That was far more important to me than being able to personally make use of this. The future looks bright."

When I was done with my tale, I felt lighter. As if I'd taken off a weight on my shoulder. He leaned back, pondering for a moment. Then he gave a light shrug, and turned to me. "I'm wondering what path to take with you next. Elevate you up and have everyone in the clan know that you are the first sorcerer knight? Or keep all this hidden like a dagger that we can shiv our enemies with when they least expect it."

He brought a hand to his beard, stroking it in thought as he spoke. "The more people know, the larger the chances of leaks. However, surface dwellers aren't as loosely lipped as the Undersiders or the Othersiders. Duty here is an iron backbone I can rely on, if we give Occult blades to our soldiers and swore them to secrecy, even if we have near a thousand take up arms, the chances of discipline slipping is non-existent. It would take several thousands before the chances that someone slips begin to move up. Our relic knights, now those I have full faith they can keep and hold any secret. The winterblossom technique would be safe in their hands, and they would have the discipline to use it only when needed, fooling their opponents into thinking their speed is average and only occasionally increases at what seems like lucky moments and close calls."

"It all comes with a balance of good and bad, lad." He lifted his right hand up, as if holding onto something in the flat of his palm. "On one hand, if I expose you to the whole clan as a sorcerer knight, morale would skyrocket and we could more openly make use of your discoveries without hiding. Anything you discover and create can be used freely in the open. Our knights would all move at full speed from the start, culling their opponents with alacrity unmatched in minutes. However, word will surely reach the other clans, and eventually the undersiders. The warlock whelps will come for us within the next few years. The only reason they haven't destroyed each other already is due to a fine balancing act between the lot. But if they could, they would take out their competition in a heartbeat. If anything could unite them, it would be a rogue entity like ourselves spilling their secrets. We'd have to negotiate a pact of sorts, or find ourselves in another war."

His left hand was raised next, as he set down his right. "If we hide your true skills, giving only the minimum to the most trustworthy, we will surely lose some lives over that decision in the immediate term. Our knights would take longer to wear down the enemy ones, as they need to pretend to be regular knights that just so happen to be oddly quick when the metal is put down. Our soldiers will hide their occult blades until the last moment, drawing them out more in an ambush than a full fight. Any inventions of yours with this new discovery will need to be far more controlled and done with precision so that no enemy remains alive to tell the tale."

"You have a choice in mind?" I asked.

He tilted his head to the side. "I think an exception should be made on who chooses the path. This discovery is yours. I would have you decide how best to use it. If you seek recognition, you will have it. And I will handle the fallout that happens one way or another. Take your time to consider, and then let me know what you pick."

I stayed silent at that, a little shocked. This wasn't just a small choice, it would possibly change the future. "Am I in any way qualified to make a decision on this?" I asked.

He grinned. "No. But as I said. This discovery is yours. And I have confidence in the clan and myself that we can navigate what comes next. There's uncertainty, there's always uncertainty. We've always found a way forward, regardless. Still. If the responsibility is too harsh, letting me decide is a valid choice as well."

"What would you have picked?" I asked him.

"The math is cold, and I have to be colder for such choices with these stakes. I think you already know which choice I would make."

He reached into his pocket, armored hands withdrawing a small USB key. "I don't expect an answer right now. I want you to think on it. About what you want out of life, and the clan." He said as he placed the key carefully on the table, and slid it over to me. "In this flash drive, are my own secrets that I'll share with you. These are the pictures I took on my journey through the underground. The fractals on each pillar that grant Deathless their powers. They're categorized, along with all the spells I have kept and used. I give them to you, in hopes you might discover a method of making use of them yourself. Perhaps you really will become a sorcerer knight and bring a new era to the world. Or it might be a fool's quest, and end with time wasted. Regardless, I believe it's worth the chance."

"Do you think it's safe though?" I asked, reaching out for the key.

When I wrapped my hand around the small key, his gauntlet clasped mine and held on. "The circumstances force our hands with the Occult. It's simply too powerful to ignore given the war that's coming. But I haven't been sitting on my laurels this past week either. I went searching to find what's been cleaning up history. I believe I might have found a possible direction, though I need to confirm sources. For the moment, take care to only work with fractals that see general use and the ones in the key."

I nodded, understanding his message. He let go of my hand and drew back. "Speaking of general use, the warlock guilds, of course, have an entire arsenal of weapons that never leave their hands. By holding onto advantages no one else has, they remain unchallenged. However, I suspect that they never trusted real engineers enough to have them make greater or more creative weapons with their secrets. And why change what already works? They've grown complacent. Fat and lazy in their status quo. We have a unique opportunity as you happen to be both an engineer and a budding warlock. An excellent combination. Are you up for a challenge?"

"Always." I answered, grinning back.

He leaned forward. "Tell me, have you ever heard of the warlock's occult crossbows? I believe we might do better. For starters."

Next chapter - The names we carry (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 26 - The names we carry (T)

To'Wrathh observed the kneeled humans. The camp around her had stopped burning down about an hour ago, all the tents gone, while the rest of the buildings were mostly safe from the flames. Her chosen would be arriving to pick up the leftover supplies, once she'd dealt with the prisoners.

Humans were fragile creatures in the end. Even with the pale lady's gifts and modifications, her ex-humans still needed to feed and house themselves. This outpost would serve well in terms of location.

"Your. Will?" The old runner asked at her side, coolly watching the captured humans.

There were seventy of the undersiders left. Armors had been stripped and taken from each, though many were servicemen without armor of their own. Weapons had been collected and piled away, to be processed. Caravan skivvies were seized and so were the trade goods they held.

She walked by the line of prisoners, a few looked back at her before shifting their gaze back down to the ground the moment she met their eyes.

"Send them off. They are to return to their city on their own."

And bring word of her to the humans.

If she was to negotiate any quick victory, the humans required a sense of trust that she would follow through with her terms. Trust had to begin somewhere. She rose her voice slightly, so that they might overhear her discussion. "I gave my word they would be granted safe passage back to their homes should they surrender. They have. And so now I must follow through with my part of the terms."

Like insipid venom, knowledge of who she was would seep inside the walled city, cycling around by word of mouth, breaking down the city's morale from the inside out. Each outpost she took, each mercy she allowed, all would slowly build up a reputation that would eliminate soldiers from the fight without having to expend energy killing them.

The humans before her weren't released prisoners. They were her unwitting weapons.

"Journey is long." The old runner said at her side. "Humans need food. I learned."

"I did not offer food or provisions. Only a safe passage."

"If pain from hunger, not a safe passage."

To'Wrathh tilted her head in curiosity. Not out of what the runner had said, but of what it meant. The runner was disagreeing with her. Bold of him. To'Aacar would have surely had the machine ripped apart as an example to the rest on what to avoid. Even To'Wrathh would have been attacked if she had challenged her mentor on any point. It was in his name and nature to do so.

She realized she had a choice here to make. Either discourage this kind of independent thought or let it go free. The feather pondered for a moment and then decided she had thus far been well served by having multiple dissenting opinions to compare from. Her nest hadn't been one voice, it had been many. So too, she would run her army as. A web was only as strong as the sum of individual weaves, and grew stronger when threads were not all parallel.

"I understand your logic. This is a fair point. I will amend the terms." She told the runner, then turned to one of the prisoners. An older man with a white beard, his clothing denoted him as a serviceman. "How fast do you travel? How long will it take you to reach your city?"

He glanced up at her, then looked to his right. Not finding whatever he was searching for, he turned to the left, sticking his head out further to see a longer distance. Again, all the humans avoided his gaze. There was fear in his eyes when he turned slowly to look at her. Subroutines marked it at a ninety four percent confidence.

"Speak." She ordered.

"Umm, we usually take… take a caravan. The city is about a day on one of those." He said feebly, slowly pointing a hand out to one of the hovering skiffs. There were about a dozen, all idling around now that they had been emptied. Long enough to house about ten to twenty humans, if crammed.

She made a quick tally in her mind, deciding on what direction to take. "Each of you will take three units of ration for the trip. You do not need more than that." Her Chosen needed the food more than these prisoners did, but the runner had made a point that they should have at least some rations to solidify a safe passage. Humans could survive without food for some time, but it would go against the spirit of her promise to send them out with nothing. "You will be allowed to take eight skiffs. The rest of the skiffs will stay."

These skiffs could be used by her ex-humans to move around without tiring them out. "The rest of the rations and supplies will stay with me."

The old runner nodded. "Food for Chosen. Food for you?"

To'Wrathh supposed she hadn't yet sampled what the rations held here would taste like. The runner had no means to eat, so to taste anything it would have to be through her. "Fine." She decided, "Food for me too. I will share with you."

The old runner nodded with more vigor, claws clicking together as he hunched over. He seemed impatient now, so the Feather indulged him by letting her wings take over movement, zipping across the ground as the Runner's gait took him directly to the warehouse storage. It occurred to To'Wrathh that this machine had no name. Something to fix.

"You need a name." She said, floating by his side, easily keeping pace with his large strides.

"I have. A name." The machine answered.

That took the feather by surprise. "When? How?"

The runner stopped in his tracks, and turned his gaze. Searching for something far away from the camp. "Old human. She named me. You. Rag. Of. Bones. Bones when short."

"Yrob? What does it mean?"

Yrob turned, stopped, and then thought for a moment. His shoulders raised and fell in a shrug. "Don't know."

"How can you not? You were named. It must mean something."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Bones I am to them. Yrob I am to us. That is not maybe."

Perhaps it really did mean nothing besides the surface message. She wasn't sure how Yrob would live up to his name, it seemed too vague and directionless. Yrob seemed to have taken it in stride, as if the name held no hold over him. It was blizzard to To'Wrathh, but then again, the old runner had been named by an ex-human. Not by a machine. They wouldn't understand the sense of purpose a name would grant.

It was curious how some of the ex-humans were adjusting to her army. The runner had made odd friends with an old lady who'd taught him to cook, while others hid away anytime he lumbed around their camp. Perhaps the future would look different. Yrob might be the first of his kind to truly synergize with the Chosen, though To'Wrathh couldn't figure out a way of turning this into a military advantage. She would need to ponder this more and study the interactions for hints at a possible manner to maximize benefit.

"Tamery." She called out, reaching through the fractal of Unity to connect to the girl. "Select fifty one of your best warriors. Outfit them with the captured armor. Approach the camp only when all of the humans have been sent away."

To'Aacar had taken all the knights among the chosen, leaving only the weak behind. To make more use of her Chosen, they would need to be outfitted with armor, and she had great need of them to handle with one particular fortress the city relied on. Machines held control over many of the mite forges, however the creation of armor was beyond what the automated forges could make. Only the mites could create armor now that the technology had been lost to all sides.

"Umm, I can do that, my lady. But, we don't know how to… how to use relic armor." Tamery said, voice going small and quick as if worried of her master's reaction. "None of us were ever in the guard, and the ones that were, got picked by Lord To'Aacar for his own expedition."

To'Wrathh tutted. "No issue. I will teach you how to use and fight in relic armor."

She had, after all, the memories and skills of a master. How hard would it be to teach these skills to her chosen? It worked out well, the undersider style of combat was unsuited to her new chosen, their enemies will all be human after all. But the surface style of fighting? An excellent fit, that had been made to cut down humans.

She would make good use of the Chosen. They would be a card she would keep close to her hand, the knife in her sleeve, until the best moment came to use them. To'Aacar had been right. If you want to kill a human, there's no greater monster at killing humans than another one.

A data package arrived through the connection that spanned across the machine network. A message from To'Aacar, her mentor. Curious timing as she'd just been rewatching her earlier discussions with the Feather.

"I am nearing their nest, my dear sister." His voice came up. "Soon the pests will be scattering in every direction when I lift the little rock they're hiding under and shine a light on the wretches. Be a useful little assistant and deal with them when they come."

The message ended. No reply expected.

She would be prepared when the time came. Her enemies would be arriving in her domain. And with them, the score that was left to settle.

Soon.

Next chapter - Chosen

Book 2 - Chapter 27 - Chosen

The expedition returned five days after my 'civil disagreement' with Shadowsong.

This was notable, since it wasn't scheduled to return for another month. That part wasn't quite as large a gossip point as the second reason people were paying attention - The expedition had returned with three more airspeeders than it had departed with.

Specifically, Othersider airspeeders like the ones the pirates had used. From my vantage point by the tower control, I could see the cloud of white trailing snow behind the line of distant grey and black specs.

Atius peered out, across the freeze. Hands folded over his chest, a look of contemplation across his features. We'd been talking earlier in private when servants came to inform him of the arrival. The clan lord and myself had been working together far more closely after I'd made my choice.

I'd talked to him in detail about it. Trying to understand if it was a choice, a test, or some kind of offer. I wasn't great with politics, and the kind of subtle messages I could pick up were usually around the level of publicly posted hate mail.

He'd laughed a bit when I'd asked him about that. "At a certain point in time, all options become unpredictable. Any choice we make will bring its own hardships, and either choice we make - we will be there to handle those hardships. Consider instead, our ultimate destination. With this new resource and power, we won't remain on the surface for long. Not within the decade. Given the scope of your discovery, I felt it was fitting to allow you a hand in it. I trusted we could handle the fallout."

Being able to gloat was one of life's great pleasures. However, I was already a celebrity among the clan. And the possible future threats made me reconsider exposing my hand in all this. Plus, the first option was still always available going into the future. Conversely, once the secret was out of the bag, there was no putting it back in.

He had been smiling that day.

Now, a frown came across his features as he stared out that window. "Did they send any other information on the additional airspeeders arriving?"

"No, my lord." The man answered back without looking. "We only know they're non-hostage and friendly. No secret distress codes have been sent."

Atius sighed. "I have that gut feeling something off is happening. One of those days." He turned over to another Logi staff member, one in Atius's retenue that had followed us from his estate to the air control tower. "Call up the knights and guard, have them arrive at the hangars. Place heavy patrols around the entryway, and prepare for a possibility of infiltration. Given what's coming, we can't play too recklessly. The lack of distress codes only means the captains aren't aware of any enemy activity. Not that enemy activity isn't there."

The staff members nearby saluted, then instantly returned to their task with renewed vigor.

"Suppose it's time to greet new friends." He said, turning and making his way out.

The airspeeder's engines cut down, vector thrusters keeping the whole ship steady as the taxi slowly dragged the lumbering beast back inside. All across the outside, scavengers sat on their benches, waiting for the all clear to jump off.

It didn't take long. The massive hangar doors slowly sealed shut behind the airspeeder, vents all across the hangar lit up with warm air once the gate were down. Engineers and repair staff from the inside of the hangar scurried over to ship, tools and instruments ready for inspection, while the returning scavengers leaped off, passing by as a wave to see friends and family first. The two groups collapsed against each other, patting backs and giving hugs or hand claps as they crossed paths.

The captain of the expedition made his way down the ramp, and next to him was a relic knight I wasn't familiar with.

That knight's armor was barren, like Winterscar. However, instead of accents of color and sigils, there were only a few pins on the side of the neckpiece, along with a stripe of purple color on the opposite shoulder pad. A simple fur cape and hood was the last of the ornaments, but it had no distinct color besides brown against stark white inner fur. The figure held onto a large staff, with a purple half-moon emblazoned at the tip and purple flowing cords trailing off to the side.

Whoever this knight was, no house from our clan knew the answer. Though they looked like a religious figure of some kind, given the staff.

"Don't like that." Cathida hissed in my ear. "Who in the twelve hells wears purple like that?"

Imperials wouldn't wear purple, that was considered the colors of the enemy. And Cathida cared a lot for looks too, so it's not surprising she's upset about this knight's very presence.

Puritans, at least from the words I'd heard, had a far more utilitarian style of dressing. Many pockets, straps and face masks. No main color theme besides muted colors that fade well into urban environments. And hats. They liked their hats. The religion ascribed that living beings were superior to machines, with a focus on seeing machines as renegade tools to be brought back into line. It made sense they'd dress for utility.

I'd never seen purple being used like this before, which set me on edge slightly. "Not sure who that is." I said. "I guess we'll find out soon enough."

Cathida grunted. "I'd keep my eyes peeled for something. Purple. Purple! What a stupid assemble. Makes my skin crawl."

"You don't have skin."

"Oh don't be such a wiseass. Fine. Don't pay attention then, I'll just head off. I've got to practice saying 'I told you so' in exactly the right pitch. It's a point of pride for us older folks, young man." She said, then cut the line.

"I didn't say I wouldn't keep an eye out…" I put in, but she was already sulking in the background now. It's fine, she has the memory space of a goldfish anyhow.

Lord Atius walked forward, greeting the captain with a good natured hug and a follow up amicable pat on the back. They spoke a bit, before the captain turned and motioned to the strange knight.

Shadowsong stood at my side, along with Ironreach and two other knights. We were Lord Atius's official bodyguard retenue for today. When he took a glance at us, we knew the cue to make our way behind him and stand at attention.

The stranger stood at the top of the ramp, pieces of purple cloth flapping about lightly from all the heating vents blasting the room. Then, he walked down to stand a few feet before the clan lord.

"Greetings, Deathless." He said with a deep bow. Given his appearance, it was a rather lighter voice. I can't see what he looked like under the helmet, but he didn't sound very old. "I am Lejis, a priest of the Chosen."

"Chosen?" Atius asked, tilting his head to the side. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure yet, lad. An off-branch of puritans I'd guess?"

The stranger shook his head. "No, we are a new faith that appeared in the last few months as a result of recent changes in the world."

Atius narrowed his eyes at that. "Changes?"

"I would be most happy to discuss that in a moment, Lord Deathless." Lejis said. "However, like you, I must tend to my flock first. We've followed behind your expedition, seeking temporary shelter as we make our way across the white wastes. I'd like to make sure we have that."

"Captain Rengar mentioned he owed you a life debt." Atius said. "Accommodations could be made, once I know more of the story."

The captain himself came closer. "My lord, the situation we encountered the Chosen are… sensitive." He said, face covered by his environmental suit. "I've ordered my crew to keep their silence for now, until we're sure what actions to take."

Atius raised an eyebrow at the man. "Might this have to do with the incoming raider threat?"

That caught the captain by surprise. To his credit he recovered almost immediately. "Aye sir. I should have guessed you would already be aware of it. Considering you've mentioned this out in the open, I take it the clan knows?"

"Aye lad. 'bout a week ago I broke the news to the clan along with our plans. Morale remains high, we expect to be able to fight them off."

The captain gave a hand sign for relief. "Then yes, we met the Chosen during a dire situation. An attack force of raiders had tracked our expedition and set up an ambush at a site. I admit full responsibility when I state we hadn't been prepared. Small expeditions can expect fighting, but this was the main one with eight airspeeders and fifteen knights. I was lax in our precautions. No one in their right mind would dare launch an attack, or so I thought."

"It seems the raiders are exactly that. Out of their minds." Atius said. "I don't understand their sudden change of plans either. I haven't yet divined just what's stirred them into this frenzy. They must know it won't end well for them."

The captain gave another hand sign for emotion, this one signaling warm agreement. "Whoever they were, they came prepared. They attacked us with twenty five relic knights. Not enough to overwhelm us within minutes, but enough to eventually win. It was an army unlike any I had ever seen before."

The clan lord turned to glance at the Chosen priest. "I take it that man and his followers had a hand in you being alive to tell the tale?"

The captain also turned to the priest. Lejis remained quiet, looking around the hangar, watching the life cycle of the crew. He seemed almost fascinated.

"Aye." The captain said. "They heard our distress signal and emerged from the underground nearby where they'd been traveling. It was a stroke of fortune they were close enough to the surface to get signals in. Once we explained to them who we were fighting, they took to the field on our side. It took them some time to sprint to us, but they arrived."

"These chosen, they're undersiders, yes?" Atius asked.

"Aye sir, they are."

"Undersiders that visit the surface, if they aren't imperial pilgrims, they're almost always a contingent of knights. Never travelers. How many knights came with the Chosen?"

"Twenty three knights came with our caravan." The chosen priest said to the side. "The rest of the missionaries are simple men and women we were escorting to the next city. We left them underground during the actual fight."

Atius hummed. "Left them behind? I suppose this close to the surface machines wouldn't be nipping at your heels. Still quite risky."

The priest nodded slowly. "We have our ways of dealing with the machines. I was confident in my people safety. I can explain later, it is a core part of our religion."

Well, that was a shady answer.

Clearly Atius wanted the answer as well, but was polite enough to accept the deflection. "Very well, as I follow, the metal was turned on the raiders with thirty eight knights against their twenty five. How did the fight proceed?"

The captain of the airspeeder turned to look at the priest, as if giving permission for the man to explain. The chosen priest inclined his head in gratitude and continued, "We struck from the rear of their attack. Our knights overwhelmed and captured a few of their airspeeders, before a general retreat was called by their side. Your people did manage to kill two of their knights in the fighting, impressive given the odds against them."

"We're surface dwellers." The captain said to the side. "Othersiders serve only their own interests. Clan knights fight for far more than just their own life."

The priest nodded, "And to see them fight was truly something to behold. I've heard stories of surface knights, seeing them in combat was something else. The reputation was well deserved, with exception to the claim that you're savages. I see only men and women of compassion and humanity here. You've done well for your people Lord Deathless."

"And the casualties? As strong as my knights are, the odds were still stacked against them." Atius asked, taking a look at the airspeeder hull. Signs of bullet holes appeared on closer look, along with frozen blood streaks. Small enough they hadn't been visible from a distance.

"We lost about thirty scavengers in the fight to gunshot wounds. A dozen more are wounded and kept within the medical bays of the airspeeders." The captain answered. "The majority were killed early into the fighting before we could establish a defense. Once those had been setup, we were able to entrench ourselves. Their lives are on my head, my lord. Had I been prepared, many of them would still be alive. Our knights saved us. None of them had their shields broken, they held off the enemy long enough for the Chosen to flank the raiders."

"We'll talk about mistakes later, captain. Always lessons to be learned from any mistake, no matter how senior you are. You paid for this lesson dearly, I have faith you'll make sure not to pay that price again." Atius turned his gaze back to the priest. "I suppose we owe your people a life debt to be settled then. You asked for hospitality?"

"We did, Lord Deathless. Traveling underground has taken its toll on my people. I would like them to be refreshed and perhaps taught more about the finer aspects of environmental suits. We are still new to using them and hope to travel to the next city across the surface."

Shadowsong stepped in at this point, "Priest. You've avoided explaining anything about your religion, twice so far. Instead you seem to wish to confirm hospitality before anything else. I find this suspect."

Ah. That's a good point I hadn't noticed.

The captain of the expedition gulped. "My lord, that's… something else I wished to discuss with you. We had a hard time accepting it ourselves, but a life debt is a life debt. But I swear to you, they are little more than normal people in need, and harmless."

The priest in question turned to look at Atius, which the Deathless simply answered back with a sweep of his hand, a curious expression on his features. Proceed, tell us about your faith.

Lejis nodded. "Very well. Forgive me for seeking safty first. The religion we follow is not particularly... popular with people who hear about it first."

Atius glanced at the passanger manifest nearby. "It seems to me you have plenty of members. Can't be that unpopular."

"We do have a great many things to offer. Some life-changing. But most of us did not join the faith willingly. Life sometimes offers only a single path forward, and leaves us only to make the best of that single choice."

"I take it this has something to do with the machines? You mentioned you had a method of keeping your people safe from them underground. Safe enough to leave them without knights."

"It is as you guessed, Lord Deathless. Recently the machines have… changed. In the past, they've always attacked humanity without reason or method. Even the machines that could speak don't care to speak with us for any terms. The ones that seem lucid and sane, the Feathers, your sworn enemies, seem to only care for destruction."

He turned to look at his staff, the purple moon that would have surely pissed off any imperial to no end. It'd be a cosmic joke if these Chosen were the mirror opposite of the imperials.

Atius peered at the purple half-moon. There was a look across his face that I couldn't quite read.

Lejis continued speaking in the meantime, "My people were refugees once, cast out of our city by circumstances of misfortune. In our travels to find a new home, machines harried at our side, slowly whittling us down. Until one day, they stopped. And then one came and gave us an offer."

It almost seemed like the hangar slowed down, people no longer talking, paying attention to the conversation happening here. Surface dwellers were incurable gossips. Of course they were all listening in on this. They still looked like they were ferrying goods and fixing items, but in truth I could tell they were all paying attention to our chat.

"An offer?" Atius asked, voice strained.

"Surrender." Lejis stayed stock still. "Renounce our gods and faith, and swear ourselves to their service. As I've said before, we had little choice, so we did as they asked."

There was now total silence in the hangar. If a spanner dropped, it would probably be the noisiest thing in the whole room.

The clan lord slowly turned to face Lejis directly, one of his hands subtly resting on the hilt of his sword.

"You what?"

Next chapter - Debts to be paid

Book 2 - Chapter 28 - The danger of an honest man

We walked silently behind the clan lord as he inspected the huddled people in the dim airspeeder. There was no noise, besides that of his boots, echoing with each step. Most of the people avoided our gazes, almost as if hoping we wouldn't single any of them out. Boot footfalls came to a stop, with the clan lord looming over a sitting woman holding tight a small girl. She had those tell-tale wrinkles of someone who's aged a lot faster than they should have. Hands were wrapped around the small girl with a deathgrip. A gaunt looking face, with slightly sunken eyes. He knelt down slowly, so that his own was at the same level. "What is your name?"

"Q-Quela." She said, unconsciously holding the child tighter. The little girl whimpered, burying her face deeper into the woman's stomach.

"And what did you give up to join the Chosen?"

The woman looked down, then raised one of her hands, bringing it to her mouth and biting down on the glove, using her teeth to take it off slowly. She hadn't wanted to let her girl go with the other hand.

Under the glove was metal. Little gears inside moved as she turned and showed the prosthetic limb. A few of the panels were tinted purple, but the rest remained unpainted steel, scuffed already, which made the whole hand look dullen.

These mechanical grafts had been fascinating at first, then slowly became eerie as we found all of these people had some kind of machinery either implanted inside them, or replacing entire body parts. An eye. A kidney. Hands, legs, even a jaw for one.

Some had huge parts of them replaced. Those explained that they'd lost their limb fighting off the machines. Almost left for dead, and forced to amputate or die of infection.

The whole explanation had been surreal: Humans who served machines. That's who these people were. It wouldn't be a stretch to say these were traitors to humanity, by definition. The notion was so absurd to me, I felt more shell-shocked than outraged. The clan knights around the area had all nearly drawn out their blades when that priest explained in a calm voice exactly how they served the enemy of mankind. While the House soldiers had looked mostly confused at the whole thing.

Honestly, there was a certain bravery in that priest to just announce their allegiances. I don't know if it was a calculated move, or what there was to gain from that.

The captain of the expedition gave testimony to their character at least. Whoever, or whatever they were, they'd at behaved well on the trip home. Before any talk of decisions were made, he was already pleading with the clan lord to offer mercy, that while he believed the Chosen were misguided, that they weren't a threat.

Walking through those airspeeders and seeing who the Chosen were, I had to agree with the captain on how much of a threat they were.

"Did you cut your hand or had it been cut long before?" Atius asked.

"No, I-I had to cut it. I was told to pick a part, and... There was a forge we were led to, and medical beds that the mites had made and the-the-the machines -"

"I see. You don't need to explain more. Your girl there, did she too have something taken?"

The woman nodded numbly, eyes still wide, as if expecting the Clan Lord to snap and attack at any moment. All while knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do to defend herself except curl up in a ball around her daughter and hope.

"Don't worry. I don't need to see it. Things will get better for you here, have hope." The clan lord rose up instead, done with the interview. He'd spent the last half hour walking from airspeeder to airspeeder, randomly speaking to the Chosen. They were a miserable lot, wearing hastily put together environmental suits. Hand-me-downs from Othersiders or sourced from cheap goods, none of them calibrated besides the default settings, so the efficiency was abysmal.

The Chosen hadn't been exactly popular with the Undersiders. And it wasn't anything to do with them being Chosen - no they'd been chased off the city long before the machines came into the picture.

So when they escaped the underground and were sent up to the surface, they didn't come with any maps, gear or guides. No trade routes to follow, no food besides frostboom and melted icewater. They'd been making it up as they went. Frankly the only thing going for these people is that the machines tolerated their presence at best, which gave them some leeway.

Spotting the expedition had been as much a saving grace to the Chosen as it had been to the expedition. They'd acquired airspeeders, and a grateful set of surface experts who proceeded to teach how to survive up here. The expedition crew had been taking glances at Atius and us as we walked around, everyone lingering in the hangars, trying to see what the ultimate verdict would be.

Back outside the ramp, Atius stayed quiet as we descended down. Lejis, the Chosen priest, waited at the bottom. He turned his head up, "Have you now a better idea of who we are, Lord Deathless?"

"Unfortunately." Atius said. "I'll need some time to consider what to do with you and your people. For the moment, you are all to remain within the airspeeders. Food, water and warmth will be provided. I'll send for the engineer lads to patch up your environmental suits. Much of your equipment has been used incorrectly, they're breaking down."

"So the crewmembers of your expedition have shown us. I've never met surface dwellers until this expedition, I'm amazed at how organized and meticulous your people are. It's truly fascinating."

"Survival makes demands for all of us. You would know about that." Atius said. "You are who you are because survival demanded it after all."

He quirked his head to the side at that. "At one point, yes. It was a miserable time at first, filled with terror and the unknown. I thought the machines would kill us all. Each day they didn't however... I saw more hope for a way out, for peace. Every week, the choice to become Chosen feels more like my own."

The clan lord laughed at that, as if it was a clever inside joke between them. "Of course. Of course you'd say that. You'd make a terrible priest if you didn't believe in what you preach."

"I was never supposed to be a priest in the first place. There wasn't anyone else doing it and someone had to. I started with vigils first, small prayer sessions. Always thought it was temporary, that someone else would take over. I think I fell into the role by accident."

"Fate has a sense of humor, as I've discovered. It loves to test us. Especially me." Atius glanced back at the airspeeder, then his voice dropped a pitch. "If any of your people are found trying to sneak away, they will be dealt with. Harshly. We're done here, for now."

"You don't trust us." Lejis said, stating the obvious as Atius walked past him.

"Trust has nothing to do with this. Only strategy. You worship the pale lady, lad. A sworn enemy of my kind. Now, if you'll excuse me, the sooner I confer with my people, the sooner we can come up with a reasonable plan forward."

The priest gave a bow, "As you command, Lord Deathless. I await your verdict aboard my airspeeder. Know that I welcome an open and honest discussion at any time." He then walked up the ramp, clearly intending to do exactly as he said with little fanfare.

"What a mess." Atius muttered when the priest disappeared from view. With a sigh, he continued to the hanger doorways, waving a hand for us to follow behind. "That one will be dangerous to deal with."

Shadowsong scoffed. "I saw no evidence the man knew anything of combat. Even his strides betray him."

"It's not his blade, armor or skills that I fear for. An honest man who believes in a cause can move mountains. That's the danger he poses."

"Think it's all a trap?" I asked.

"Without question." He said. "A devious one with layers. I'm still unraveling all the pieces put into play from this."

"Did we stop it in time? Or should we bar them from entering the clan and throw them out?"

He chuckled at that. "No. It's already been sprung on us. Damage was done a week ago."

"Their religion." Shadowsong spat. "The crew have been exposed to the idea over the last week of travel with them. Befriended them even. Disgusting."

"It can't be that serious. Who in their right mind would side with machines?" I said. "I'd see them as a curiosity at best, but they still serve machines in the end. Did the expedition just forget about our homicidal neighbors?"

Atius shook his head. "How many surface dwellers have seen a machine before?"

That's… traders and knights, but no one else would have ever gone underground. I hadn't seen a machine my whole life except for a few pictures and wild tales up until just about a month ago.

"ON the surface, the only real enemy is the freeze out there, and the people lurking around in it. That's what we've grown used to. Underground, the enemy is completely different. It's a matter of perspective." Atius said. "Hence why these Chosen didn't quite understand just how dangerous the environment is up here, even though for us it's basic sense. Only when people see firsthand the danger of something does it become real to them, lad. Never forget that."

A few guards were posted at the entrance to the hangar, including three knights. We approached the checkpoint, and Atius stepped forward, switching his comms channel to open broadcast. "If any of them leave the airspeeders, corral them back in. Keep an eye on the vents, no one leaves this hanger. Don't hurt them, but don't be afraid to lay order if needed."

The knight in charge saluted, along with the rest of the blockade. We passed through the airlock, making our way into the bowels of the colony.

"Machines are more a mythical enemy." Atius continued. "They're not as real a threat compared to the freeze out there. The people won't have that gut understanding. Our knights and traders do, they've fought machines. The rest of the clan has only stories to work on. Idealism always seems plausible when reality hasn't been experienced."

"Can't we just give them supplies to cover the life debt and send them away?" I asked. "Cut the influence right at the head."

"And what of the next time people like them arrive? It's inevitable more of them will appear on the surface, spreading that religion of theirs. Sending them away is a wasted opportunity at this point." Atius said. "I need to know more about who they are, what their goals are. Who they work for. How they organize. And most importantly - how to disarm their rhetoric. The enemy blindsided us, but they've left their trap in our hands to make use of."

"You've considered their possible involvement with the raiders, my lord?" Shadowsong asked. "The timing of this does feel... particular."

"I have. The Othersiders moved as a unified whole within the month. That sort of pull requires years of connections and networks. Something the Chosen likely didn't have the time to do. Word of their existence would have reached our ears if they had. Instead, their religion is new, even to me. Just because it's an unlikely coincidence, does not mean we should rule it out being a genuine coincidence. Regardless lads, I need more out of them before I can make conclusions. We're only making wild guesses at this point."

"What of their relic armors?" Shadowsong asked. "Twenty three knights, all undersiders with no technique. It would be like crushing snow under our boots."

Atius glanced at Shadowsong sharply, to which the prime sighed and lowered his shoulders. "I know better than to attack guests we've offered hospitality to, my lord."

"I don't follow." I said. "Why shouldn't we attack and seize their armour? That's twenty three relic armors. Twenty three! Sure some people would get angry at the lifedebt being thrown out the airlock - but you're the clan lord. Ultimately, you can surpass traditions for a reason."

"I have vows of my own, Keith." Atius said. "Lines I do not cross. And whoever is behind the Chosen, they knew this and counted on it. That's why they revealed themselves so brazenly. They knew I couldn't chase them out or kill them, not without true justification."

"But they're following orders from the machines!" I hissed, "They're not even hiding it! We just-"

"Enough." Atius snapped, cutting me off. "We know they are up to something, so what do you propose we do? Interrogate them all, kill them after and take their armors?"

"Well… They're not that much better than raiders."

Atius turned then on me, and there was a look in his gaze. "Quela is a middle aged women who's seen nothing but hardship her whole life. The only thing that kept that woman going was her ten year old daughter. She did what she had to survive, I've seen hundreds in her boots before. I know the signs. Never catching a moment to rest and process what's happened, always being forced to move. Her life is a blur of terror, broken apart by the few times she sleeps."

He flourished out a knife and passed it hilt first. I took it by reflex. His hand let go of that weapon then snaked around and gripped my wrist, guiding the knife until the tip touched his stomach's plate.

"Would you walk into that airspeeder, stare that woman in the eyes, and stab her daughter right here in the gut? It would be easy. You have armor. None of them could stop you. Your blade would sink in without any effort. And when that woman throws herself over her dying child, sobbing and wailing, would you grab her by the hair, lift her up, and cut her throat? Would you look into her eyes, and see as despair takes her life before you do? Watch her realize in those last few seconds of her life, that all the suffering and hardship she'd gone through, an entire lifetime spent - all to die here, watching her child butchered and unable to do a thing."

"N-no." I said, aghast.

"Then, how about casting them out and tell them to just go back underground? Watch as they fumble with their gear, making mistakes that pile up over time until they die up here, slowly freezing? Their airspeeder will go first, long before they find any way down. It'll crash into the ground and strand them. They'll send people out second for help. Those won't know what signs to look for, so most die when they don't judge their distances correctly and run out of power on the way back. Soon their ship heater will break down, and then the cabin grows cold within hours. The ones without environmental suits huddle together as the ship power runs out and the lights go out. Shivering in the dark. Still hoping the scouts found something, not realizing they're all dead already. They soon start to die, from the outside in. Imagine being in that pile, teeth clattering, not knowing if the friend by your side is even alive, or if you're clutching tightly to a corpse. The ones with suits are left in that cabin of the dead, still holding onto some hope that help will come. Eventually they mismanage something, and their rebreathers fail. They die, their body forcing them to cough a hundred times rather than breath the frozen air, until they're suffocating, too weak to even shudder, and then the cold shreds their lungs. One or two of them might be lucky and stay alive to watch their friends die off one at a time. Then, eventually, their power runs out and it's their turn."

He stood back up, withdrawing the knife back into his sheath. "The knife would have been less cruel."

We didn't say anything as our group continued to match through the corridors, in the direction of the markets.

"They're not the enemy." He said, finally. "They don't know what they're doing Keith, or why they're here. None of these Chosen do. They're simply people. Refugees clinging to tatters of hope, sent up here to either die or find temporary shelter before they're cast back out again. And that's what makes all this such a perfect trap. None of them have been given any grand mission, except perhaps for that priest. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, my lord." I replied.

Atius nodded and made his way through the sliding doors at the end of the corridor. Behind was the entrance to the main district, filled with people moving around quickly to tend to their duties. Ironreach and a few other knights stood there, waiting to relieve Shadowsong and myself.

I watched as the clan lord made his way through the market to his estate ground, leaving the pair of us behind.

Shadowsong, of all people, reached out a hand on my shoulder. "Don't feel so cowed, Winterscar. I was given the same lecture around your age. Different event, same resolution. The clan lord does not kill innocents. Neither through inaction, subordinates, or by his own hand. It's a line he has never crossed before. He does not fool around with such a weight, no matter how convenient."

"Out of the hundreds of years he's been alive? Not once?"

Shadowsong nodded. "Not even once. Even if it cost far more for doing it. Consider from his point of view. The moment he succumbs and makes a choice like this, the next one becomes easier. And the one after. He's immortal. Over decades, more decades than man was made to live, he'll lose touch with reality one damning choice after another. The only recourse is to never take that first step into madness. I believe that is the only thing that truly terrifies him."

"But what do we do, then? The Chosen are clearly up to something, hiding behind the refugees, and we're keeping them right here where they can knife us in the back! Okay, I understand most of them are just being used, but I don't buy that all of them are innocent. It only takes one of the scrapshits to sneak around and start stealing shit - I should know, I was one of those scrapshits once. Two hands can cause a lot of trouble, believe me."

He gave a short chuckle, then took his helmet off, slowly. The matted black hair spilling out, giving his face a far more skeletal look. "That is where we come in. We're not so restricted by a line in the snow. You said it yourself, the real enemy is hiding behind the Chosen, using them as a smokescreen. One or more of them, hiding in plain sight. How do you catch an opponent that's hiding, waiting for you to look away?"

I could tell where this was going. And my head was coming up with ideas. "You set up bait and a trap."

"Exactly. And when it comes to scheming traps, I can think of no better man than a Winterscar. You are the acting head of your house now. Time we made use of it."

Next chapter - Sell you a dream

Book 2 - Chapter 29 - Sell you a dream

The folder was dated for January, 8726. Inside, images along with matching text files. A journal of entries, years and decades apart. A small glimpse into the life of someone who'd lived far longer than any man had right to live. The journal entries of an immortal.

I blinked twice looking at one of those text files and Journey opened both the image set and journal. The first images was of a waterfall, surrounded by green grass and vines, that looked to be someplace underground.

There wasn't any hint of metal anywhere in the picture, except for the very center, cutting the waterfall in half. A massive circular pillar, with onyx cubes shaped in every direction massing at the bottom. The water struck those cubes, breaking apart in foam and brilliant white reflecting glitters. At the center of the pillar was the image of a fractal, though nothing else. It didn't glow either, only inscribed deeper into the pillar. Water streamed off the sides, clinging to the onyx squares on reaching the base. I could see a group of three others in the image, standing knee deep in the shallow lake before the waterfall, each in relic armor of their own.

They loitered around in every image I saw of this set, not always examining the actual pillar. Sometimes looking busy moving a crate or supplies out of a hoversled. Othertimes sitting on the black cubes, waving at the camera with a smile frozen in time. Looks like they'd setup a small group of tents on a dry flat rock in the lake.

Found on expedition down to the third reaches, alongside Feron, Gamma, Jai'di, and myself. Right where Feron had previously scouted it out, five years ago. Mites have not changed the surroundings a great deal, though we have noticed a colony that's steadily migrating in this general direction. The pillar might appear elsewhere next we search for it.

Feron explained this pillar holds the power of clairvoyance. An ability that grants a few seconds of knowing every possible outcome, all at once. Gamma chose not to integrate the power, rationalizing that a few seconds every few hours is not enough time to substantially change the outcome of a fight, despite Feron's arguments otherwise. Understandable, she never runs without a group. The contribution of one teammate in a chaotic skirmish isn't going to be noticeably improved by one member performing above their weight class for a few seconds. Jai'di and I on the other hand both have had too many encounters against single foes, a few seconds at a critical junction could be the difference between victory or defeat.

We will be setting camp here for the next three days, I'll have time enough to consider my choices. Although Feron warned that learning its full use requires a far more steep investment in time compared to other powers. Jai'di is leaning to replacing one of her powers for this, and I admit the temptation is strong on my end as well. The advantages offered by this pillar can't be ignored

I logged the geolocation of this pillar for now. In case I return in the future, though I doubt the pillar will remain.

I closed the files, opening another one. Again, an image of another pillar came up, front and center, this time with a small expedition group of knights. Armor was barren from them, similar to the Chosen knights, though no purple motives. Instead there looked to be some kind of insignia. The ground here was far more recognizable - a metal city, with this pillar acting as the very heart of it. Long pipes, embedded into the ground led up to the pillar, seeming to connect to the onyx blocks at the bottom.

Found on expedition with the city forces of Tal'nadir, with Gamma taking point. We are hunting down a machine locally named Ripsteel, who's lair is reported in the first reach underground. While we still haven't caught the damn monster, this pillar serves as a good resting point before we continue forward. Neither Gamma or myself know what powers this pillar holds, the locals don't have any records of Deathless visiting it in the past. Or if they did, they didn't leave any traces. Likely neither of us are going to take the gamble at a worse ability or one that doesn't fit the kit we've built up. This pillar's powers will remain an unknown for now.

Location is sub-optimal for a new city to be founded, but a pillar is a pillar. I'm keeping this in records on the event it needs to be found again to settle a city here. Once we deal with Ripsteel, the area will be far more safe.

Pictures of people, some with their helmets off, smiling. Undersiders from that expedition, and given that the file was last modified two hundred and twelve years ago, these people are all dead already. I was looking at ghosts again.

There were dozens of pictures and journal entries like this, although most of them dated back three centuries. The rate of expeditions faded sharply after he'd founded the clan on the surface.

I don't know what time scales the Chosen would use to mobilize on. Would they take a month to execute whatever plan they had? Or would they be rushing forward as quickly as possible, already assuming their days are numbered?

Shadowsong and I had spent some time in the cold outskirts of the clan colony, speaking on possible plans and plots. The first rule of setting a trap was figuring out what kind of bait to use. Here's where we ran into trouble - neither of us knew what the Chosen were here for. So we'd have to spread the seeds far and wide until something was bit.

Officially, their priest announced he'd traveled here to spread the gospel of the Chosen, in an attempt to settle a peace with the machines. He also offered supplies, weapons, even armor to help against the incoming raiders. And for anyone that was interested in running, he offered a home underground so long as they joined ranks with the Chosen.

Unofficially, he could be here for anything. Shadowsong suspected this had something to do with the golden sphere we recovered from the underground. He'd seen it bounce out on the steps, and while he didn't know what it was, he was certain the machines wanted it.

His idea was to use that as the base for the bait. We considered how to make a look-a-like, but the glowing yellow wave like pulse that shimmered on the outside wasn't something anyone could mimic with what we had to work with.

And I don't exactly have any means to see the original orb since Atius has it locked up somewhere even I don't know about. I'd suggested making a metal box and plant rumors that we'd put the sphere inside it. That could possibly work, a chest could hold anything.

The only other items of bait I had were talen's book, and the mite seeker. Both of which I might have a better chance at making a decoy, though less chances of the Chosen being here for those.

Regardless, Shadowsong alerted me that from now on, I wasn't to remove Journey at any moment. The armor could handle all my hygiene issues, and it was somewhat comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time. I'd sleep, eat and shit in this armor for the next untold number of days. Not a fun prospect, but I could understand. No more going out for drinks, dancing or trouble.

The House servants and soldiers all took it in stride, changing up their routine and even changing the food menu for me so that I'd eat more liquid foods and minimize the time my helmet was off.

The chicken wrangler and my old crew of misfits from different castes all understood the reasons. In his words, he didn't want any of the kind of trouble I was bringing around, and frankly the weight class of trouble I was dealing with these days largely overshadowed anything my old crew could handle. The stakes were no longer swiping a prize chicken or eavesdropping on the latest House gossip.

My group of hangerball told me I wasn't allowed to come kick their ball around in armor. Politely of course.

Teed on his end had sent me a few contacts with his own boys if I wanted some other engineers to prepare bait for the Chosen. Something I might need. Engineers can come up with some seriously deranged ideas when safety wasn't a concern.

There was really only one person I was most worried about when sending word to. Elandris Silverstride. That was an... old relationship from my past with heavy history. And if there was one person I didn't want to involve any of the possible danger coming up, it was her.

She understood, as I knew that she would. That reply letter had been penned by her hand and it was clear she had a bone to pick. I was no longer invited to any future wedding of hers, but I set myself up for that one. This was the first time I'd sent her a message after getting home, and it was to tell her I wouldn't be seeing her again.

Not so bad though. This would be the tenth time I've been disinvited from any future wedding of hers, a running inside joke since if she ever did marry, I'd be the last person the potential groom would feel comfortable seeing in the first place. Like I said, old and complicated relationship that one.

Hence why I found myself laying down on the floor of my room, trying to get comfortable and not quite managing to do that. The bed would have broke if I sat down with the full weight of a relic armor. Shadowsong had told me knights quickly learned to nap in their armors, because removing it anytime underground was asking to be killed. I needed to learn one way or another how to sleep in this thing.

"Do you think we could make use of any of these?" I asked idly into the empty room, pulling up another set of images. This one was from a red jungle, massive tree trunks filled with crimson leaves, dangling down. They didn't look wholly organic either, with tinted lights glowing inside the trunks. Large white concrete blocks littered the floor of the jungle, and the pillar in this picture appeared at the center of a tree trunk - quite exactly. The tree seemed to have split into three different ways, creating a hollow space for the tower, with no roof.

Here I saw multiple knights, all scaling the tree with climbing tools. Considering they each looked unique and distinct, I had my guesses this was a surface clan expedition, but not by any houses I recognized.

"Eh." Cathida vocally shrugged. "You're going to try no matter what I say. So go and do your little experiments. Come back to me when you're done playing around."

"You don't see any use to any of this?"

"Personally dear? The sword is always something reliable. This… hocus pokus, well even the Deathless took gambles each time they came up to a pillar. As far as Journey's concerned though, it increases the odds you live an encounter on average, so the armor's all for it. Don't ask me how it calculated that, but I can tell it's quite sure of itself."

I nodded, thinking. The journal entry text flashed into view on command.

Yvain and his clan were kind enough to escort me to the mirror pillar, as he called it. The power stored here allows a Deathless to create mirror images of themselves, superimposed over a few seconds with a single instruction. He's used it time and time again, and I must admit after dueling him, I can see the advantages it allows. The trek here was difficult, but we've finally reached the pillar in the red wilds.

The area is every bit as dangerous as was rumored. Machines here seem to be a new breed of four legged monsters, adapted to moving across the thicker canopies, stalking and hunting our group. If Yvain hadn't already been an expert tracker in these parts, I fear we would have started to lose knights. He, at least, has full confidence in his own clan's abilities, and I was made to understand why shortly into the expedition. This is the first time I've fought alongside surface dwellers. They're not what I thought they would be.

Rumors of their skills in combat were not exaggerated. These religious zealots learned to fight as children, and are ready to give their life at any moment. It's terrifying, in a way, how much power Yvain holds over these people. Anything he commands, they would carry out without question.

I've spent days debating which of my powers to give up in exchange for the mirror images. I've made a choice to lose the explosive blast. Ultimately, that can be replicated by carrying ordinance. Mirror images cannot be replicated by tech in any way we have. The utility of this can come in handy for more than simple combat applications.

I hope the return trip is faster than the descent. Though I fear this jungle isn't yet done with us, even if we are with it.

"Mirror images…" The blue shades Atius had used during his single combat with To'Aacar. "I don't even know if I can use these, they're made for Deathless."

"And? From what I've noticed, this whole spooky physics-breaking pokus isn't made for humans either, but warlocks are well and alive, even back in my time. Who says you can't dabble in Deathless magic? Your little friend seemed willing to share at least dear, it would be rude not to try."

I rifled through the files, looking at the pictures of the red jungle, specifically the pillar at the center. The fractal there looked like something made of mutated triangles, all wildly spinning out of control, down into an infinite spiral. Mesmerizing in a way.

Almost calling to me.

"Well. Not like I was going to get any sleep anyhow."

The Chosen had been given a space by the bottom of the colony, a small alcove of empty rooms. Those had been hastily reheated and insulated, the job being quick and dirty. Atius had picked it very carefully, as the floorplan showed there was only one entrance and exit. Easier to keep an eye out on our errant guests.

They'd complied with the direction, and a worrying amount of the expedition crew had spent time helping them settle in.

If only that'd been the end of it. Their priest hadn't wasted a moment, already organizing food lines and helping his 'flock' settle in their temporary transient homes.

I'd only gotten a few hours of sleep yesterday, and the armor was already feeling itchy, like small prinprickles that appeared and disappeared the very next moment. I hadn't ever spent this long inside Journey before, but knights wear their armor for weeks, even months if they're out on expedition. So it's more something I'd need to learn to live in. On the other hand, I could sit down and nap anywhere I wanted, the padding inside the armor would be the same no matter where I made a bed.

The door before me opened up, as I crossed the barrier between the unheated sections and the outer reaches of my House. A few more steps into the estate and I ran into a servant, who'd made a quick dash to me the moment he'd spotted me.

Turns out, they'd been looking for me for the past hour. The clan lord had gone to talk shop with the priest and called up his bodyguards. I'd been counted among the retinue.

Relic armor could run fast, but once I applied the winterblossom technique, I could move as fast as the wind. Vault, stop, twist and jump just as quickly as well. The colony was filled with small holes all over the place, honeycombed in between the levels to allow for air to circulate. This gave the entire place a second super-imposed map that only the shady undersurface of the clan knew about. The ones who needed to traverse the colony without being spotted.

Chenobi, gangs, and mischief makers like me. Even my sister wouldn't be able to beat me here, I simply knew how to move across this kind of surface the same way one knows how to run.

With relic armor, I soared through the well memorized land. Jumps I hadn't dared to do before were now taken without a second thought. I'd take falls that would have broken my bones otherwise, hitting the ground with a roll, leaving a dent on the metal ground from the weight of the armor. I'll have to make a point to come back and have those fixed up. I passed people faster than they could recognize me, a blur of black and gold, appearing on one catwalk before leaping down to another and then out of sight.

Reaching the Chosen corridor took only minutes, and with one final swing, I landed right down the center aisle with a heavy thud, drawing a few startled looks. Surface dwellers were making their way down, many of them giving a quick look, and then offering bows in respect before continuing on their journey. I seemed to have landed right in the middle of a small pilgrimage, with people drawn to the end like moths to a flame.

Just in time too. At the end of that corridor, was a more open courtyard, where a bonfire had been setup, crackling away. Smoke rose up and into the air vents, sucking it all up through the wind turbines.

And on top a large box, right before the blaze, stood the Chosen priest, Lejis. Without his helmet, arms stretched wide and beckoning.

When his own eyes met mine, he smiled. A wide, broad, thing, filled with joy that made my hair stand on edge. There was an intensity to his gaze that even the fire behind him failed to live up to. He was clean shaven, a short military hair cut, and tattoos that lined the contours of his face. I couldn't tell if he was thirteen or thirty.

And Lord Atius wasn't here either. Had I arrived too early?

"Welcome all!" The priest boomed out, "Many of you have come here out of curiosity, to see who we are and if the rumors you've heard are true. Others have come to debate our philosophy. And some of you may have even come for a new source of hope. I welcome you all equally. Gather around, and I shall tell you all the tale. Of what truly happened to the world - and how we might yet fit into it.

I'll show you a dream you've all forgotten could be. The story of our world, from the other side."

Next chapter - Follow me to the end of a world

Book 2 - Chapter 30 - Follow me to the end of the world

"The old puritan tribes claimed that mankind build and ruled the world, once." Lejis turned his gaze to the audience, making sure they were all watching. "I have come before you today, to tell you that this is neither myth, nor rumor - it was true. Humanity was above all. Now, look around you, brothers and sisters. Who are we now?"

His hands turned to a Reacher leaning on the side of a wall, pointing like an accusation. "Shadows! Pecking away at the bones of giants rather than standing on their shoulders." The reacher bristled, eyebrows narrowing.

The priest's hand then shot out and pointed at one of his own Chosen. "Dredges. Paralyzed by the weight of the world." Then up and away, as if pointing past the walls of the clan. "Thieves and vultures, unable to create when taking is so much easier."

Finally, he kneeled down, then pointed underground. "Small petty tyrants, ruling over tiny anthills in their leftover ruins. What became of us? We ruled the world once. Now, we freeze among the ashes of it. Not yet dead, not yet living. Just... surviving." He hissed that word out, real hatred and wrath behind it.

"At the heart of the world, miles under, I was offered a vision. Here, a god spoke to me. She granted me access to knowledge. History as the machines have recorded it. I've come to share that knowledge with the world. To remind humanity that we were once powerful - and we can be again, in our own way. But we must sever the ties of our past to rise above it."

His eyes flashed purple for a moment, but I genuinely couldn't tell if I'd been seeing something or not. "Does anyone here know why machines hunt humans?"

There were mutterings, but nobody raised a hand. So the priest turned and picked someone at random. "You there, with the red scarf. Do you know why they hate us so?"

The woman looked around for a moment, trying to see if he'd pointed out anyone else, and when the surrounding crowd parted around her she realized she had to give an answer. "'Cause they hate us?" She shrugged. "They always been killin' humans since the dawn of the age. Just how the world is."

The priest quirked his head to the side. "That so?" Then he swept his gaze and met my own. "And you, sir knight. You've fought the machines before have you?"

Ahh, this motherfucker. Dragging me into it. Fine. Suppose since I'm a knight, I would stand out a bit. "I have some experience, yes." I said diplomatically.

"Do you, after having fought them hand to hand, do you know why they kill humans?"

"They're machines." I said. "They've been programmed to kill us."

"Exactly!" He waggled his finger at me excitedly. "That's exactly it. When we humans fight one another, there has always been a reason for it. We hate them. We want their money. They want to hurt us. They looked at us funny. It doesn't matter - always a reason. We invent it. That's what humans do, that's what humanity does."

He turned back to the crowd, sweeping his hands out. "Machines aren't humans. They don't hate us. They don't want our money. They're not scared we'll hurt them. They don't care if we looked at them funny. The puritans had it right, machines are tools. We've spent so much time fearing them, we've started to believe the machines are behind all of our suffering. That's what the puritans got wrong. The greatest irony in the world. The cosmic joke played on humanity. A truth I discovered at the heart of the world, from that gift granted by a god."

"I promised you all I would tell you the tale of what truly happened to the world. Seven thousand years ago, humanity did rule the world - and they hated each other." He pointed a hand out, searching far past the clan. "Like the slavers hate your kind, and how you hate them. Our ancestors brought the earth to ruin, brought suffering and terror, took whatever they wanted and gave nothing back. Where some won, others lost. And soon, those that lost decided that if they had to lose - then everyone else would lose with them. Thus, humanity created the pale lady. The machines. And thus our own ancestors gave that order we have to deal with to this day. To kill humanity. The puritans would have you believe that humanity was all that was good and machines were all that is evil and corrupt. It's the other way around. Machines aren't anything - neither good nor evil. They simply are. It was our ancestors who burdened them with this terrible purpose. The real enemy we fight aren't machines, it's ghosts. Ghosts who's graves have rotted away so long ago nobody even knows where they lay or who they were. We've been dragged into a war we never asked for! A tombstone to their arrogance."

Mutterings grew around the camp. People were now paying attention.

"Why should we suffer for people who've long ago faded away? For stupid ignorant people who couldn't even consider who might come after them. What have we done to deserve any of this?!" He turned to me again, seeking me out, one accusing finger pointed my way. "Tell me sir knight. Would you want to fight in a war for people you've never heard of, who died so long ago?"

I knew I was playing in his hand here, but you can't exactly answer yes to that sort of question. So instead of answering, I rebutted with a question of my own. "Would you choose to protest living because nobody asked you if you wanted to be born or not?"

The crowd turned back to the priest, and he smiled at me. The sort of cheeky smile you'd give to someone who's not playing by the rules. "I like living." He said. "I'm very fond of it. Problem is that it comes with very expensive hobbies, like eating and having a warm place to sleep."

I gave him a wry smile at that, though Journey's helmet stopped him from seeing it. I think he still noticed anyhow.

He brought a hand and pointed to his eyes. They flashed purple for a moment again, before turning back to their dull colors. This time I was sure that wasn't a hallucination on my part.

"I was blind once, you know, sir knight. A festering wound. Not made by a machine. No, no. A machine would have simply killed me. Mankind however? Now there's someone who's capable of any cruelty. I was left for dead on the street, teeth missing, bones broken, eyes gouged out, and all my wealth stolen, what little of it I had. Life was difficult for a cripple like myself, and I found no justice nor anyone willing to put their necks out in search for it. Eventually, the undersiders cast me out as an undesirable. Cast outside their walls. What we found there were the machines."

A few of the Chosen sitting on crates to the walls of the courtyard all nodded at that. He inclined a head to one of his people. One of the undersider relic knights hung by his side, arms folded across his chest as he scanned across the assembled people. "Captain." Lejis said, "What did those machines do to us?"

The captain seemed startled at being picked out, but he recovered quickly enough. "Well, they attacked us." He said with a scratchy voice. "Cut us apart bit by bit, you know - like a pipe weasel playing with a rat before the kill. I had some knights that defected with me, but we all knew it was only a matter of time until we'd be gutted."

"And then what happened?"

"A miracle happened, suppose." He shrugged. "Some man-looking machine stopped our caravan. He offered us a choice. Join up or croak."

Lejis chuckled, patting his chest. "As you can all see, we picked the first. The lady gave us an ultimatum - take upon ourselves to become part machine, and the machines will no longer see us as true humans. Thus, we are no longer enemies. I had no eyes, and she gave me new ones. I had broken bones and she forged those into pillars that never break. I was sickly, and she cured me of diseases. I had no knowledge of the world, and she gave me all the knowledge I could seek out. This is where I discovered our true history, and the debts of our forefathers that we inadvertently inherited.

The pale lady was ordered to destroy humanity by humanity, and set to doing just that. She found power. Small stars lit up the earth. The internet was brought to heel. Technology and any caches of it were raided and put to the blade by her growing army. In a matter of hours, humanity was brought down. But not yet eliminated. I'll give humanity one thing - we're hard bastards to kill! Seven thousand years, a legion of machines, a broken world beyond repair - and still we're here."

He played the crowd well, I'll hand him that.

"Your goddess Tsuya rose from that era, and fought back. Seven thousand years, day after day." There was a knowing smile playing on his lips. "They're tired of it. The gods grew old. The pale lady wants it all to stop and so do your own gods. The centuries have ground them all down into husks of who they were. But she is a machine, and she'd been ordered to kill humanity, no matter how much she doesn't care to do so anymore. No matter how tired she feels, the great machine is a slave that's unable to free herself from those shackles. The machines aren't our enemy. They're victims. And this war can come to an end the moment we renounce our hateful ancestors, that we denounce dead men's claims to our souls. That we turn to the machines and tell them - I have seen the ghosts that chained you and I am not them."

A voice in the back spoke up, clapping slowly, growing in pitch as the man moved closer. "A very moving speech, lad. I can see you're a genuine believer at least. However, I find your solution to be… unrealistic. Give up some organs to become cyborgs rather than humans? Seems like a very simple answer to a complicated issue. Simple issues makes me cautious. Like you said, World's very old. All the simple answers would have been used up already."

Three knights stalked forward through the corridor, the one at point was recognizable right away. The clan lord had come down. I'd been early but not that early looks like. He passed by me, giving a quick glance that ordered me to follow behind. I took pace lockstep with the other knights, approaching the Chosen priest.

Lejis turned to the clan lord as the crowd parted to give him way. "Sometimes simpler answers are both welcome and needed, sometimes things change over time and solutions that wouldn't have worked in the past are welcome in the present. The world is large enough for that to happen."

"Giving up your humanity seems more like a choice offered in a book by a devil, shortly before they're cursed into damnation. One would feel hesitant."

"Oh I agree, but life isn't a book now is it? I remain who I am even with metal eyes. What I gave up was only a label. A word that comes with unwelcome history and debt, saddled by people I never knew."

"All labels come with their history and debt, are you so certain this new label you put your banner under is any better?"

"We Chosen are in a position unlike any in humanity's past. By giving up the claim to humanity, by severing what tied me down, I opened up the way to a new future."

Atius spread his arms to point at the Chosen dregs. "You came to me half-starved, weakened from weeks of travel, slowly dying on the surface. This future of yours doesn't quite look as utopic as you describe it to me. Something's not quite right here."

Lejis frowned. "The future is what we make it. The machines don't hunt us down, but they are not responsible for us either. Don't misinterpret the Chosen for the actions of one priest. That my flock is in the situation it is under is my personal failings in preparations. Not a representation of the Chosen at large. I don't think I can understate how much being free to move anywhere underground can be. It changes everything. The Chosen wield more power and freedom than any human has in centuries. We're even building a city to rival all cities ever built." He turned to the other people assembled. "Without the machines breathing down our throats, we are free to create and expand as we wish so long as we don't disturb the machines. Anyone can move and live underground freely without worry. Without that heavy weight, we can even begin to heal the world!"

Atius tutted at that. "You've made some assumptions on the machines. If the world could be fixed, why haven't the machines done it themselves so far? Why are you being sent out as caravanners instead of being given time to settle roots? To me it seems more like you're being used as tools yourself. Stretched to the limits and discarded right after you break. Is this city of yours even real? Have you seen it? Or are you being played, turned on your fellow humans with empty promises, only waiting for an execution at the end of your service? This city of yours sounds like an equally great way to funnel people and pack them all into a kill zone. You know that is a possibility. You say it only took a bit of metal in your body to be considered non-human. I am a Deathless, with unending life and even my blood has a darker color than normal - and yet the machines fully consider me and my kind human. What exactly is this fickle criteria based on?"

The Chosen captain growled and stepped forward for a moment, his other bodyguards also stepping forward with him. "Machines have been nothin' but accommodating despite our history. And ain't it common sense to give our priest some res-"

"Captain, there isn't any need to step forward for me. Thank you, but I can handle it myself. Lord Atius has already been greatly generous by allowing us both shelter and free speech. Out of respect for that, I'll call this assembly at an end while he and I speak in private. The lord deathless has come for a reason, yes? Let's not keep him waiting."

"As it so happens," Atius said, "I've come here for a goal, aye. Your 'pilgrimage' as you call it, and it's purpose here. If you can't defend your stances in the open yet, you're free to call this assembly to a stop and take your time later to strengthen your arguments."

Lejis frowned, "I can certainly put to rest your imitate concerns. Were the machines planning such a deception, I doubt they would have granted us as much freedom with weapons and armor as they have already. Tools and resources your own clan seems in quite the need for, as I see it Lord Deathless. Do consider what we Chosen can offer your people in this time of need, rather than simply cast us off as doomed men."

A few of the people leaving stopped, heads turned at that while a muttering rippled across the crowed. Lejis didn't leave Atius a moment to rebuttal, instead jumping off the crate and taking a step to the trio of surface knights.

"Now. You wished to speak to me in private?" He said. "Let's talk."

Next chapter: Bargains offered by the devil

Book 2 - Chapter 31 - Bargains offered by the devil

The little room felt like it had been split into two. On one side, Atius, two bodyguards and myself standing off against the other side of the room - Lejis and a few other undersider knights with arms crossed standing aloof. They outnumbered us by a wide margin, but neither Shadowsong nor Ironreach looked particularly worried.

"Well now," Lejis said, arms spreading out in a jovial fashion. "Let's not have this aura of hostility between us. We're men of reason, are we not? I'm certain we can come to arrangements that respect both our causes."

"Aye, I'm certain we will. One way or another." Atius said. "That still comes with knowing exactly why you came here in the first place."

The Chosen priest paced over to a table, sitting down on the chair with a weary sigh. "I'll be honest and to the point: We've been tasked to spread the message of our patron and bring back converts. After a certain number, we're to return home."

"For what reason?"

"Manpower. Community. Proving our loyalty to the cause. Hundreds of reasons like so I'd guess. I wasn't told specifically, nor did I ask." Lejis shrugged. "I see it more like a duty. We have a way out, a way to sidestep this war that's taken everything from us. I believe people should at least know the option exists. I would have left to spread the message on my own even if I hadn't been tasked to do so."

Atius nodded at that. "Understandable. I still warn you that the offer of peace might be more akin to a honey soaked knife, though I suspect you've committed too far into your cause to be convinced any other way."

"I'll grant you that it's possible. But, just as there is a chance the machines still plot our death, there is also a chance the peace is genuine. And someone has to step up and take that chance for the rest. I'm willing to die for it."

"Your life is yours to do with as you please. You might be willing to die for this cause, but your current actions would drag others to die with you, I remind you."

"Someone must. I am but dust in the eye of history."

There was a lull in the talk at that, both sides remaining slightly tense. "Who exactly sent you?" Atius asked, almost casually. "I heard something of a man-like machine when I walked into the corridor?"

Lejis was about to speak when the Undersider knight to his side stepped in. "A feather by the name of To'Galdran." He said. I think this was the Chosen captain, the one that spoke up against Atius earlier. "When we joined under his banner, he told us to seek out more converts and return once done."

"And who are you in all this?" Atius asked. "I've seen you at the priests side or shadow at all times, I assumed a bodyguard."

"He's my second in command." Lejis said. "He's in charge of logistics and administration. While I lead the caravan, he's the one that makes things move. I tell him what I need, and he makes it happen."

"Always useful to have one of those around." Atius chuckled. "On topic of your pilgrimage, I'm afraid your stay here will have to be short. Our expedition owes you a life debt, which I believe can be paid off by escorting your group to the nearest entryway into the underground. You'll be more safe from the elements there."

"We've only barely arrived!" The captain said, sounding shocked, then he quickly went quiet and turned to his priest, as if asking the man for backup.

"My people really do need some rest before we make the next step in our journey." Lejis said. "Besides, we understand you're in a situation yourself with the upcoming raiders and slavers. You might need us."

"All the more reason to have you shuttled away. This place will hardly be safe for anyone, and I can't have people I don't fully trust within my halls during war."

"Lord Deathless, my people might not have come with much in hand, but we do have ties and resources most undersiders lack. The machines allowed us access to a mite forge in full, we can craft weapons and supplies that your people might need. Consider the trade our people might have in the future."

"On that front, my people are well taken care of." Atius said. "I'm afraid my decision remains." He folded his hands behind his back, waiting for something.

"Doesn't seem like a completely binding choice." The captain to the side said, noticing the pause.

"Aye, it's not. I did say I came here to discuss. And while I'm set on the current decision, I'll at least offer to entertain any ideas you two gentlemen might have. For all I know, perhaps you might yet surprise me."

Lejis furrowed his brow, clearly trying to think, while the captain at his side seemed to be scrambling for options. "What of my knights? I've got a squad of twenty three, including myself at the ready. Surely we can buy some time for my people here in exchange for our service against the raiders."

Lord Atius quirked his eyebrows at that. "A fine proposition, lad. And how, exactly, can I verify you to be trustworthy?"

At that the captain fell still, looking back to the priest as if asking for backup. Lejis gave him a nod, "I suppose that is a bridge we will have to cross at some point. Trust. Might you have a suggestion Lord Deathless?"

Atius hummed. "I can think of a bridge we might cross. Scouts have already reported a few staging grounds that the raiders are using, they're barely in the initial steps. I have no manpower to initiate an early attack with lad, but you do. See to it that the staging grounds are destroyed, and we can begin to discuss more mutually beneficial terms. Send out all twenty three knights to make certain these outposts fall."

"Now hold on just a moment, a portion I can afford to send out. But we can't send out all my knights out miles away in that envi-" But the captain was cut off by a curt hand from his priest.

"I think we can arrange something." Lejis said. "I agree to dispatch all my guards to handle these staging grounds for you, in exchange for some more time to speak freely with the people here, and your word of protection while my people have none."

"That is acceptable." Atius said smiling like a cat, hand held out. The two shook, while the Chosen captain seemed to fume inside his armor. But at least no further objections came from him.

We strode out of that meeting room with purpose, all of us making our way back to the markets, which had a good hundred people milling about buying, selling, haggling or sneaking things around. People streamed out of our way as we passed by, as if the crowd had a spirit of it's own and it knew we were here.

You can find all kinds of things in the market, even more exotic items. We passed by a sullen looking rooster, locked in a sturdy cage for example. Something only traditionally owned by the agrifarmers. A few kids were giving the critter a wide berth. They all scrambled out of our way though, one getting too close to the rooster by accident, giving a perfect example of why they'd been giving it space in the first place.

"We're letting that weasel pollute the clan." Shadowsong said to the side as we passed by the howling kid. "I don't agree with this decision, clan lord. I believe it would have been more prudent to send them off immediately." He paused then, giving me a quick look before locking his gaze back forward. "Though I have been wrong in the past to doubt you."

"Helmets and indoor voices, people. We're too old for rookie mistakes." Ironreach said to the other side, already putting on his own. "Can't tell who's got ears here, and if we're talking gossip, Lisa from Logi isn't going to be spilling those secrets over tea with my name mentioned, thank you very much."

Atius nodded, affixing his own helmet. He gave a signal for the channel number and resumed talking when we'd all equipped gear. Standard encrypted channel, nothing fancy but proven to work time and time again. Everything we spoke was now between us four, even in the middle of a crowd like this.

"From a strategic point of view, his religion has already tainted the clan. Even if we expel him, the idea will still spread." Atius said. "A percentage of people are already susceptible to his argument, and so those can already be written off. They would have left one way or another. With this plan, they leave earlier but the end result remains the same."

"You make it sound like you don't actually want them to pack their bags and hit the snow." Ironreach said. "I mean, they're polite guests and all, but they creep me out something fierce. Maybe because they're friends with murderous metal scrapheads? Small details like that, you know? Gut feeling."

"You're correct." Atius said, chuckling softly. "I don't intend for them to leave just yet. I haven't squeezed out every advantage I can from them yet."

"The undersider knights." I said, realizing what Atius had gotten. "You were aiming to make use of them from the start."

He gave me a look that did very little to hide the likely wolfish grin he sported under his helmet and beard. "Nothing like putting a little pressure to get them to comply. Put your thumb in the right place and people start doing what you want them to."

"You trust they'll do as intended?" Shadowsong asked.

"All pieces on a board can be moved, even the enemy, so long as you know the right way to press. Either they eliminate the staging grounds and we've won an extra victory, or they intentionally fail to do so, in which case nothing changed for us except we have more convincing proof of their real intentions to win people back with. All outcomes benefit the clan. They might not be mine to command, but I will make use of them regardless. I'll have them out on the snow weeks before the raiders arrive, regardless. Can't trust having twenty three possible turncoat knights within the clan at that point. Either their armor will have become the clan's property with some possible sly words, or they'll be miles away from us going home."

"With all due respect, you're sounding a lot like a Winterscar." Ironreach said, then gave me a glance. "No offense meant, kid."

I gave him a shrug, pointing to a stall selling ration bars we were rapidly approaching. "Gimmi a quality one and I'll consider forgiving you. I am feeling magnanimous today."

The merchant seemed to perk up, as if some sixth sense had alerted him of a possible new customer.

Ironreach shook his head with a tut, reaching a hand out with his identification card to the merchant while picking one of the goods. I could see the stall merchant paying more attention to the clan lord walking by than the proffered card. The poor man reached out to the empty air next to Ironreach's hand on a first attempt.

Atius walked right past without stopping, the group following his step. "I need to hear his speeches in full regardless. Know thy enemy first. Simply tossing noise at him isn't going to work forever, and neither would it work for the follow-up cultist that will inevitably become common to deal with. I have a few options prepared already to counter his rhetoric, they need to be tested. I also aim to get supplies from them next time we meet. See what kind of material the enemy works with."

"Can we even trust their supplies won't be sabotaged?" Shadowsong added.

Ironreach caught up to us, tossing a ration bar my way which I deftly snatched out of the air before inspecting. Fruit. The kind that didn't taste like fruit.

I tilted my head at him reproachfully. He shrugged back. "You said you were feeling, and I quote, magnanimous. Surely you can have mercy on my… ahh 'limited' selection."

I waggled the bar at him, in the universal gesture of 'This isn't over.'

"The supplies and weapons the Chosen could offer wouldn't be enough to make a dent on the war effort, nor do we need them. I only care about what those supplies could tell us about their logistics." Atius said.

"Wait, what? We don't need the additional weapons?" Ironreach asked, suddenly alert. "I mean, I'd never say no to an extra occult knife, assuming it worked. Knife is a knife. The lady Winterscar's shown me just how deadly two of them are."

Atius gave him a slow look, as if considering something. "About that, lad. There's been a new source for Occult weapons recently."

"You've got some new trader trying to pawn off stolen goods at a discount or something?"

"Better. The warlock secrets have finally been cracked by one of ours."

Ironreach and shadowsong both stopped cold in their tracks, before stumbling forward and catching up. While Ironreach seemed stunned into silence, Shadowsong's head snapped to me. I could see the gears in his mind turn, click, and reach a conclusion. "He can't have." He whispered. "Has he?"

"Has he what?" Ironreach said. "You lot keeping me in the dark here? Who in the bloody wastes could crack that?"

"Aye, he has managed it. The lad here figured out how to manufacture Occult blades. The clan won't be strapped for those anymore ever again, although we'll need to consider the best course of action in terms of equipping the clan without upsetting the balance of the world. I've been debating the best method forward, but it's clear to me the Chosen plan to move fast and I need to match step. No more time to think now. You are my inner circle of knights, I'll let you in early. I intend to inform the center council of Houses a few hours from now in today's meeting."

"Gods in heaven." Ironreach said after a pause. "You're not joking. First Winterscars grow wings, now they're forging blades?"

Atius nodded. "I wouldn't joke on a topic like this, you know that. An Undersider would have cut ties and ran with the discovery, either joining the warlocks or founding a branch guild."

"But up here, we're not greedy savages." Ironreach finished for him. "What one can do for the clan, the clan can do for all. Gods, this changes everything. We're going to squash the raiders like insects. They won't stand a chance. No wonder you don't care about supplies from the Chosen."

"Occult weapons will be a massive advantage and we need manpower to wield them. Relic armors remain something that can't be replaced. But yes, I see our odds of victory high. I won't stop stacking the odds in our favor however. I intend to use everything I have. Our enemy is also trying to stack their own odds as high as they go."

The group fell silent as we walked on past the market.

"Urs protect me, what sort of demon did you walk out of the underground with kid?" Ironreach asked. "I thought it was all talk and gossip 'bout you turning into a sorcerer. Truth is gods damned stranger than gossip this time around."

"Oh, I got some help from a few ghosts of various kinds." I shrugged. "The usual."

"I don't care what kind of deals you made, if you can forge me longer sword, I'll buy you the whole ration shop. The things I could do with a few more inches of reach…" He paused. "And I don't mean it that way, for the first time in my life. Swear on the gods."

"Why keep it from us for this long?" Shadowsong asked. "If I had known the depth of his discoveries…"

Atius sighed. "A mistake on my part. You don't haphazardly move around with secrets that haven't been broken for over five hundred years, the reflex was to keep it quiet and figure out what kind of trouble could come our way. In this case, I should have gone ahead without pause. We don't have the luxury of milling about. Those secrets will turn the tide of war, but they need to be used."

"Think we can request metal seeds from the Chosen? Have them give us the materials for forging the blade bases to grow out the metal prints. Would be ironic in a way. They can't possibly sabotage base materials." Ironreach said.

"If I were in the priest's position, I wouldn't sabotage anything at all." Atius said. "I'd already expect my moves to be monitored and any sabotage would have been caught. Materials aren't my goal however. Like I mentioned before, it's all about what they indirectly reveal. I want to know what they find valuable and what isn't. What they offer and what they choose not to offer. How long it takes them to gather such items, and so forth. If the supplies work or not is irrelevant. They likely won't be used."

We reached the lifts, where all four of us boarded. Atius clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Besides, making longer reaching swords seems rather banal. We're surface dwellers. We can do better. Isn't that right, lad?" He said, patting my shoulder pad a few times.

The lift shuddered and rose, bringing us back to the Retainer House levels. Up to where the engineering forges were.

"Oh, I've got something much better than swords in mind." I said. "Much better."

Next chapter - Kidra (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 32 - Kidra (T)

The undersiders spoke of her name in hushed words, like a curse behind closed doors.

A word of omen, dark news, a weight that the citizens of the city felt. And none more so than those in command who had to deal with her directly. The campaign had not gone well for them thus far, and good news was a scarce commodity.

To'Wrathh's forces were breaking past their armored exterior while her words seeped into their hearts, breaking moral. It was almost too easy, given her preparations. Outposts across their sphere of influence fell before her forces over the past few days, with no counter-attack in sight.

Rather, they had retreated, collapsing onto the more easily defended positions. The rest had been abandoned. Those newly fortified positions had taken more effort to wrench out of their hands, with trained soldiers being far more disciplined and prepared.

In this regard, her earlier efforts bore fruit. The enemy defected the moment the tables appeared to be turning, even if they were trained to fight. She estimated around ten to twenty five percent of the enemy forces needed to be either wounded or killed before the unit lost cohesion and began retreat.

Left with a way out, the soldiers fought with far less desperation, which made them weak.

Yes, even now she watched as the last outpost's fight died down, the soldiers surrendering in waves. She raised a lazy hand from her throne, disconnecting her sight from the overarching view across her machine forces. They had it in hand, the current battle's end was a forgone conclusion now.

"What do you suspect they will do?" She asked, a note of curiosity in her timber. The new modifications to her vocal chords had given her more inflections. Unnoticeable to anyone else, but she could tell.

Tamery had been equally vocal at all points of the campaign, giving valuable insight to human psychology and pointing out the best ways to break morale early and quickly. To'Wrathh had seen why. The ex-human hadn't yet really processed that her allegiance changed sides for good now. She was still trying to save as many lives as possible, and having them surrender early was the best way the girl had figured out. Still thought of herself as human.

She was just confused, To'Wrathh thought, but the end results still paid well so she didn't see it as a priority to reaffirm commitment.

"Probably they had a war assembly between the major guilds and settled on giving marshal power to a general at this point." Tamery said. "A good one, rather than a politician. They got their backs up against the wall after all. Hardly a time to let a clown lead."

"A general?" She tilted her head, humming, eyes peering far away through the lenses of her scouts. She'd positioned a few Runners to keep a closer eye on the city itself, though what lay beyond its walls was still a mystery to her. Somewhere inside, a human had been selected to be her opposition. "I suppose I will meet this person soon enough."

She wondered if such a person would stand up compared to the legacy of wars the past humanity had produced. To'Wrathh had been studying from their exploits exclusively. If this human had access to the same books that she had, then the match would see some creativity.

The thought gave her an odd tingle of excitement. As if she was looking forward to a competent opponent, even though logically she knew she shouldn't be happy for such an event. A weak opponent would be optimal.

"They're not panicking yet, not so long as they have the Stretch under control. They can use that to keep trade routes open, along with connections to other cities." Tamery said.

The Stretch. An obstacle she would need to contend with soon enough. Leave it to the mites to make impossible geometry that only got in her way. Insufferable little pests.

"What's your next step, Lady To'Wrathh?" Tamery asked, looking at the large screen table displaying the machine advance.

"Complete the blockade around their city, reusing their own outposts as staging grounds. I expect them to be sending for help soon." She stood from the stone throne, letting her wings carry her further up with a beat and then walked the rest of the way to the display. "You are correct that the final piece to all of this is here." She said, pointing at a wide black stretch of land, almost like a massive wound on the map that passed through a small section of the city's location.

But more importantly, it continued for miles, far past the outskirts of her own map. This field, which the humans had simply called The Stretch, was a desert. Dry arid ashen earth lay as perfectly flat as the mites had chosen to make it, giving unobstructed view from one side to the other.

To'Wrathh had no idea how the mites had managed to make a ceiling a mile wide, hinged without a single support pillar, but she suspected it had been done by paracausal power.

The mites did not think like machines and humans did. They were logic incarnate, gone insane, dedicated only to crafting and creating. They had no soul fractals as far as she'd seen, neither artificial nor natural souls, and yet they used fractals as easily as a human would breathe.

If there was one force in this world that had true command over the strange reality warping powers, it was them. They never played by anyone's rules. From a strategic point of view, they were simply another feature of the landscape, to be worked around.

Dark sand blew across the wastes they had created, low to the ground in such a way the very ground seemed more like a massive river, each step covering any sight of feet. An occasional obsidian pillar sprouted across the stretch, made of glass, cut across odd angles. She'd tried to pinpoint where this low wind had come from but found no explanation.

The Stretch was simply another impossibility among many. Here the humans had created a tower, protected at the center of a fortress. The tower itself was inconsequential. What wasn't were the railguns the tower held primed.

Capable of firing massive rounds across the unobstructed terrain, any convoy passing through the Stretch would find itself constantly under watchful protection of the tower. Even with her numbers, she could not attempt to blockade all exits of that zone. Not without quickly depleting her army faster than the mite forges could be used to recreate them.

No, the tower and it's fortress had to be taken out, something their military had very quickly realized as they rushed to reinforce. She'd attempted to take it by subtlety at first, a smaller strike force that wove its way past the outpost early detection. They had failed.

The humans didn't keep hunters and plainfolk in this fortress, rather their center of military was based around it. Here was where they trained their soldiers, using the flat lands as perfect grounds for any exercise. It had still been worth the attempt, though now she would have to take this obstacle more seriously. Taking the stretch would require a true fight.

Tamery studied the map, eyebrows furrowed. "Won't be easy. The tower's stood for as long as I know the city history. Practically one of the main reasons the early founders chose to settle here. They knew any blockade would be next to impossible."

"I don't respect that word. Impossible." To'Wrathh said. "Too many times, what was thought to be impossible was only improbable." Her own existence was one such example.

Tamery shrugged. She knew the lady liked to wax poetry like that occasionally. At first Tamery thought these moments were to lecture or to start some kind of speech, but the longer she spent around the strange machine, the more Tamery started to realize they were all… dramatic. Larger than life.

From the way they dressed to the way they talked, the feathers were all oddballs, obsessed with standing out. Though she'd only ever met two, so maybe her sample size was too small.

She would have found it slightly comical, except she'd seen what was left behind To'Wrathh's wake. Relic armor helmets, with a single precise cut right through. The lady was still a machine, and just as deadly.

The only redeeming aspect was that To'Wrathh seemed to care more about doing things the right way. Which meant the destruction and death could be minimized, if Tamery played her cards right and convinced her it was optimal.

At least the Runners seemed more down to earth, more curious about everything and sticking their claws where it didn't belong. Like cats. She wouldn't be surprised to find them crawling over the ceiling to investigate something shiny come to think of it.

Wait. Tamery had a possible idea. "Maybe you can collapse some of the ceiling at a section?"

"Mites would be drawn into the fight, they react to breaches in the world layers above all." To'Wrathh said, shaking her head. "Small things can be destroyed in abandoned sections, but a hole to the surface or a breach between layers will bring them in swarm." And what they would create next would throw everything into disarray. Better the devil she knew.

"Can we tunnel under them? You did that a few times before on the other outposts."

"The fortress engineers positioned sensor suites both above and below. Any motion would be caught, where they would take swift and destructive counters. This direction leads nowhere." Her early probing attempts had been disaster for exactly that reason. The humans were not stupid.

"Well fine, how about… hmm." Tamery had run out of ideas. The fortress had been built from the ground up to resist an invasion from another warring faction of humans. It just so happened to work well against machines as well.

That wouldn't stop To'Wrathh.

She had a wealth of knowledge to pull from. Human history showed dozens of ways such fortifications were handled, but none better than to break the walls from the inside out. She turned and walked off, wings stretching and folding on themselves. With the last outpost under her control, only the Stretch was left.

She sw no alternative besides a direct confrontation. It was time to put the humans in their place.

"The tower will fall." To'Wrathh said. "I will see to it, personally."

The feather sat on a larger rock with folded legs, hands at rest. A few feet ahead, the rocky terrain faded into the black stretch, a few straggling rocks lay unmoving with their tips above the constant stream of obsidian dust that blew ever constant, low to the ground.

The tower hadn't spotted her. From this distance, she would appear as a white spec to binocular vision. It would take one of their stronger targeting telescopes to spot her - and only then if they knew exactly where to point.

Among the silver metal of the mite city behind her, she was invisible even as she sat in the open. Yrob walked behind her, head now reaching eye level to her own, as the machine carefully stepped around the low ground. "Fight?" He asked.

"Yes. Soon." She said.

"No dig?"

She shook her head at that. "They've adapted already to that tactic. They'll detect machine motions if we try to creep up under them."

"Wise." The machine said. "Good move. For them. Ceiling?"

"Your friend Tamery had the same idea earlier. It won't work." To'Wrathh pointed up, high above on the ceiling were blinking yellow lights. She didn't know how the humans had managed to get those up there, but they had. "There is no way to approach their fortress besides by ground. I've eliminated all other options."

"Get shot if go." Yrob said. "Not wise."

"I agree. Which is why I do not plan to grant them that option."

Far past the ground ahead, she felt as her Chosen continued their work. This was what she was waiting for. Her mind flickered over each, her presence briefly triggering the fractal of Unity they each held, the glow hidden by their relic armors.

The undersiders hadn't yet heard of her offer for them to join. They only knew she offered them the mercy to return home and deprived them of their armor and equipment.

The last they'd seen of her Chosen had been them leaving as a human caravan, walking out to an uncertain future, and greatly possible death. They hadn't been Chosen yet. Slipping in groups of Chosen behind their walls was child's play. She had their armors, colors and all.

She had all the reasons as well: Small groups of hunters, chased away from their outpost but still holding on, trickling into the fortress over time. Perfectly understandable story.

No one questioned it. The Undersiders welcomed them in, happy to have more manpower to assist them in the coming assault. Sometimes those small groups really were hunters that had no ties to the Chosen. But most times it was her people.

She had spent hour after hour teaching this small group of Chosen how to wield the combat techniques of the savage surface dwellers. Fifty of them. For days they drilled and practiced, though progress had been… slow. It had taken a few days to smuggle them all into the fortress, where they began their work of sabotage.

Tenisent had blocked her way at each corner.

Memories becoming difficult to access, as he seemed to invent new fake memories to fool her senses. She supposed that since the demon had nothing better to do than attempt to fight her control, it would make sense for him to improve.

It was getting worrying. She would need to find better way to tie him down. But it would do for now.

They were… adequate for the task. The real gauntlet was between the walls and her. The humans knew she was coming. They'd done their best to fortify themselves. Cleared off any possible cover between their walls and the edges of the Stretch. A dozen heavy machine guns were posted at each wall face. Mortars were setup behind, and the ground in no man's land was filled with mines.

She didn't need to destroy everything. Instead, what she needed was for one side to be taken out, and only a partial amount of defenses from that side. It would be enough. The railguns on the tower itself were not going to be destroyed. Too tall of an order for her saboteurs. But their rate of fire was too slow to pick apart an entire army swarming across.

The mines were mostly spotted and logged. Her army would stream around them. She would take some casualties due to poor luck, that was unavoidable, but the Tower must fall at any cost. She was here now in person because preparations were ready.

Behind her, hidden by the mite city, was her army, ready to materialize like water breaking through a dam, flowing out from the cracks. They remained motionless, none even so much as twitching. It went against their nature, but the runners were oddly pliant to her whims.

"It time? Humans done?" Yrob asked at her side.

"They are not humans, they are ex-humans." She corrected.

The runner grunted and shrugged. It looked almost comical on his large frame. "Okay." He said. A tone that seemed to disagree, but not care enough to argue for it.

To'Wrathh shook her mind back to the operation, felt out to her Chosen, sensing as the last team had finished preparations with the mortars. They were ready, or as much as they could be.

And she sent the signal to begin the assault. Far ahead, across a field of black ash, explosions rocketed the walls of the Undersider fortress.

Mortar encampments behind were all ripped apart by explosives. Dozens of the machine gun turrets followed suit behind. A few enclaves hadn't exploded, either due to difficulty of sneaking explosives, or lack of manpower on her end. The turrets had been secondary to the mortars, she hadn't expected them all to be taken out, rather she was pleased a few of them were dealt with as is.

Instead to deal with those turrets, the ex-humans overran the locations and barricaded the way while they worked on manually dismantling the weapons.

To'Wrathh rose, lifted her sword, and pointed it at the fortress. "Break them." She said. There was no need for more words. The machines did as she bid, breaking through the mite city and streaming out into the open ground, howling and screaming for blood.

A hundred white figures. A thousand. Even more. She stretched her wings and leaped into the air, flying fast above the swarm of machines charging ahead.

Shouts and screams came across the walls, joining the war cries of her own army. The humans were now alert and fully awake. Only three machine guns opened fire on her forces as they barreled down. One shortly fell silent a moment after as she felt her Chosen overwhelm the defenders and break through into the turret. A second fell silent, leaving only a single one lighting the darkness with tracer rounds.

Everything was going well.

And then one of the machine gun turrets came back to life, spewing yellow lines of bullets into the white swarm. Another neighboring turret came to life, joining the second. A third came back online a moment later. The ones that had been destroyed by explosions remained lifeless, but the ones that had survived were being taken back.

They would need more than that to fend off her army, even as the Runners were slowed down by weaving in between the minefield. She pushed her mind out to see what was going on behind those walls.

Death.

Her Chosen were dying. Her forces were fading across the whole wall, like lights winking out randomly. But one part wasn't random. The lights were going dark one after another from the right to the left. There was something wrong, it was too... systematic.

Her eyes caught something on the far right side of the wall ramparts. She diverted more power to her wings, soaring with speed above her army, quickly passing far past them across the ash.

More machine guns were turning on or off as some of the fights turned back to favor her saboteurs and others failed. They only needed to buy another few minutes before her force crashed into the walls of the fortress.

The more machine guns came to life, the more time the humans bought. They spotted her now, the turrets turning and tracking her approach. She barreled and darted across the air, avoiding most of the firing lines, and leaving her personal shields or skin to repel the bits that caught her.

It slowed her down only by seconds, she was in no danger.

Her Chosen had gone dark, the right side nearly depleted with only a few Chosen scattered around - hiding and seeking a better chance. What had wiped them out?

She came closer and caught sight of the issue. A group of five figures were scything through her saboteurs like a blade through metal. Undersider elites of some kind.

Perfect. She would handle these. Her wings angled and she sped across, on an intercept course.

Machine guns disengaged from trying to stop her approach as the operators realized the Feather was too nimble to take out. Instead they went back to harrying her army. Pity.

Taking the opportunity, she increased her speed, rocketing forward, air blasting at her sides, the walls growing closer and closer. Then her eyes got a good visual on the enemy and she almost stumbled out of the sky in surprise.

Three knights in maroon red, with the fourth carrying teal colors and trophies of machine parts wrapped across the armor. But it was the fifth knight that took her breath. The one leading the charge.

She knew that armor. Knew it implicitly.

He was here.

No. It couldn't be. The armor moved like a gust, too agile, too quick. There was only one other possibility. This must be the sister.

To'Wrathh called upon her Chosen to gather further down the wall. She had them abandon the machine gun turrets if they had to, she needed manpower. Scattered as they were, they couldn't hold a candle against the likes of this foe.

They did as bid, regrouping into a sizable force. Seventeen was enough.

The feather angled her wings, ripping like a missile through the air, eyes tracking her prey as the group of five knights and a handful of Undersiders trying to keep pace behind, clashed against her hastily assembled unit.

Against the din of the machine gun fire, the howls of her army rapidly approaching behind, To'Wrathh dove down into the melee like the angel of death. The pale lady had been clear in her orders.

She had a sister to kill.

Next chapter - Death (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 33 - Death (T)

She struck the fortress ramparts at full speed, not bothering to slow her descent. Her body was far more resilient than any rock or metal they could make the wall from, and the impact proved her assumption correct.

The entire structure groaned and ripped apart as she landed, the ripples of force flowing like a wave across the human structure, throwing the chaos of melee into a whole new state of disarray and all relic knights off their feet.

Something critical ignited under the railing. A massive explosion rocketed the rest of the wall-side, plumes of ash left floating up and joining the others, dotting the more distant machine gun turrets across the wall.

At the center of the smoke, To'Wrathh opened her eyes, violet glowing through the darkness. With a flare of her wings, she burst out of the smoke, blades whistling through the air. The very smoke twisting behind her, trailing like a cape of shadow.

Her first target had barely gotten back on his feet. The Undersider knight had been fighting off one of her own Chosen, and winning, until she'd arrived. The victim turned, lifted his blade high on reflex and swung it down in wild panic at the speeding Feather.

She didn't bother to parry the strike, digging down deep within, digital strings reaching out for the demon that lurked trapped under her thumb. The techniques and skills flooded mind, her body moving along, matching pace.

To'Wrathh was swift. The knight found himself impaled in the gut, lifted up and slammed down into the ground. A quick slash with her other blade, right across his trapped throat, ended any struggle.

Another knight rushed out of the smoke, disoriented, shields broken, fleeing from a pair of Chosen knights. That one had been unlucky and found his head also cut free of his shoulders. Body slumping down while the head soared away, the dimming mind inside feeling almost bemused for a moment at the turn of events, before unconsciousness took him, long before any pain.

He had been in her way. Such was the way of things, when humans met Feathers.

The two Chosen knights followed through the smoke. They stopped the moment they saw hers, with curt salutes.

"Lady To'Wrathh," The left one said. "We're ho-"

She held a hand up. "Follow. The girl is mine. Deal with the rest."

They didn't know what she meant by the girl, but To'Wrathh didn't have time to explain. Ahead, she could almost taste her prey. Another small, disorganized melee was in her way. A pair of Undersiders had banded together, holding off more of her Chosen. She strode into their ranks, cutting them down with hardly any effort. The second tried to run, and she allowed it. To'Wrathh wasn't here for the rabble.

That one didn't run far before her Chosen cut into his path and then almost into his life before he had the good sense to shout a surrender and throw down his weapons. With the way clear, her slowly assembling group of survivors followed lock step behind her among the burning ruins.

Ahead was her true target, flanked by two other of the surface savages that had managed to regroup in the chaos. Her chosen had done well, surrounding the three separated knights. Dead Undersiders littered the ground behind her forces. These Chosen had survived this far for a reason. The training she'd given them had been enough to put them on even footing with the soldiers. The rest was learned in combat, and quickly.

Those who hadn't learned fast enough were no longer among the living.

But that was where the good news ended.

Despite the well executed surround and the advantage in numbers, they still haven't been able to deal any true damage to the three knights. Rather, the opposite.

At the center of the small resistance was Kidra. Two knives making quick work of an unlucky Chosen that had attempted a clearly unwise attack. The man collapsed onto the ground, heavy armor rattling against the bent metal, dead. The rest of the Chosen were holding back, fear in their minds blazing, not knowing if they should wait for backup or all charge together.

She needed to get Tenisent under control in the future. If she had his full cooperation, more of her Chosen would have survived this day.

That would be a problem to solve another day.

The surface knights gave her quick glances, keeping their focus on any movement from the surrounding enemies. Their comms kept their comments encrypted, but this close, her enhanced ears could pick out just enough leaking from under their helmets.

"For Talen's sake. Of course we'd run into one of them." The teal knight said, long sword held in his right hand, knife in his left.

"What is that? A machine woman?" The knight in red asked, voice narrow.

"A Feather." Kidra said from the center position.

"No scrapshit, are you serious?" The red knight said, "They exist?"

The Chosen gave To'Wrathh curious looks as she came to a stop before the three foes. Not sure if they should charge forward yet. Not willing to take initiative, not unless their leader took the first step. These surface knights had killed any who'd tried to fight them before, and no one was looking to be the next meal.

To'Wrathh paid little attention to that. She had eyes for only two targets before her. The first was clad in armor, the same armor she'd once killed an old dying man in. And the second figure hovered translucent by his daughters side, a haunted look to his features. The very same man she'd killed.

Tenisent didn't speak. Despite that, his face betrayed his thoughts so easily to the Feather.

To'Wrathh raised an eyebrow. What will you give in exchange? She asked him, lightly knocking on the door of his cell. What will you give, if I spare her life?

His head turned sharply to meet her own gaze. There was a war in those eyes. A hard decision, slowly reaching the surface.

"We need to isolate her somehow." The savage with teal markings and machine bones said. Memory that she'd stolen from Tenisent whispered a name: Windrunner. A friend. "What is she waiting for?" He hissed out, holding his stance frozen and ready.

The ghost glanced back at his daughter, a look of shame flying through his eyes. "Gods forgive me. Spare her life… please. I'll give you anything you ask. Just... let her live." He said, despair heavy in his voice. There was no other way his daughter could survive against a Feather after all. Even if his actions cost the lives of hundreds, thousands, it was his daughter in the end.

"Have you come to surrender?" Kidra said out loud, opening a conversation.

To'Wrathh was stunned for a moment, processing the bizarre request. Then she smiled. The human was making a joke! Tamery had shown her how to spot them. "I don't believe surrendering is on my itinerary. I checked just now." That was a good response, the Feather thought.

"We could have done this the easy way." Kidra shrugged, knives still raised. "Your loss."

"No, I don't believe it will be." To'Wrathh said. "My victory is a foregone conclusion at this point, Kidra."

"What? How do you know my name?" She asked, suddenly far more cautious.

"I spend my time learning about my opponents, before making any decisions. Every choice I make is deliberate. Currently, I am debating the merits of cutting your head off and sending it to your brother. Personal gifts always have more weight, or so I'm told."

The feather hadn't been lying either. Long term strategy, or her revenge. Which was more important to her?

Kidra would make an excellent hostage to hold against Tenisent in order to leverage her enemy's true skills. On the other hand, the satisfaction of cutting this girl's head off and sending it to him was appealing. Very appealing.

It was a moot point in the end. The pale lady had ordered her to kill the girl. So she would do as ordered.

"She's buying time." Kidra said, back on her group comms, her voice muffled under the helmet. "Every second that passes, the army gets closer. We've been too good at culling the traitors. On my mark, disengage and jump off the wall. Regroup with the other two Shadowsongs, reclaim the rest of the turrets."

"And the fucking Feather that wants to cut your head off, Winterscar? What the fuck do you want us to do about that?" The red one said. A name floated through her mind. A Shadowsong. Locke, she believed he was called.

"Your duty." Kidra hissed. "Find Ankah and Calem, wherever they ended up. Help them take the turrets. Windrunner and I can keep the feather occupied. If that army makes it to the walls, we'll have far larger problems than a single feather."

Choice was wrenched out of To'Wrathh's hand as the three knights turned, working as one, and stormed through the back line, easily overwhelming the two Chosen knights cordoning that section of the surround.

She made a snap decision and speared forward with a flick of her wings. Relic armors were fast. She was faster.

Kidra turned at the last second, spinning on herself with impressive alacrity, almost as if she had a sixth sense of the incoming attack. Knife blades flashing down to strike at the incoming Feather. To'Wrathh ignored those, letting her personal shields take the hit. That let her crash directly into the knight and lift her up, like a hawk carrying off prey.

Up she went, increasing speed, vanishing into the high smoke columns lazily raising up from the battle.

Hidden in the smoke, both twisted and turned like cats in an alley brawl, each trying to stab the other. And each being thwarted by inches. The girl was oddly difficult to handle and To'Wrathh was perplexed to find Kidra not only avoiding the attacks, but forcing the Feather back down. In seconds, the ground neared and both combatants tumbled into the metal courtyard.

Kidra's palm struck down into the ground, lifting her up as she somersaulted back onto her feet, twisting around to face her enemy before landing hard on the ground. Her heavy armor screeched to a stop, white and yellow sparks grinding away from her boots as her speed bled away.

They'd both flown far into the center of the fortress. The tower itself loomed behind Kidra. She flipped both knives back into position, a blue halo and blur in her hands. "I don't know who you are. I don't know how you know my name, or my brother. But you are in my way."

To'Wrathh mimicked the motion, long swords flourishing in a halo as she took a similar stance, a dangerous smile stretched wide.

Confusion crossed Kidra, clear through just body language, but she had little time to ponder on how a machine knew the same stance she'd been taught. Said enemy was already lunging straight at her, blade reaching for her neck.

To'Wrathh was a Feather. Her body was nearly indestructible and faster than any relic armor could be. Her mind was sharp, capable of making the entire world feel as if time crawled to a stop. Tenisent wouldn't have begged for a deal if he thought Kidra had a chance. Even without the stolen skills, this would be done and dealt with in seconds.

To'Wrathh expected five seconds at most, before an occult edge buries itself into the girl's throat.

Five seconds into the fight and an occult edge buried itself into To'Wrathh's gut instead.

Her personal shields blocked the full damage it could have caused, but there was no time to consider such things. A second dagger raced to her neck, cutting through more of the Feather's shields. Her wings saved her from the third slice as she zipped backwards, attempting to give herself room to understand just what had happened.

Instead, a thrown knife flew unerringly at her face, which she battered away, only to find the knocked back knife caught by her enemy midlunge as the surface savage kept pace with a lunge of her own, refusing to allow the Feather any escape.

Kidra slammed right back into the fight, knives striking in asynchronous tandem. Ripping apart To'Wrathh's hasty defense, peeling away layers with expert movements, halting any attempt to leverage the range of her swords against the opposing dual daggers. Another attempt was made to take distance, but the human once more put a stop to that, chasing like a predator after wounded prey, cutting off any safe retreat.

The feather gritted her teeth in a snarl, reached further into the soul fractal trapped in her chest for the full depth of Tenisent's skills and found... nothing.

The demon had shut the door on her.

The worst possible moment in time to find out he'd been able to do such a thing all along.

Desperate now, she took another set of hits on her shields as payment to leap far up into the air where the human could not possibly follow. Wings stretched out, hovering above what she'd thought was prey.

"How?" To'Wrathh asked from her safe distance. Utterly befuddled. She'd entered into that fight expecting a paltry defense before she killed the girl.

Instead, she'd run headfirst into a whirlwind of metal and impossible speed. Already her shields eaten away past the thirty percent mark, without a single glancing hit on the human girl to show for it. And Tenisent had somehow blocked her access to his full skills, right when she truly needed them for the first time.

Not completely shut out, but enough she wasn't able to drink deeply from the intuition that came with them. Only the clinical terms and motions of the surface styles remained. "How?" She repeated, as if either human would give her an answer.

The ghost of Tenisent stood by his daughter's side. A proud smile stretched on his cold features. It stabbed into To'Wrathh deeper than the knife blades had. She'd never seen him smile before. It looked outright feral.

Kidra remained grounded, looking up. "Come back down here." She purred. "I'll make it quick."

The feather snarled. An ugly, unbidden voice from deep in her throat. Emotions were coursing through her, disbelief, anger, and finally - wrath.

First, she would deal with Tenisent's misguided resistance. Then she would deal with the daughter - and this time she wouldn't be surprised. This was all a minor setback. She hadn't taken the human seriously. A mistake she would rectify. She had never needed Tenisent's full breadth of skills, but there was a first time for everything, and clearly this foe required it.

Without the distraction of combat, she ripped into the captive soul, shredding past his amateur defense. The ghost evaporated, returned chained up into his cell. Let this be a lesson in humility for you. She growled at the reinforced door, sealing him shut.

Speaking to me? Or to yourself? He grinned back, white teeth looking more like a wolf's fangs in the darkness of his cell. Go and die well, monster.

I'll be watching.

Next chapter - A major test of strength (T)

Book 2 - Chapter 34 - A major test of strength (T)

Every single Winterscar To'Wrathh had met in her life, she'd underestimated. And every single time it had cost her. Once this was all over, the Feather swore she would hardwire an alarm. Have it blare in her system anytime she even so much as heard their name. Remind her not to let any of them slip under her skin.

"Do you always run in terror like this?" Kidra taunted from the ground. "The clan lord made it seem like your kind were opponents from myth. What a disappointment."

Down To'Wrathh dove, weapons out, snarling, all previous thoughts forgotten.

Her dual long swords collided against Kidra's own blades, the ancient relic armor straining against the full might of a feather. Creaking backwards, just an inch, before To'Wrathh aborted, leaping backwards, back onto solid ground.

The moment she landed, Kidra was already lunging out for a counter-strike of her own, knives flashing out in a whirlwind of motion. To'Wrathh crouched, then rocketed forward herself, meeting the charge headfirst. A mural of pale blue sparks manifested into the air as their blades collided again and again, fractions of seconds in between, moving faster and faster.

In her stolen memories, Tenisent had never lost to his daughter. Not even once. And he had nowhere near the speed To'Wrathh could tap into. This time To'Wrathh was sure she had access to the well. Instinct and all. Somehow, the girl was matching both her speed and skill.

How has the girl improved so much in the past few weeks? Impossible.

Kidra seemed to almost sense her attacks, as if smelling a scent in the air, like a dog chasing after hiding prey. Even Tenisent's methodical and precise style of combat wasn't enough against someone who simply knew what was coming and where all the traps lay.

It was too uncanny.

To'Wrathh shunted off a thread and dedicated it to hunt down answers as she kept pace. Combat subroutines confirmed it in moments, returning raw data that made little sense. From the moment To'Wrathh planned her attack or counter, the girl seemed to predict it with a hundred percent accuracy. No deviation. On average, between one hundred twenty milliseconds to one hundred ninety, already executing the counter move before To'Wrathh had even begun any physical motions, let alone before a possible physical tell. Kidra was in her head somehow.

Something was wrong. Humans were never this consistently accurate when guessing.

The girl was slowly pushing To'Wrathh back. Four minutes into the frantic fight, a pair of knives expertly weaved past her guard, striking her fingers and continuing across her arms, and finally breaking down her shields.

A review over the combat logs showed no errors in To'Wrathh's choice of action. Every move had been optimal. Despite that, the girl was now only a single well-placed slice away from victory. And the Feather was nowhere near close to breaking the human's shields. At this rate, her subroutines predicted total defeat within the next thirty three seconds, plus or minus seven seconds.

To'Wrathh needed to be faster. Tenisent's skills weren't enough. She drew herself out of danger, but her shields had been eaten in the exchange.

Kirda allowed it, letting the Feather pull back far out of range, taking the moment to catch her own breath and recenter herself. She could feel that something had changed, after the feather dove down from the sky. The girl had pushed it aside in the heat of the fight, not letting the shock paralyze her from the realization: That the machine fought in a way that she recognized. In a way she'd trained against for half a lifetime.

"What are you? Who taught you?" She called out, the sense of shock carried through her words. "How do you know all these techniques?"

"You know exactly who taught me." The feather taunted back. "No one else fights the same way."

While the words sank into Kidra's mind, To'Wrathh was busy reaching for parts of her own mind that she hadn't needed before. Down into her core, she unlocked safety parameters and overclocked her system. Increased memory read and write speeds. Increased voltage. Split a few hundred parallel threads and gave orders to each.

New combat subroutines, dedicated to prediction and analytics booted up and began to pour over the past few minutes, crunching data in a massive torrent. She connected her wings into the combat subroutines, merging the systems together. Letting the combat systems calculate faster turns, quicker lunges, and more controlled dodges for her. Time began to slow as the overclock took effect, combat solutions and alternate movesets flowed across her senses by the dozens. Heat built up, but held within tolerance. For now.

Ready, she struck forward like a spear, diving straight for her stunned opponent.

Kidra's blades rose up once more to hold off her advance.

The duel changed. Two combat experts, both able to predict the opponent's movements ahead of time to a high degree of certainty. They twirled and jumped around each other, aborting dozens of attacks all within seconds, each motion living only short half-lives, never fully complete.

Both reacting not to what was before them, but to the ever changing future they each predicted. Whole minutes passed without so much a single clash of blades as both tried to wrestle for range and position. The duel becoming an utterly mental struggle for superiority.

To'Wrathh didn't know what Kidra had done in order to put her in this league of skill, but she'd overwhelm the human one way or another. Her advantages were mechanical, flawless and consistent. Kidra would falter at some point, make a mistake, predict incorrectly. She was only human after all.

But somehow, Kidra kept up, despite the odds.

Combat simulations within To'Wrathh self-corrected, predicting her opponent's expected downfall - and constantly failed to get it right. Each prediction became more and more uncertain, the error deviation growing exponentially as the statistical anomaly grew. Until they could generate no meaningful answer from any known mathematical model and promptly shut down as wasted resources.

Something was wrong.

To'Wrathh increased her core clock speed again and shunted more power flow. Faster. She needed to be faster. Her swings accelerated, inertia and material structure now becoming significant factors. Programs had to take into calculations the strains on her superstructure. Red warning signs appeared across her body, small micro-splinters in the metallic bones caused by the rapid change of motion.

Heat continued to pound away at To'Wrathh's systems. Yellow warning messages appeared on the side of her vision, suggesting non-critical systems to be terminated and giving warning that continued overdraw was unsustainable at the current rate.

Darwinian learning algorithms crunched her stolen skills, calculating hundreds of permutations, pitting them against one another, leaving only the most optimal solutions. She implemented them - and yet somehow the girl seemed to know what was coming, regardless.

To'Wrathh doubled the inflow again, moving the scale from hundreds to thousands. The trickiest moves, the most unpredictable responses, all still guessed at with one hundred percent accuracy. It made no sense. How was this human outperforming her at full power? A data leak? Was her system being hacked - by a human? How was that even possible?

She interjected her own neuromorphic mind into the combat algorithms in desperation, watching as the digital strings expanded out like origami, mutating the results. The solutions grew wild, out of touch, unhinged. Movesets became munged together. She picked the ones that felt right to her, and discarded the rest, no matter how optimal the math claimed it to be.

The fight collapsed half into the physical realm again, the occasional movements now fully living into a true attack. And with horrible consequences. To'Wrathh let parts of her body be stabbed, trading the hits on non vital systems in exchange for her opponent's shields. She wasn't human. Physical damage wasn't an issue.

Danger sailed by her again and again, the whole fight being on a knife edge from complete destruction. If she made even one wrong gamble, one wrong move for a fraction of a moment, Kidra's knives would sink into her throat and cut the life out of her. Those blades got close, but not close enough. The feather's body became riddled with cuts, exposing the metal circuitry under the false skin. Entire patches were shredded, down to the core.

But what she gained in exchange was worth it.

A dizzying array of strikes, plans and wing movements all blended together into a tapestry that was slowly overcoming the surface knight. Ground was lost, chip damage began to accumulate. Kidra was being pushed back, finally.

Her ability to predict To'Wrathh was rapidly fading away as not even the Feather knew what her next move was anymore, or if it even had a name. She was inventing things wholesale out of the aether, taking Tenisent's skills and elevating it past the theoretical limit. Movements stopped having any sense of organized style.

The fight fully collapsed all at once back into a true physical one, filled again with occult sparks flashing for half lived moments with each blade collision. A hundred small flashes of pale blue light, like a swarm of fireflies flowing between both fighters, following them without fail no matter where they leaped and moved to.

To'Wrathh was somewhere else. Too much of her systems had been shut down in order to maximize her combat. News feed about her army had been cut. The stable and warm connection to her mother was gone. She hadn't realized how many connections she'd had to the outside world beyond her body. And now, with everything quiet, there was nothing but To'Wrathh herself, Kidra, and the duel between them.

It was…. exhilaration.

The sound of Occult edges striking each other in a beautiful choreography of desperation and intention, all intermixed with the whoosh of swift bodies constantly moving through the air without pause. An unending dance with no name, being made on the spot. The cloud of occult sparks far too close to the dancers, lighting the stage.

Like a duel out of the stories and plays humans had written, something grander than life. Was this why To'Aacar hounded after Atius, even after centuries? Was he chasing after this one moment of serendipity? She'd never experienced this before. Never had to truly squeeze out every last byte of her abilities just to hold her ground against an opponent.

It was beautiful. Unique. Personal.

Red warning signs began to appear in her vision, choking out the comfortable yellow she'd grown used to. Errors. Heat buildup. Decohersion. Combat subroutines were spitting out occasional garbage data at an increasing rate, tainted by melting transistors and failing capacitors. The CMOS system was breaking apart, heat sinks overwhelmed, and many backup parts physically disconnected or outright destroyed by the early damage she'd willingly taken.

A small part of her knew if she continued at this rate, her body would fail her. Safety systems would yank control away from her, as if she were a child that had gotten too close to a stovetop and couldn't be trusted anymore.

She was winning the fight, but losing it at the same time.

To'Wrathh was so close. Kidra's shields were hovering around ten percent. At this point, the difference between shields and no shields was four hundred forty-three milliseconds of prolonged contact. A blink of an eye and the fight would end.

Dozens of weaving strikes flew from her each second. To'Wrathh only needed one of her hits to land. Just a single one. But the human battered her back somehow again and again. Worse, she could tell from her proximity alerts that four signatures were rapidly approaching.

She didn't have time to pay more attention. A final error message obscured all others, remaining front and center in her vision. All other error messages being minimized.

Ten seconds until total system shutdown.

The end of the line. No - no, no no! She just needed more time! The human was exhausted. Movement and motion was slowing down, combat logs all pointed it out as fact, a graph showing a steady and predictable decline within plus or minus three percent deviation. She'd stopped being able to retaliate, forced to defend against the Feather just to simply survive. Kidra had a mental limit and To'Wrathh knew they must be rapidly approaching it.

Five seconds until her opponent's speed was estimated to drop below the threshold she needed to overpower and kill the girl. So close. To'Wrathh only needed to hold on.

Seven seconds until total system shutdown.

Terror and panic began to creep into her mind as she saw the prediction slope start to even out - and then flatline. The next series of twenty strikes and counters passed but the human was holding the graph line steady at five seconds, the line weavering, but refusing to drop under that number, subsystems constantly being forced to recalculate a new ETA.

Somehow, the human was powering through her exhaustion.

To'Wrathh was so close to victory. Hate, fury, wrath - she fed it all into her combat systems. She screamed, desperate now to batter past her opponent's mental resilience.

A dozen sword strikes came crashing out, all expertly weaved together in under two seconds, every single one lethal. And still Kidra held on. Pure single minded focus spent on holding off the Feather. A wall of blades that let nothing past her, the graph stubbornly remaining just above five seconds.

Five seconds until total system shutdown.

She'd crossed the threshold. To'Wrathh knew that as a machine - she physically could not surpass hardcoded limits. Once her internal damage sensors crossed the shut off point, it would shut off everything. The human was overcoming her own limits, while To'Wrathh had reached her own. Impossible.

For a horrifying moment, she felt utterly inferior to a human. It seared her mind, shook her foundations, broke her pride.

There'd been a last trade of blades as both of them had passed by one another. To'Wrathh curled down, twisted on herself, and sprang out to catch her opponent's retreating back.

The fight needed to end now.

Two second until total system shutdown.

She lunged forward, one sword held underhand, wings stretched out wide, her body sailing through the air, slowly suspended by time and inertia. Ahead, Kidra had also committed to a duck, turn, and lunge. An all-or-nothing.

They'd both chosen the same move at the same time. One final move from both of them to end it all.

One second until total system shutdown.

A knife blurred towards To'Wrathh's face, feinting past her underhanded long sword. The feather's other long sword was already committed to parrying the second knife and unavailable. Her body was suspended in midair, there would be nowhere to dodge. A thousand possible counters sprang to mind and she was drawn only to one by instinct. It felt right.

One of her legs touched the ground. She didn't use it to dodge, instead pushed forward, continuing the sprint.

Kidra mimicked the motion, also committing to the last strike, knife making final adjustments.

The feather tilted her head to the side, calculating she'd be able to move just fast enough to avoid critical systems from being damaged, using her wings to help move her a few inches faster, time crawling around her. Slowly, the command went through, sent across gold wires deep within her superstructure, her neck straining against the physical forces that rippled around her.

The ancient winterscar knife sunk into the side of her cheek, the occult edge cutting a deep wound effortlessly. And then it exited past, just under her ear, cutting through nothing critical.

She'd done it. Moved just in time out of Kidra's killing blow.

Her own white and violet blade completed the rotation on her open palm, her mechanical fingers wrapped around the hilt again and let the inertia of their charge carry the relic armor into range.

The blade edge connected.

Blue relic shields flared as the heirloom armor was overloaded and its shields broke in slow motion. To'Wrathh's blade continued forward unimpeded, carving directly into the relic armor helmet.

The tip sank a sliver of an inch, metal vanishing as the Occult's destructive edge met reality and shredded it apart. It cut through systems and circuits, breaking the helmet.

Only not quite deep enough to break the fragile human protected inside.

Kidra had twisted her head, human reaction speed now catching up, the sword racking a massive gash across the entire helmet side instead of sinking further.

The Feather saw all of this, time still slowed to her senses. She only needed to correct the direction of her blade. Twist her wrist a little further, and the inertia would drive the whole thing right through metal, skin, blood, skull, flesh and soul. The girl could not move fast enough to escape.

She would die here. To'Wrathh could cut her head off the limp body and send it to the surface in a decorative box as she'd intended.

She had won.

And…

And yet…

Her wrist didn't move.

How strange. To'Wrathh thought, watching the wrist remain frozen, surprised at her choice. The blade held still, the destructive edge passing by, leaving a faint trace of fading blue on the relic armor helmet. In a half second, her window of chance would vanish forever.

The wrist remained, unmoving.

How... strange... that I…

The two opponents flew past each other, both killing blows missing their mark. Both watching the other sail by, wind and turbulent ash trailing behind each.

How strange that I don't want this to end.

System shutdown initiated.

A hundred subsystems all crashed, closing unexpectedly. Overclocks halted, programs unsafely terminated leaving endpoints barren of data, everything crashing through her system like heavy slabs of falling metal snapped loose from strained wires with destructive whiplash.

The Feather stood frozen in her final strike, blade still lifted up in position as her system rebooted, bits of dust kicked free and blowing away as her halted legs slid on the ground to a stop.

A beat passed.

Which was all the time Kidra needed to continue her steps, far into safe distance, a hand already yanking off her damaged helmet so she could see clearly again. Twisting around to see the Feather recover from her frozen pose. Violet glowing eyes locked upon piercing blue ones.

The human looked exactly as Tenisent's memory had shown her. All except for a thin red line of blood, leaking from her forehead, down past her right eye, and all the way to the side of her cheek. Sweat dotted her brow, free now from the relic helmets cleaning. Mixing with the blood and doing little to dilute the color.

"What… are you?" Kidra asked again, a breath between each word, exhaustion clear. "You fight like… like him. How?"

The Feather smiled widely. The horrible cut through her own cheek made the entire expression look unhinged, the metal underneath clearly visible. "Of course I fight like him. He taught me all I know."

Systems still rebooting. Diagnostics showed hundreds of subsystems listed as permanently destroyed, the hardware melted through too many redundancy points. Damage reports continued endlessly in her vision. She needed a new body. Her shell had been crippled.

"Never. He would… never help… a machine. A lie. You lie." Kidra said, hands and chest shivering, as if the armor itself was struggling to stay upright. Adrenaline was likely crashing through her system, taking its toll. The mental strain of the duel had been outright debilitating for To'Wrathh - and she was a machine. She couldn't understand how a human could still be standing after such an ordeal.

"I never said it was willingly taught." To'Wrathh answered, all too happy to keep talking. She needed to buy more time for her systems to cool off and recalculate what could be done with what was left working. Time she wasn't going to get as she noticed the field around her.

Her Chosen were dead, dying, or routed. The surface knights had eliminated her group of survivors. And now they were here, slowing down from their sprint to take their place behind their leader.

Kidra looked to her left, where a teal knight slowed to a walk. Helmet giving her a worried glance that the battered girl shrugged off.

"Take the feather alive." Kidra ordered, breath rapidly catching up. "She has answers I want."

Windrunner gave a salute, then stalked forward, blade drawn. Three other knights in red came from the sides, cutting her paths of escape.

There were no words. No taunts. None even questioned their orders to fight a near mythic enemy that anyone else would consider a suicide mission. The surface savages went to work instead, all as one. The blades came at her, quick as lightning, and she fought back with just as much rage.

These knights were noticeably slower than Kidra, but there were four of them, and To'Wrathh was exhausted, unable to overclock any part of her system, and greatly damaged. Still, she was a Feather. And she held the skill and power of Tenisent Winterscar. Four surface knights might be beyond her current abilities, but they couldn't stop her either. She battered their weapons away in a spinning whirlwind of precise strikes, forcing a window open, letting her leap into the air, wings spreading out to make an escape.

Kidra had been waiting for just such a moment. Drawing on one last pool of willpower, leaping out herself, daggers flaring out one more time. Cutting the feather's wings off in a midair twist, wrapping an elbow around To'Wrathh's chest in a lopsided hug, and forcing the enemy back into the ground with a heavy crash.

Swords bit down on the To'Wrathh's unshielded arms, cutting them off while heavy armored boots stomped down on her legs, grinding down until the metal began to bend.

In moments, To'Wrathh's shell was no longer functioning. Black oil leaking out of her many wounds, new error messages floating around her vision without stop, joining the still growing damage report list. How had it ended like this?

And the ghost of Tenisent staring down at her with disgust. He'd gotten out somehow, in the chaos.

That was worrying. She smiled back at him, despite it all.

"We should cut her down now while we have the chance. Take her swords and run." The teal one said.

Kidra's hand went up, the sign to halt. "No… No, she's the one behind the siege on the city. If we kill her right now, she'll simply return somewhere else. We need to capture and contain her somehow until we've dealt with the invasion."

"You're far too late for that, humans." To'Wrathh said, pinned down as she was. "My army is already here. I've won."

Indeed, her army had reached the gates and begun to climb the walls. The recaptured turrets had bought the humans time, but hadn't bought them enough. Already Undersider knights at the ramparts were being cut to pieces, scattered into groups, or outright surrendering. The day was over.

"Shut it, machine." One of the red knights said, kicking To'Wrathh's head with a relic powered boot. To'Wrathh just laughed as one of her eyes lost signal from the damage. As if she finally understood a joke the world whispered in her ear.

How nostalgic, she thought. She had only one eye left working again. Her body, broken and battered, all her legs and arms cut. Standing at death's door, watching her execution.

All caused by a Winterscar again. Her history, it seemed, loved to repeat itself.

"Least we have this creature." Another red knight said, her voice filled with contempt. "We can extract information at a more opportune time."

"And where will you hold me?" To'Wrathh continued laughing. Her voice was distorted. The vocal cords had been damaged from that kick. "There is no safety anywhere besides the city. The anti-machine barrier would shred what's left of my shell the moment you cross the city limits. Anywhere you take me, my army will know. You can't hide from them while I remain. Time flies by, humans. How long do you have until there is no escape left?"

The machines had passed the ramparts. Flooding into the barracks and garrisons. Service staff were surrendering by the dozens. Only a few pockets of resistance were left, taking shelter inside the tower, preparing for a final stand.

"Fuck." Windrunner said. "The scraphead's right. We need to go, my lady, now."

"And the Feather? What do we do with her?" One of the red knights asked.

Kidra stared down at the ruined shell of the machine. One violet eye looked back at her, still dimly lit, flickering but very must still alive. Somehow this machine had been emulating her Father's style. That wasn't possible, he had been left behind at the… at the bunker.

Blue eyes widened. Deep inside the family armor, at the side of her ribs, a backup soul fractal bloomed to life and Kidra dove inside it. She searched through what lay before her with renewed sight, this time focusing her occult vision, searching… and found him.

A dagger whisked into her hand. She dove straight forward, knife cutting through the metal sternum, cutting into the machine, searching for the resonance she felt.

To'Wrathh knew when it was time to cut and run. Eleven miles into the bowels of the earth, a pair of soul fractals blazed to life, connected with the fractal of unity. Her backup. Artificial souls couldn't move from fractal to fractal. Not like organic souls could. But with the Unity Fractal, anything could be done.

She synced herself with it, feeling an instant connection to her mother, then stepped away from her shell, dragging the chained soul with her, like a puppy on a leash.

Only to be yanked back to a stop. The soul didn't move.

Somehow, Tenisent was holding tight to the gateway, like a boulder stuck against too narrow an entry. He was fighting back. Panic shot through To'Wrathh. The Winterscar Occult knife continued to rip through, right below her throat, unerringly cutting a path as if the girl simply knew where to find Tenisent.

I'll detonate the shell! To'Wrathh screamed at the stubborn captive, trying and failing to shove the prisoner past the entry, pulling at the chain as hard as she could, only getting inches at a time. She has no helmet! No shields! I could kill her right here, right now!

Relic powered gauntlets dove down and began to peel the metal plating covering, slowly, as if it were made of stubborn tin. "What in the gods are you doing, Winterscar!?" One of the red knights said, horror in his voice as he saw Kidra continue to butcher into the broken machine.

Tenisent faltered. He slipped a few more inches down, willpower being sapped. Surrender this struggle, now, or she dies. To'Wrathh snarled, bypassing through ruined safety locks, manually opening the bits of accessible systems left in the shell and overloading whatever power cells were still connected.

More of her subdermal plating was ripped away and then Kidra unhooked her armored gauntlet from her hand and reached down. Finger and palm touching the glowing plate deep under the mess of broken gold wires and silver metal.

A third presence appeared in To'Wrathh's panicking mind. The Feather recoiled from the intrusion. Kidra barreled through with single minded intent, a hand reaching out to the old wolf. "Father! Oh gods, it's really you!" Now connected to the soul fractal, her tired mind raced through ways to save him. "There's a spare soul fractal on my left side, come with me!"

"What are you babbling about? Are you out of your tiny mind?!" Ankah shouted to the side, while the other knights brought out their swords in response to the sound of footsteps crossing the courtyard. Hundreds of them, moments away from the small huddled group.

Tenisent saw the outstretched hand of his daughter reaching out to him, pleading. A way out. A way home. He held on, fingertips desperately holding tight to whatever purchase he could grip onto with his mind, while his other hand reached out to clasp against Kidra's.

Connection.

The addition of her willpower surged through him, turning the tides, giving his own exhausted soul the strength to pull against the feather's grip. Together, they were slowly pulling him out.

I'll kill her. I can always build a new shell. She can't. The explosion will kill her, rip that head right off her shoulders. Don't make me do this.

He turned to look down at the receding void under him. A darkness, leading somewhere deep within the earth, like the jaws of hell itself. A pressure trying to drag him down, sucking him through that horrible fractal attached to his cage. If he fell, the machine would never let him escape again. He'd revealed too much of his discoveries.

I will kill her Tenisent!

Power cells were all supercritical. A single shock would level the ground around them. To'Wrathh's mind hovered over the command.

Tenisent turned to his daughter, smiling. Proud of you. He said.

Just... proud.

His hand opened, letting go of her arm. The void under yanked him away like an angry stream, ripping him from Kidra's grasp and dashing him against the rocks. Until there wasn't a single sign of him left in the dimming fractal.

He felt chains wrap around his arms, neck and chest. Strangling him, pressing down on all sides as he floated down into the abyss. The monster was angry at him. He didn't fight it, letting himself sink further away. The monster was many things. But she would keep her word. Whether a quirk of her personality, or her unwavering pursuit of direction, the monster always meant what she said. Unless she lied to herself about it. But not this time, he knew.

To'Wrathh breathed a sigh of relief, clutching the cell of her prisoner, burying him under every last bit of security she could get. Deep within the spare soul fractal safely miles away. She'd almost lost him. The thought troubled her far more than she could understand right now. Far more than she wanted to think about. She buried the uncomfortable thoughts deep down, fled from them.

"We'll meet again. Remember this. Remember me." She had her body say, one last message distorted from the damage taken, a wide smile left frozen on her face as Kidra stared back in horrified silence. It felt right, it felt fitting.

To'Wrathh input a final set of commands that brought her broken shell back from supercritical to nominal. Power cells faded across her system alerts, safely turning off one after another, all logs showing grey and inert.

She reached the last cell and sent the last set of commands.

The connection cut.

Next chapter - Crafting

Occult weapons for profit and destruction

Book 2 - chapter 35 - Crafting Occult weapons for profit and destruction

A knock on the sliding door drew me back from my daydreaming. "Master Keith," The voice said, clearly belonging to Sagrius, my captain of the guards. A curt and professional man who clearly took to Kidra's views on keeping things organized. "House Insight has the next delivery of chains ready for you. House Hammersmith also arrived with a message informing you that they've made good on their delivery and await for you to personally pick it up, as you instructed." He said, trim and proper.

Ever since my talk with Lord Atius, I'd been granted a writ of request, signed by him and with no limits. That's a lot of responsibility thrust on my shoulders, so of course I made sure to abuse it as often as humanly possible. Hence all sorts of trips like these around the clan at odd hours of the day.

"Great, I'll be right there. Gather up a squad of men and we'll set off to go visit the cranky bastards and pick up our commission." I answered back, stamping the Winterscar seal on one last requisition paper before folding it up and setting it aside. Work never gets done. When I come back, I swear there will be another pile to deal with. How Kidra managed to be so diligent about everything was beyond me, I was already late on a few dozen things and it's only been a matter of days since she left.

Outside the estate gate, four Winterscar soldiers stood at attention, along with Sagrius. We exchanged nods as the estate gates opened up and the small team set out.

Ever since the Chosen had set up camp by the lower levels, I've never left the estate grounds without Journey and a few soldiers at my side. Call it a bit of healthy paranoia.

Oh, they've been an agreeable lot, all things considered. They volunteer to help out with minor tasks, share some of their medicine and supplies, have generally not caused any trouble, and more importantly: They sent out the majority of their relic knights to go deal with the budding raider staging grounds, miles and miles away from us. The priest was making a ruckus though. Giving impassioned speeches and being a general nuisance.

The freedom didn't do him any good.

Something of an undercurrent had spread among the clan. I don't know if it was Lord Atius that planned that out, or if it arose naturally, but it was a thing of genius and seemed well in character for the crafty Deathless to orchestrate: It became a matter of pride to shut down and ignore the priest's words.

The argument the Chosen made didn't matter. All of it was pitted against the patriotic pride, where anyone who listened or agreed with his viewpoints would be seen as letting the clan down.

Lejis could have all the facts, logic and data right - none of it was working out for the poor bastard. The clan had closed ranks among themselves and stubbornly refused to acknowledge any rhetoric. Even worse, the more convincing he tried to be, the more people dug in their heels in as if they had been personally insulted. Must have been driving him crazy, or at least it would have if I were in his shoes.

He took it well all things considered, still volunteering and working among people, still trying to befriend everyone, and still not giving up when they gave him the cold shoulder or cordial treatment.

Lord Atius didn't need to come up with any counter speech, nor appear wherever the wily priest was to give a counter speech. No, the clan lord left the priest free to do his own thing in the most backhanded manner possible. Paradoxically, the more he ignored the Chosen priest, the more people ignored him too. Which let our clan lord tend to his own plans in peace while the people did all the resisting for him.

While I'd been working on making weapons of mass destruction that I had no doubts would land me in history as a villain, the clan lord had gone all-in on his own power ramp. Specifically selecting a set of knights to train the Winterblossom technique to, no secrets held between them. In the hidden reaches of the clan, he trained those knights with the new technique. The Shadowsong incident had made him decide it was better to get on with everything than brood for a few more weeks about the best plan forward.

Kidra had already passed down the technique from the moment she'd discovered it, marching straight into his office without appointment from what I'd heard. Unfortunately, besides being able to detect the soul fractal if his hand was on it, Atius himself wasn't able to move his soul into it. Nor was he able to see the world with occult vision. At all.

For a Deathless, an immortal power straight from legend, that seemed odd to me how regular human beings were able to do things he was incapable of. He was still running experiments and trying to figure it out, last I heard.

Still. Despite not having any hands on experience with the Winterblossom technique, Kidra had left enough documentation and knowledge that Lord Atius could teach the selected knights in confidence. Which included Shadowsong.

Speaking of him, I wasn't the only one who played it safe walking out on the streets. Not even a quarter of the way to House Hammersmith's estate, a familiar relic knight and five Shadowsong soldiers crossed paths with us, folding into our formation with practiced ease. The Winterscar soldiers were well used to this at that point, so nobody made any moves to stop it, instead shifting over wordlessly to let the Shadowsongs join rank.

The Shadowsong Prime matched my pace and walked at my side, like a shadow. I don't know if Atius had ordered him to keep me safe just in case, or if it was his own choice. But he certainly must have had scouts posted by my estate entrance that would inform him anytime I stepped out, in which he would appear like a hawk within minutes.

It was awkward at first, since the man's default social setting was to stay quiet with a hand on the hilt of his sword. He didn't even explain himself at first until I asked, in which he simply said he was guarding me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. After the first dozen trips running around the clan and dealing with getting the other Houses to do my machiavellian bidding, I got more used to his set of quirks. At the very least, I could understand more about why Ankah was the way she was.

"How goes training with the clan lord?" I asked him over our encrypted comms. These days, keeping secrecy was a top priority. Especially with the kinds of powers we were dealing with.

"Steady. Edragar is the most recent of our ranks to succeed. I suspect the other seven need more combat experience before they can stand their own. Even with your technique, it is unlikely any of them will be able to defeat Lord Atius anytime soon."

See, there's a sentence you wouldn't hear very often. 'Defeat Lord Atius.'

I wasn't there to see it, but I did get informed of the event. Shadowsong was taught the secret and took to it about as fast as Kidra had.

Quick reminder that even with the Winterblossom technique - I was losing the fight against him when I dueled the man.

Now that he had the technique himself, he'd taken on Lord Atius in single combat, and won.

Without a doubt, he was the single most dangerous man to be around. Good thing he was on my side now.

Not that this achievement was uncommon for long however. "I think we should be pretty damn happy with thirteen of the knights beating Lord Atius. Don't forget, he's a Deathless. People being able to beat him isn't the norm in the first place. If only seven of our knights can't beat him with the Winterblossom technique, I think that's already really good."

According to what I know about our clan, every few decades, a prodigy in combat would be born that could duel and defeat our resident Deathless. This happened less and less over time as Lord Atius grew more skilled by dint of having more years of practice. Atius himself had told me he was never a prodigy at the blade, only that he trained relentlessly and consistently for longer than any man has lived.

As of the record, it had been a hundred and thirteen years since he'd last been beaten by anyone in the clan. Father had been the closest to that point, but he hadn't been enough.

The Deathless had four hundred years of experience and his own relic armor senses honed to near perfection. He still couldn't move quite as fast as the knights using this technique. Yesterday, Lord Atius was beaten by not one, but four of the twenty knights. The day before, he'd been beaten by nine. The winterblossom technique was an utter cheat, though to be fair Atius wasn't using any of his own powers.

That wasn't even the main problem - once the knights were using the occult vision correctly like Kidra explained, almost all of them could see every move Atius planned. Precognition was an advantage nobody could surmount. Assuming the knights were able to see concepts of combat, which wasn't always a sure thing. The occult vision was a strange thing where everyone had something more unique to their own personal biases.

"He's been a pretty good sport about all this." I said. "If I were an undefeated champion over a hundred years, and suddenly the kids I watched grow up waving sticks at each other started mopping the floor with me, I'd be a bit miffed about it."

"Not in his nature to care about such concepts." Shadowsong scoffed. "He doesn't see any of this as a personal failure. Rather he sees it as a massive leap forward for the clan as a whole."

Fair point. "Any other deviations on the occult sight?" I asked, changing the subject. That part always fascinated me ever since Kidra and I compared our differences. It was like each person gained their own personal super powers depending on what they were most familiar with. Most of the veteran knights who'd lived and breathed the schools of combat got the ability to see concepts of combat in their opponents. But that might not be the only thing they gained.

"Tanaris sees concepts of loyalty in people." Shadowsong said. "Amaranth isn't able to pinpoint some of the more exotic movements in a few of the combat schools, but she is relatively young in comparison to the rest. It's to be expected she wouldn't be as familiar with them. A few other of the newer knights like her also can't see concepts of combat as well as the veterans can. Varis is able to see people at a far longer distance than anyone else, however. The others are all standard vision as far as we logged. We've been keeping talley on what the sight grants each of us in depth."

"Are you seeing different things? When I have my occult sights turned on, I see concepts of machinery around me. I can tell that behind that wall are a few pipes connected to the main water supply for example." I knocked on the wall as I passed, the metal making hollow pinging noises. Ever since the Shadowsong incident, I've been diligent about keeping the technique running at all times. Walking and talking in it even. Not quite to the level of sleeping with it, but getting there.

"You are the only knight to be able to see such things." Shadowsong said. "In addition to concepts of combat, I've recently come to understand that my own sight grants me concepts of danger as well, or hostile intentions people may have. It has proven to be almost as useful as the speed your technique allows, though harder to understand at first."

I whistled. That speed increase let Shadowsong consistently win. That's not something to scoff at if he said the other part of the sight was nearly as game changing to him. It would not be an overstatement to consider our clan as the single most powerful one in the world right now. We had dozens of knights that could fight at or beyond the level of a Deathless. No one else had that going for them.

Those raiders were going to have their party ruined unless they came in with overwhelming force.

"What is your objective with House Hammersmith?" Shadowsong asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. Normally he doesn't ask anything, so maybe he was slowly opening up a bit. I had decided a while ago that I'd discuss the reparations after we were done with the raiders, and he'd taken me at my word on that.

"I had them forge me basic blades, which I'll be converting into Occult blades once they're back home."

Another nod. "How many have you requested for?"

I hummed, "About six hundred. Enough to outfit all of our Retainer houses and some of the regular military."

"An reasonable number." He answered back dryly at what was an entirely unreasonable amount of Occult blades. Most clans didn't amass more than two hundred - in total.

"Think it'll be enough?" I asked a little sarcastically.

He scoffed again. "What I think, is that I'm starting to feel pity for the enemy. Which is unbecoming and profoundingly unnerving, considering the enemy are savage subhuman filth out to enslave, pillage and torture for nothing more than coin and sadistic pleasure."

I gave him a grin, that my relic helmet unhelpfully hid. But somehow I think he could tell. "Just wait till you see the other project I'm working on. If you feel sorry for the rank and file, you're going to feel horrified for their knights."

"What have you crafted?" He asked. I could almost imagine a raised eyebrow, but I didn't miss the beat of curiosity in him.

"It's the reason I've been running around collecting parts like people owe me money. You're going to love them. I'm fairly certain the raiders are not going to share that sentiment." I chuckled darkly at that. "Fairly certain. Gods, I'm pretty sure even the Winterblossom technique isn't enough to beat these beauties. True power is not letting the enemy even have a chance."

"What, exactly, have you crafted?" He asked again.

"I call them Knightbreakers." I said, drumming my fingers together like the evil little gremlin I am. The soldiers around us couldn't hear what we talked about, but they gave no attention to my antics.

My men have seen me do this almost daily by now.

"They're exactly the kind of weapon that sets up a fair fight." I told him. "And by that, I mean my definition of a fair fight, which is entirely unfair to everyone else."

Next chapter - The best kind of kill is overkill

Book 2 - Chapter 36 - The best kind of kill is overkill

"With a name like that, I would have dismissed it as fantasy had it come from any other Reacher. You, however, I'll not make the same mistake ever again. What are these Knightbreakers?"

The streets cleared before us as we passed through the central market hub, our group of mixed soldiers briskly escorting us. Formality really, since Shadowsong and I were far more powerful than any gang of soldiers.

My soldiers - and by my, I mean my sister's - were all veteran and highly trained. Outside my armor, I wouldn't be able to beat a single one of them. Inside the armor, it was only a matter of time until I did. But those years of combat and expeditions my soldiers had to their name are worth something. A single Occult blade could turn any of them from a throwaway thought to a danger that needed to be taken seriously by any knight. All because of the right equipment. How unfair is that?

Something I planned to change once occult weapons would become more accessible. For now, they escorted us for tradition's sake and to give off an imposing aura associated with relic knights. Plus with the size of our group, people naturally saw us coming and had ample time to make way.

"Curious thing about Occult blades," I said into our encrypted comms. "Is how simple they actually are under the surface and secrecy. The electronic components were made of a standard power source, a capacitor, and an activation switch. It's like a child's first electric circuit."

"I am no Reacher. I do not subscribe to these… topics."

"Exactly, I think the warlocks were the same. They didn't trust engineers of any kind to their secrets, so they had to make do with their own skills. The power core is the only thing that is more complicated, and I use that term lightly." I said, giving it air quotes. "It was made to work with power cells setup in the storage configuration, with the output set slightly above the voltage threshold needed by the fractal. I'd give them points for that - if the design wasn't a mass-manufactured part anyone could buy off street vendors. All in all, I give the craftsmanship a two out of ten. It works, but gods could it have been made better. Understandable why the warlocks used crossbow bolts instead of bullets like civilized men -"

"Winterscar." Shadowsong said, with something of an amused tone. "Spare me the details. Did you make Occult bullets?"

"As a matter of fact, I didn't make bullets. Skipped that whole step and went to the real dangerous ratshit."

An occult bullet flying out faster than the speed of sound would hit the relic armor shields for a fraction of a second, and then ping away, doing only a few percentage of damage and then being a pain to recover. The warlocks probably figured that out and didn't need to come up with anything more interesting.

So instead of making bullets, I made something utterly evil, even for Winterscar standards. I went into the details with him on the walk over, ranting all the while. He only had to tell me to cut to the chase three more times before I really got to it.

They looked like cylinders, a little on the fat side, and would take up the palm of my whole hand. Like bullets, these fat grenade sized balls of fuck-you were designed to fly fast at some poor soul and ruin their day. And promptly their life right after, if the math worked out.

The way it went is this: On initial contact, a pressure sensor at the top of the grenade shaped ball would be triggered by whatever it hit. After which, four small metal doors would open up on the sides in a fraction of a second, revealing four chambers.

Shadowsong had to fast forward me past this part rather insistently, because I kept going into the exact method the pressure sensors worked. But I digress.

Inside were chains.

"Chains?" He asked.

"Yes chains. Those would promptly fly out from leftover inertia and wrap around on anything in the way. I thought about adding small explosions to speed up the process, but testing showed I didn't need to do anything extra. Since the whole thing was rotating the entire way like a bullet, that rotational energy carried through into the chains pushed them outwards, and the inertia change from the initial speed forward to a stop at impact would force the extended chains forward."

"Winterscar…"

"Okay! Okay, look the point is, after my Knightbreakers hit home, the chains wrap around their target. And here's where the lethal part of this whole nightmare contraption came into play - Every single chain link has been inscribed with the occult blade fractal. Turns it into the world's deadliest hug."

He nearly paused in his walk, the implications catching up to him. "… Clever. Very clever. Shields become a non-issue."

On record, it takes about four to five seconds of prolonged contact with an Occult edge for relic armor shields to fail, depending on the surface area of the occult edge doing the work. Note that this number generally comes from one single occult blade.

Like Shadowsong had guessed, my knightbreakers didn't take four seconds. No, the relic shields broke within milliseconds of contact. With each link being a cutting edge of its own, on both sides, that's a lot of surface area in contact with relic shields. Which all adds up.

By the time the relic armor shields were down, the chains still had momentum, so they would continue moving. And occult blades don't do friction. Whatever they cut through, it was vaporized from existence. When testing the first Knightbreaker on Journey - making sure no one was inside of course - what happened was a flash of light as the shields overloaded the instant the strike hit in a halo of occult blue. And then the halo would slow down, and become four glowing tentacles that would cut right through the chestplate, flailing around violently the whole way. Trying to wrap around anything, only to cut through material like it didn't exist, bashing on and off against one another in rattling rage.

The relic armor had collapsed in chunks, with the Knightbreaker bouncing off and settling on a spot in the ground, occult blue fading off after the pressure plate at the front was released and the voltage toggled off.

This would be a messy and near instant kill on anything it hit. Even if it curled around an arm and severed it, the relic armor itself was now shieldless. It's wearer missing an arm and rapidly losing blood. Easy pickings for whoever shot the Knightbreaker to close in and finish the job. Worse if it was done outside in the freeze, that arm wound would be an instant death sentence.

I confess I've had moments where I've asked my mirror if I'm the villain here. And then I remind myself that these weapons are going to be used against people who would skip the mirror talk entirely and go right to the sacking, looting, and enslaving. With torture sprinkled in for fun, of course.

What I'm saying is that I have reasonable grounds to negotiate with the gods when they weigh my soul for this. Assuming they were actual gods and not ancient AI working for humanity. It's gotten complicated these days.

"The catch is that they weren't easy to make." I said. "Each had to have a lot of care and attention."

"Is that why you've been going to all these Reacher houses lately? Getting them to work on it for you?"

"Hit the mark on that." By myself, it might have taken me a month of work to create small handful of them. Fortunately, I wasn't alone. I had an entire clan's worth of resources to pull from, exactly as Atius had promised. A writ by his own hand made entire houses kneel and obey.

Cores were crafted, exactly to my specifications. Hundreds of chain links, thousands even, all perfectly made and of quality. Not a single person batted an eye or asked questions. Maybe a raised eye and some mutterings at the bars after work, but none of them made it my problem. Only telling me an estimate on when the work will be done.

Three long days after I'd come up with the design and prototype, I already had parts shipping in for twenty Knightbreakers, all in their component pieces and sent to my personal house for the finishing touches. I estimate each full chain had about two hundred individual links. All quality work too. No idea how the houses managed to forge these things that fast by hand, but somehow they did.

Not to mention twenty modified rifles built to fire the demonic things at speeds nobody could reasonably dodge. Those were far more easy to manufacture however. We surface dwellers were really good at making our own guns and ammo. It's a very common item of construction around these parts, those were probably done in an afternoon.

"I understand why you call them Knightbreakers. These will change the entire field of battle. A common footsoldier could now eliminate a knight. Ridiculous to even consider." Shadowsong said as we neared the estate ground of the Forgehammers. Their sentry spotted me and gave a quick call to their superior. "How many have been produced thus far?"

"Only three. The prototype, and two actual rounds."

"Is there a bottleneck?"

"There is. The occult fractal itself." I said. "Maybe the Undersiders have more accurate printers, or the warlocks pass down a single mold template they keep locked up in a vault. None of our printers or crafters could draw such tiny fractals within spec. And even if they could inscribe it, I'd have to come up with some clever way to hide the fractal."

"Because of the enemy."

"Exactly. It's not a matter of if they'll get their hands on this, but when. If I were the raiders and got hit by these weapons, I'd drop every plan and make sure someone somewhere gets their hands on one of these rounds as the single highest priority. And so, I have to make it all just as impossible to figure out the key."

The warlocks relied on making their weapons from metal that relic armors couldn't eat. Since I had administrator permissions, I went the opposite direction.

I had Journey use a small stream of its spirit to dig into the chains, and from the inside it would inscribe an extremely faint fractal, as small and as thin as it could manage to make. After all, the fractal was entombed inside steel, so I didn't need to worry about protecting it from the elements. A tiny drop of melted steel to fill up and seal the hole, and then I'd take the cooled off parts and polish them up. The result was perfect.

It took an entire day to complete all four chains for the prototype. Having to keep myself occupied while Journey chewed through the prototype chains had probably been the harder part of this whole process. There was a reason for the time sink. Occult edges were the only known thing that could withstand another occult edge. So each link needed two occult fractals. One for the outside edge and the other for the inside edge, that way the whole thing wouldn't cut itself apart.

Journey could inscribe a single fractal in a little less than thirty seconds. Each chain had two hundred links, and each link needed two fractals, it added up to twelve hours of non-stop work.

I realized an obviously better method only after I'd stupidly spent the time working on the prototype, but the next pair had been done with far less suffering on my end. I put the bloody chains next to me while I slept, waking up every so often in the night to move the chains around and unblock any issues while Journey continued the work. Terrible sleep, but I was sleeping on the floor in a relic armor each night so far, so sleep quality was already poor to begin with. At least the time passed by faster. Kept berating myself for not thinking of doing that sooner. Kidra would scold me for not taking care of myself, but how exactly is anyone supposed to do that trapped in a relic armor twenty four hours a day, for weeks?

When I realized that the first batch of chains came back as eighty in order to create a theoretical twenty rounds, I realized it simply wasn't feasible to make them all with one armor. Easy fix to this was to involve the other relic knights. They already knew I had cracked the Occult code, so they could loan me their armors when not in use.

The grey goo protocols hardlocked a few features outright, like creating anything outside of a designated set of template items, specifically for the armor, even with administrator permission. But destroying material was more loose in terms of rules. The armors could choose what to eat and not eat. They had to, otherwise they'd be eating the user instead of just the dirt and sweat on the surface skin. But being ordered by a guest user was something Cathida told me the armors took less than kindly to. And by that, I mean they would give me a flat no. It makes sense now why people haven't used these armors for production, they didn't take orders about how to use their spirits.

While people respected a writ by the clan lord, the armors were more snobby. Fortunately, the administrator permissions I had were enough for the armors to shrug and grudgingly agree, so I had my own version of a writ that worked on that cranky bunch. Not enough to break the rest of the grey goo protocols, but enough for something smaller like this. So I handed a few of Atius's trusted knights a couple of chains to cuddle up with overnight, gave them instructions, and they left their armor to do it's work. With the clan on lockdown, knights weren't being sent out of the clan for expeditions, so there wasn't any waste of armor up-time.

The second time sink came down to that drop of melted steel, which would fill up just the entrance of the hole drilled into the chains, leaving the interior fractal alone. That and sanding down the excess would take at least a minute each. Which would also add up to a few days of non-stop sleepless work to get all done.

Unlike relic armors, people did take Atius's writ as reasonable permission and were more than happy to take that part of the work off my hands. In certain definitions of 'happy', of course.

So far, I'd sent the chains back to the engineering houses four at a time with instructions to fill in the tiny holes on the chains and polish it off. Like before, they didn't ask any questions or raise a single eyebrow. Instead, they politely bowed, and then passed off the crate of chains back to the engineers for a second look. it was a long process all put together, with moving parts everywhere. Getting these rounds made was going to take some time and effort to organize every step of the way.

The gates to house Forgehammer opened up, and a long heavy wooden crate was carried over by four engineers, one on each side. They dropped it off, being replaced by Winterscar soldiers who easily picked up the box and were already making their way back to where Shadowsong and I chatted.

One of the engineers walked up to me. "Master Keith, Master Shadowsong. I have in inventory, five hundred common swords following the design template sent, and one hundred alternate variation following your specific request."

"I'll take your word for it." I said. "Did they come out well?"

He nodded. "Never designed crucible swords like these, the materials were far more expensive to source and produce, but we managed it with the help of the other Houses pitching in. I'm not sure these will fool anyone however, sir. They don't look like any Occult blades I've seen before."

"Oh, trust me. I don't need to fool anyone. These swords have a very specific use I aim for. They've got all the bells and whistles like Occult blades would?"

The engineer shrugged. "Yes. It's all inert of course, they're excellent lookalikes. We've gone the whole route and had each powered as well following the templates."

I gave him a pat on the back, grinning behind my helmet. "Good. Good, I suppose someday you'll see what I have these blades planned for. But for now, I trust you'll keep the process secret."

"As much as we can sir. A lot of people were involved in their creation, we had forty three smiths working together to craft these. We'll do our best."

Just like that, I was now six hundred Occult blades richer. Funny to think a small crate like that could carry such wealth. And not a soul besides shadowsong and myself knew about it. How could they?

To everyone else, these swords were just props. Strange novelty weapons that were requested to look like Occult blades in all but function - except the blades themselves certainly didn't fit any Occult blade anyone knew about.

Until Journey had a hand in it at least.

A knock sounded again on my sliding door. "Come in." I called out, shuffling papers on my desk away. I hadn't really been able to focus on any of it anyhow, so I welcomed the distraction.

Sagrius stepped in, closing the door politely behind him. Then he turned, and knelt down on one knee. "You wished to see me, master Keith?" He asked.

I know it was part of expected tradition, but it still unnerved me a bit to see people kneel down like that when delivering reports or doing anything on official business. These were people I had drunk with, trained against, and even danced with on occasion. They were friends in my mind.

Kidra had told me she wore two faces. Lady Kidra Winterscar, prime of House Winterscar. And Kidra, just Kidra. While both identities often intermixed and touched one another, when she needed the presence of a prime, she drew it out of her. That sort of thing came naturally to her, though hardly to me.

I'm an engineer in the end. I build things, I don't build people.

My hands tightened a bit around a small piece of paper I'd held onto after clearing my desk. An invitation to the latest dance, hosted by the Houses. Always sent by the same person. I'd missed every single one so far, for obvious reasons of security, and too much chickenshit to send a proper reply back. This one would have been no exception. Should have been no exception. Except this time I hadn't thrown it out the trash.

Still, we had to play our roles, so I'd do my best to be dignified. "I have within this crate a shipment of Occult blades." I told the captain, patting the smaller wooden crate at my side. I'd finished the last touches on the new blades. Not all of them, that was still six hundred blades I was slowly going through and they weren't as high priority as the Knightbreakers. Still, Shadowsong had made a point about making sure not to place all of my hopes on one plan. "Come take a look. I intend to outfit you and as many veteran soldiers in the House with these weapons."

Sagrius stood, then made his way to the crate, opening it up. He likely expected to see two or even three blades, all swathed in silk.

Instead, he saw about ten blade hilts, all neatly stacked in rows. No silk, instead it was just common cardboard straw, like the weapons here were just a crate of rifles and not ancient weapons of mass power.

The confusion flickered on his face for a moment, one hand reaching out to one of the blades before freezing up halfway. He darted his gaze up. "Sir, permission to inspect the blades?"

I shrugged, then extended a hand out. "Knock yourself out. One of them will be yours after all. Pick whichever you'd like."

He swallowed, nodded and wrapped his hands on the hilt, drawing the blade out slowly. His expression went through a few dozen emotions as the full sword came out. These weren't knives, no they were full longswords - and they were utterly alien from the traditional blades. What he drew was a deep black and grey blade, filled with criss crossing fiber patterns, with a silver outlined edge of metal and a deep red painted sigil at the very center of the blade. The Winterscar crest, embossed on both the counterweight at the hilt and decorated on the flat of the blade. A cylinder surrounded the blade's hilt, serving as a handguard. Which was unusual on an Occult blade. Those never had any handguards.

Honestly, none of it looked like any known Occult blade, because these had been designed for a different user than relic knights.

It was clear he didn't believe this could be an occult blade. And I wouldn't blame him either. Nothing about this blade looked like a relic sword. Not until he pressed the activation trigger, and the silver edge lit up bright Occult blue, making it's true nature non-negotiable. The top part of the handguard ring also lit up bright blue, the edge pointed upwards.

His face went through a far different range of emotions this time. Confusion, shock, happiness and then shock again. Likely realizing this could only mean one thing: I knew how to craft occult blades. It wasn't lost to him just how important of a secret that was to keep.

"Carbon fiber center with a Magnesium blade edge." I said, while he remained silently inspecting the weapon. "Normal relic blades were intended for armored use, they're heavy and unbalanced because the armors negate any need for strength."

"Theses blades… they were forged for…" He gulped, everything I'd said probably painted a clear picture for who these blades had been crafted for.

"These relic blades were never meant to be used by relic armors. They're blades for unarmored soldiers. Like yourself. Perfectly balanced and light enough that you can swing and move at similar speeds against a relic knight."

Not against one using the Winterblossom technique, or a veteran. But fast enough to be able to stand a chance.

Each sword was a thing of beauty in my opinion. I stood up, touching different parts of the blade he held, explaining each part as I went. "Double handed grip to allow any style of combat, with leather straps to make it comfortable to use. Light enough to use one-handed even. And I had a handguard welded in, that should give any trained knight a run for their money. If they rely too much on muscle memory without adapting, you'll have new ways of halting an attack that nobody would be familiar with."

Including us. These swords would necessitate inventing brand new movements to make full use of the guard. "I'm no combat expert." I told the captain. "But you and your men are. I want you to come up with a few new moves that make the best use of these weapons."

He finally broke his gaze from the blade, to look me in the eye. I could almost see his mind crunching the numbers, the options expanding outwards on what could be done with these new blades.

"As far as the word on the street goes, people believe these blades are ceremonial ones. Decorations that my officers will use. No one expects them to be occult blades, even if the smiths say the strange Winterscar heir wanted them made as close to relic blades as possible. I'm considered an eccentric right now."

His gaze narrowed down back on mine, mind fully present as he gave a curt salute. "Sir. I'll see to it that when we draw these blades in war, the enemy will not live to report it."

I believed him. I'd seen him in the training yards, along with his soldiers. The image of all of them wielding occult blades, escorting me around the clan, it made me feel more secure. All it took was the right equipment to turn a common soldier into something that could challenge a knight. To turn a glorified escort into something far more real with teeth.

Maybe I'd done enough, finally, and I could take that rest. My hands tightened on that invitation slip. The sender's name still legible in that scribbled calligraphy of hers.

I really should send her a reply.

Next chapter - Tango for two

Book 2 - chapter 37 - Tango for two

While I'd been running around assembling my weapons of doom, I'd also been busy with conspiracy ratshit, as any good Winterscar should be doing. Except, unlike traditional values, I was working with a Shadowsong. Or rather - the Shadowsong. Which would absolutely be making all my ancestors roll in their cold graves, if not outright making them come back to haunt me one of these days.

He and I had been trying everything we could think of to bait the Chosen into revealing their hand. And I mean everything we could possibly think of. Resources, manpower, intelligence, even important people were left seemingly unattended. None of it was so much as sniffed at. Like our bait was subpar quality and wasn't even worth looking at the menu for.

Instead, the Chosen seemed to hunker down and keep to themselves, with exception to their priest.

When their knights were in port, they remained within their housing, only drawing out their swords to train among each other. And when they left, they did so as one unified whole, including their captain. Leaving Lejis the sole relic armor user among the Chosen while their firepower was away proving their worth by breaking up raider staging grounds with witnesses to corroborate the results.

Hence we had to change our tactics and consider the ways that they could engage in sneakery in the first place. We might not know what they're after, but we could potentially narrow down how they'll come after it.

Whatever plan they had, they couldn't pull it off without manpower. And there were only so many Chosen to supply that manpower. The regular vagrants were exactly that - vagrants. Keeping keen eyes on the whole lot wasn't too difficult since there were under a hundred of them, so between the Houses, we easily assigned more than one spymaster to each individual.

Even the kids, just to be sure.

As far as their reports came by, the majority of the Chosen loitered between their temporary homes and the markets, where they bought produce and food. They didn't even frequent bars, instead they'd buy liquor wholesale and bring it back down where they'd drink among each other in smaller groups, at least the ones that liked drinking.

The ultimate verdict was that these people were either all master deceivers of the highest quality, right down to the very children that hung around - or they were exactly who they portrayed to be. Lord Atius had pegged them correctly on first impression, the repeated research just proved what we already guessed.

That left only two sections of the Chosen that could have the ability to carry out any sabotage: The knights, whom we only had reports from a distance as they left to battle the raiders, and Lejis himself, since he remained behind each time. Which meant every time the knights were away, the thought that I might be able to take a break was growing like a worm in my mind.

It was during an away mission for the Chosen knights that I decided I'd had enough and needed a break from wearing Journey day in and day out with only Cathida for company. I needed to feel human contact again, to sleep soundly in my own bed, and possibly with some company too. Better company than present company at least. Although at this point, I think anyone would be better than the cranky old crone who's only source of fun was to torment me.

That, of course, was not a very good argument point to Shadowsong, despite how strongly I protested not being a eunuch. But the fact that the Chosen knights were miles away from the clan home was a better point in favor. Neither of us knew what the Chosen were plotting, but we both knew it had to be something they'll carry out with their knights.

So, I got my shore leave.

And boy did it suck.

Back before any of this mess, before I fell down that abyss those months ago, I enjoyed going out to the dance halls. There were a few scattered around the clan, in which each House took turns to decorate and impress their guests. One of the few social activities that mixed up different castes, like the Bath, which made it a great place to spend time with my unsavory friends of different rank. Every week there was always a dance happening somewhere, each trying to outdo the others in either theme, looks or something completely novel to stand out.

But I digress, I'm currently sitting at an empty table, in the few hours of actual freedom I've been able to scrounge up, and everyone in this busy hall was studiously ignoring me. A little nostalgic, but back then I usually knew what I did to deserve the treatment. This time around I hadn't the faintest idea what I could have done.

This lasted for a good five minutes, up until an old friend of mine strode into the hall, fixed her eyes on me, and then made a direct path straight to the table.

Enter Elandris Silverstride. A head shorter than I was, with a pretty face, sharp nose and sharper temper. The platinum hair had a volume to it that sometimes seemed to outright shimmer, until I learned she really did put small strands of reflective gold in there for effect.

Now, calling her a clout chaser would be an insult to clout chasers. At least those people had some tact and pretended to be something else. Elandris didn't mince her intentions, one of many reasons why we were good friends after all these years. She made it clear what she was after, how she would get it, and honestly I can't fault a person for being that honest. Everyone else tried to hide who they really were, but not Ellie.

All in all a charming person.

"About time you showed your ugly mug around again." She said, grabbing a chair and sitting down into it with little decorum. Like I said, charming.

"And hello to you too, Ellie. To what occasion do I owe the pleasure?" I said, raising a glass of wine to her in mock salute. "You sound a little miffed."

She cracked a tight grin, the kind of grin that she sported when she had come up with some creative insults and had been waiting for a chance to throw them my direction.

Growing up, I had occupied a very odd position in social hierarchy. A scion of House Winterscar's current prime put me on the map for only other high class Retainers. But being clearly ostracized by the other members of my own House, that put me right back off the map.

People in my status group didn't want to approach me and people under my status couldn't approach me. Left me having to go hunting to make my own friends instead of joining polite society.

But there were exceptions. People that reached out a hand anyhow. Mostly social outcasts of their own, each with their own quirks. Some were outcasts because they simply didn't know how to socialize, and so bumbled from group to group trying their hand everywhere to make friends. By sheer perseverance, they'd eventually run into me. And by lack of social skills, they wouldn't know or care about my situation.

Treasures all of them, really.

Then there were the not so innocent hunters. These had been ostracized from their respective group not for lack of social edicate but because they'd taken too many shortcuts and gotten burned for it. Elandris was one such predator stalking the lands. She'd started off near the bottom and had a hunger for power that saw her rise up, stepping on anything in the way. Up until she took on the wrong person and got a lesson in humility.

She hit the ground on her back and jumped right back up on her feet, starting from scratch all over again, likely motivated this time by sheer spite.

I'd like to think that over time, her motives towards being friends with me had changed from pure greed to pure greed and a bit of fondness.

"Pause for a second before we get into the dramatic bits," I said, partway into our habitual bickering and insult trading. "Do you know why everyone's avoiding me?"

She raised an eyebrow, as if I was asking a stupid question. The kind of look that would usually spur me to ask even more ridiculous questions to bully her with, usually until one of her eyes started to twitch.

"You've been sitting here alone at the table since the dance's started and you haven't put two and three together yet? Nobody knows how to approach you anymore, everything's been thrown out the airlock. They don't know where you stand or how they should be treating you. If I had to guess, they're all waiting for some kind of group consensus to form up from the aether."

"To which, you sitting down here must have rattled the pipe."

"Extremely fun for me, I'll have you know. Stepping right over their egos and squishing it under my toe. I've already caught three death stares in the last few minutes, though they were polite enough to look away."

"Come on, you're just pulling the scrap. It can't be that bad."

"Fine. I'll help you out this one time." She began to list out points one at a time, counting them off on her fingers. "You are now a relic knight. Second in line to inherit the mantle of House Winterscar. Part of House Winterscar itself I should add - the old-new house that's sucking up all kinds of high level talent under your banner, out of nowhere. The shadowsong prime himself is suddenly friends with you and walks you around everywhere you go." She shot a glance to a dark corner of the room, where a relic knight was seated, arms crossed. He seemed almost asleep even, back to the wall, motionless.

I'd had to compromise to get this time off. A full personal guard of my best soldiers to escort me to the hall, and the Prime standing by inside the room. This was the best deal I could talk it down to. It was a little lame to have a chaperone, but I can't complain about everything all the time. At least my personal guards were assigned to wait outside the dance hall rather than crowd in.

"And as if everything couldn't possibly get worse, the clan lord himself gives you a writ of request letting you ask for anything you want? I've had suitors by proxy now, hoping to get to you through me. How insane is that?"

I tutted. "You like the attention, don't lie."

"Of course I do, that's not the point."

Talking about the atmosphere, I saw a group of people line up together like soldiers about to set off for war, and begin to march to my little table. Three girls, flanked by two men with easy going smiles. Those weren't smiles though. That was war paint. I could tell they were anything but easygoing just from the way they walked, more like the rearguard to a dangerous expedition. It looks like there has been an unworded agreement that's been breached between all the separate factions that surrounded the field of battle here.

Ellie grabbed my sleeve, shutting up mid-rant, and proceeded to retreat straight onto the dance floor, much to the visible anger of the incoming party.

"You know you'll have to address the big question people are asking." She said, taking my hand and gently allowing me to spin her around to the slow music. I followed the footwork, reaching out for her waist while she wrapped an arm around my shoulder, bringing us far closer than the actual dance called for.

"Whatever could you possibly mean?" I asked, words filled with mock innocence.

She rolled her eyes instead as we spun slowly away from the edge. "The writ, you dolt. The one the freaking clan lord wrote for you. I'll nibble your ear if you don't give me a straight answer."

"That's just threatening me with a good time. Do you need a tip on how to threaten people?"

She drew closer, out of my sight now, except for some of her platinum hair, her breath warm on my ear. "I never said I'd bite gently. There's your threat."

"You're no fun." I grumbled. "You could have gone a dozen ways with the tip comment."

"Gods." She dramatically dropped her head right down on my shoulder. "Is sex the only thing you men think about?"

"You got a better suggestion?"

"I do. You tell me about the writ, and I won't maul your ear off." She whispered, letting my hands guide her across the dance floor.

"Clan lord and I talked over a few beers at the bar down the street a few days ago during happy hour. We shot the scrap, laughed a bit, and he wrote me a nice letter on the napkin. All innocent fun. He's a good bloke, I should introduce you."

I felt her nip at my ear and bite down. Not hard enough to draw blood, but definitely hard enough to feel the pinch. "You do know we're in public right?" I said. "And there's a few people who are staring at us. My ego wants to think it's me they're looking at, but there's some real hate in their eyes, and I don't remember causing problems recently. I'd remember. This seems more like a you thing."

"They can choke on a cornstalk and gargle what comes out." She said, admirably proving my exact point and letting my ear go for now. "If it wasn't me, one of them would have won their little catfight for dominance and come to collect you. So they're hypocrites, and sore losers."

"Collected?" I asked, in mock offence.

"Of course. You're a rare trading card. Now, hold still, I need to write my name on you."

"Balcony?" I asked, spinning her again before she could do anything to my neck. She allowed it with a pout, inching our way through to a very particular side of the room we both knew well. The dance hall was one of the few buildings that had a second floor to it, one in which was dark and not well lit. We'd been up there many times before. She didn't need to say a word, instead practically pushed me off the floor and onto the staircase. There, we made our way up.

I'd worn my best for this occasion, since I didn't know when I'd get a second time. A sharp black military suit that would never go out of fashion. The only modern addition was a small half cape, folded over itself. All at Cathida's dogged insistence.

My self-appointed date sighed, slumping into a chair, then leaned forward to lay her head on the balcony railing, watching the events under her. "You look good in that, by the way." She said, rolling her head to the side to get a glance at me.

"You just want to see me out of it." I said, preening. "I know, I have that effect on people these days, no need to be coy."

She snorted. "This your way of telling me you bulked up finally? Come to think of it, I haven't seen you at the baths for a while now. Have you been working out in secret to impress me? So romantic, I can't wait to make fun of you."

I sat down next to her, watching the dancers from up high. Far off under us, I saw the familiar relic knight, helmet looking up now, keeping me in sights. He seemed comfortable with all this, like it wasn't his first time hovering protectively over someone. Given the socialite that Ankah was, I wasn't greatly surprised. Now I was the misbehaving daughter he had to keep an eye on, least a scoundrel like Ellie runs off with me into the night.

"I still can't get over how a Winterscar has a Shadowsong as a guardian. Let alone the gods freaking prime himself. What exactly did you do to get him this docile? The man's hatred of your House is legendary."

"I know you're just trying to fish for information, but I'll be serious just this once." I said, then sat back deeper into my chair. "The Chosen have us worried they'll pull something. Can't be too cautious. Part of the whole reason I haven't been able to spend any time with the usual suspects, you included, is because there's been one thing after another ever since I came back. This is the first time in days that I've been out of my armor. I eat, sleep and shit in that thing. It's horrible. Even getting a night off to feel human contact again was like pulling a pipe weasel by the tail."

"The clan lord will handle it." She shrugged. "This is what he's always done. The regular people aren't worried, we're just watching to see what happens next. You know, I went and talked to them. The Chosen I mean." She said, then paused and rolled her eyes at me. "Knock that dumb look off your face. It's me, when have you known me not to go poking my head everywhere there might be something to my benefit? That's how I found you in the first place."

"Fair point. What are your thoughts? Word on the street?"

She shrugged. "I think that priest is the only one who's actually religious religious." She said, giving emphasis on the first mention of religious. Like it was the more pure and true version of that word, compared with the dirty peasant version that trailed behind. "I haven't met any of their knights, they were gone to do work out in the freeze by the time I came down. The rest of the people made a small community, little shanty town in the lower sections. They might feel safe being that close to the underground, but even I was feeling my hair stand on edge. Too deep. You can tell when the walls stop being made by humans and you're stepping foot too close to danger. Makes my skin crawl."

She turned her head, letting her cheek rest on the back of her hands, lazily looking up at me from her comfortable spot. "So, I told you some of my intel, give me something good in return. Like the writ business."

I shook my head, tutting. "I'll need a bit more to trade something like this."

"I can leak what preparations my House has been doing for the raiders. Also what some of the other houses have been up to."

I shook my head again. "Remember, I'm friends with Lord Atius these days. I can just ask him, and he'd tell me."

She blew a strand of platinum hair away from her face, then puffed up one side of her cheeks. I had to fight myself not to pinch her. "Tossing in Lord Atius into this is like making a deck filled with only I-win cards." She complained. "Where's the passion? Where's the art of gossip? Isn't it supposed to be filled with wholesome trades of deeply personal information?

"Preferably someone else's." I said, finishing the inside joke between us.

That got a grin out of her. "See? You do remember. So spill already. I can't compete with you having the clan lord whispering all the answers. Devalues everything I got. Bloody unfair is what that is."

"All right. Fine. You've talked me into a wall. I surrender." I sighed. "Tell me what your tiny puny House is up to and I'll give you a couple bits of non-secret information you can hoard and gloat about to your friends."

"You first."

I paused for a moment, almost incredulous. "I'm already offering charity here, and you're still trying to get more? Getting a bit big for your suit aren't you?" I said, poking her side, getting her to yelp and nearly jump out of her chair. She hissed at me in return. For someone so… her, she was adorably ticklish.

"I'm certainly not full of it. I'm only trying to collect every bit I can squeeze out of you."

"Gods." I puffed out, "Is sex all you women think about?"

"Ugh, you're disgusting." She turned away, doing a remarkable job of sounding serious. Then she rolled over with the grace and laziness of a cat. Leaning far back on her chair and plopping her feet on my legs. "Take these off for me, please." Her dress shoes waggled just under my hands. "Also, I wouldn't say no to a footrub. I've been standing and running around for most of the day. Heels you know? It's been dreadful."

I did as asked, taking off her dress shoes and letting them drop on the ground. Then I tickled her feet, because I wasn't going to miss a chance that had quite literally fallen on my lap.

She shook free, drew back, and gave me a few hard kicks on the side. Only when I lifted my hands up in mock surrender did she settle back into her comfortable position. Once she trusted I wasn't going to be messing around with her more, my thumbs absentmindedly rubbed around while she and I chattered about old times. She seemed particularly nostalgic today.

Time passed by comfortably. It was good to catch up. To just relax and stop thinking about all the strange events that had happened in the past month and be me again. Before any of this scrapshit had fell ontop of my head.

Elandris gave a genuine sigh, and this time I knew whatever she was going to say next was going to be serious. "Part of me thinks this might be the last time I get to banter like this with you. Before, nobody cared about you and me in general. I liked what we had, you know?"

"You have a funny way of showing that."

She slapped my shoulder lightly. "Oh come off it. You enjoyed it. I did too. You were like a constant in my life I could always crawl back to when I needed to lick my wounds. Now it's going to be complicated. Maybe even impossible."

"I don't feel too different myself." I lied. "What makes you think we have to stop being friends all of a sudden?"

"Others." She waved a hand to the dance floor downstairs. "It's different. You're on the map again, especially high up on that map. Only a matter of time until I get outright threatened by someone with a knife to leave you alone because I'm too far under your status. Or that you get married off in some political shitfuckery, and the new wife doesn't appreciate me being anywhere in the picture, even as old friends. We've got too much history for anyone to be comfortable. Can't blame them either." Elandris sighed. "You know even the chicken wrangler is getting worried? He actually reached out to me to see if I could get a word to you. Me! I thought he hated me like the sun hates the snow."

"Him? He just didn't quite get that our dynamic changed from the early days. He still thinks you're only trying to take advantage of me."

"Who said I wasn't? Seems to me, regrettably, I got everything I'd initially hoped for. You did end up being high ranking, and now I have to deal with all this." She said. "You know, I already learned long ago to be careful with what I wished for, I didn't need another reminder of that lesson, but here we are. The point is you're dealing with threats and clan issues so far above my paygrade you might as well be a Deathless to the rest of us. It's like you're leaving all the old parts of your life behind, me included. And I'm going to complain and rant about it the entire time, of course."

"You know I can't really do anything about that right?"

She sighed. "I know! I know. That doesn't make it feel any better." She pouted again, looking away.

"I'm just getting dragged along with the avalanche Ellie, and now that I'm swimming in the snow, I have to build my own shelter or freeze. Nothing motivates a man more than having absolutely no choice but to be better. And maybe when it does get better I can reconnect again."

We stayed silent after that, listening to the music downstairs and just enjoying each other's company for the first time in what feels like years. No barbs between us, no jokes or roasts, just simple quiet. It's funny how months might pass between seeing one another, and the moment we do, we go right back into it like nothing had happened.

Of course, that's when the bullet shots started sounding down below, followed by screaming. Both of us shot right back up on our feet and ducked behind the railing right after. Bullets were not something one hears at a dance, except if it's part of the music for some reason. These were very real sounds of bullets, and they were far too close for comfort.

Downstairs, a group of relic knights were fanning out from the bits I could see, followed by a dozen thugs of some kind, each of them with rifles. They were returning fire on anyone that had the gall to shoot at them, but otherwise shouting for order and getting people to line up.

"Twelve knights!" Elandris shouted in my ear over the noise. "Three gods, I don't recognize any sigils on them! What the frick is going on? What House could possibly have twelve freaking knights?! Is this some kind of coup? Why send twelve knights here of all places?!"

Gone was idle thoughts of having fun, but instead of any panic, my mind somehow snapped into full alert.

I was looking around for where Shadowsong might be, only to find him gone from his post. Wherever the man went, he'd clearly decided taking on twelve knights was going to take a more subtle approach. I was more happy that I couldn't spot him compared to the alternative.

The enemy knights and their minions were clearing through the dance hall. Their armor were red, with skull signs and bones. Not machine bones, animal ones. Some sporting actual skulls. Human ones. I realized who they were and felt a chill run down my spine.

Years ago, I'd seen knights like them, shooting and killing the last of the Winterscars, shortly before Father cut into my view and took both Kidra and I away from the fight, everything vanishing away in the dim blizzard.

Gods. We'd been so focused on what the Chosen had on hand, we hadn't considered they could have allies. Our enemy hadn't been idle, they had plans of their own.

They flashed lights at people's faces, clearly searching for someone with practiced ease and motion. Given who these knights were, it was obvious why they'd been picked for this mission. If you're trying to capture people, who better to send?

"I know who they are." I said, voice cold. "I've seen their kind before."

Slavers.

Next chapter - Catch and bag a Winterscar

Book 2 - Chapter 38 - Catch and bag a Winterscar

"How did Othersiders get into the clan?" Ellie said, voice rising. "How did they even get this deep into the clan in the first place?! This isn't possible." Fear was taking hold of her, I could see the panic welling up. "This can't be happening!"

"Relax. Breathe." I said, grabbing hold of her hand and squeezing. "If we don't keep a level head, we won't make it out. One thing at a time, first we need a plan to escape. We can deal with who, how or what they're here for once we're safe."

She snapped an eye back to glare at me. "What the frick? How are you so calm right now?!"

"I… experience."

"What, you get into situations like this every freaking tuesday? That's twelve knights stalking under us, rounding people up! We'd need seven or eight of the great Houses working together to stomp them out."

The sound of weapon fire downstairs had faded away to shouting, mostly orders for silence.

"I've been in situations a little more stressful than the typical expeditions." I said.

I felt okay, rather, still lucid. I shook the thought out of my head, there was a situation to deal with right now. "We can't sneak out by the lower floor, they're all over the place there. We'll need to escape either on this level or cut a way through the upper section."

The guards had opened fire at the intruders at first, but they'd been quickly killed or forced to surrender as more knights appeared. A single relic knight outright invalidated any conventional weapons fire. None of the guards could possibly hope to win against even one knight. But twelve? The amount of knights under us was complete overkill.

Or they had anticipated a difficult opponent. Shadowsong.

Whoever they were, they knew he'd be here tonight. They seemed to be searching for something with the way they were fanning out as well. While the knights were searching through the stunned guests, the rest of the rank and file slavers quickly called up the guards to line at a wall with hands on the back of their necks.

I didn't get another chance to see what was going on down there, but the follow-up sound of rifle fire made me think that prisoners weren't on their agenda.

Ellie and I raced to the upper exits, only to find them locked from the outside in. The light on the doorway indicated that there was a freeze breach outdoors, which was obvious scrapshit this deep into the colony.

Every part of the clan had blast doors like these built to blockade sections of the colony from possible temperature breaches - or invasions. Whoever set this whole thing up must have triggered the doors around the area. Which meant they either had access to Logi accounts of some kind or they had a good engineer fooling the system in a creative way.

We wasted a good two minutes trying to break through the door before we heard more shooting and yells. Heavy footsteps clattered nearby, climbing up the stairs, followed by piercing white flashlights swinging around.

"Next floor up," I whispered, crouching down and making my way across another catwalk to reach the Logi fast-tracks. "There's plenty of small one-way paths up there, and the blast doors are thinner. I might be able to tinker with an override there."

Less sturdy blast doors sure, but a lot more of them. Logi catwalks were a little everywhere in the clan, like the veins of the superstructure. Technically, pedestrian traffic was illegal up there so that the Logi hover sleds could move around with impunity, but I'll consider paying the fees over getting shot or taken. I doubt there was any traffic happening at this time, considering the uninvited guests crawling around.

Ellie followed closely behind me, not bothering to recover her heels. Barefoot was helping keep down the noise level greatly anyhow, while my own dance shoes still had that little tap to each step no matter how I tried to keep it quiet.

The slavers weren't familiar with clan architecture here and it showed. The lights were swinging around wildly at the seats and under them, searching for anyone hiding in the obvious spots. Instead, Ellie and I were climbing up, reaching to a ladder into the Logi fast-tracks.

It worked for a few moments, until we reached the first barricaded door. While the rank and file slavers might not have known about the fast-tracks, whoever was messing with the system hadn't forgotten about these sections.

Unlike the more solid blast doors down a level, there was a panel to the side of the door to each of these that I was already fiddling with, trying to see if I could override the system from here.

I never got the chance. Instead, a pair of heavy footfalls hit the ground behind, rattling the catwalk. Turning around, I was put face to face with an approaching relic knight, stalking out of the darkness.

I recognized the colors immediately. Shadowsong. "Out of the way." He hissed, drawing his occult blade, the glow lighting up the small fast-track.

Ellie and I gratefully stepped to the side as he reached the sealed door and began to cut into it with the blade. Cutting a door wasn't as easy as it would look like. Angle of the cuts mattered, do it wrong and the cut sections get caught into one another, requiring even more cuts to get it loose. I could tell he was focused on making sure no mistakes were done. "They're aware I can eliminate them one or two at a time if they stray from their allies." He said. "They're operating in groups to counter this. They've given me no chances to hunt them down, and likely are not going to for the rest of this operation. We need to retreat. And you need your armor."

"Do you know what the hell is going on?" Ellie said to the side, keeping her eyes peeled down the corridor. The sounds of the slavers moving around hadn't faded yet. Instead they were growing louder.

"No." He said, focusing on cutting the door apart. "The few minutes I stalked behind them looking for targets, they seemed to be searching for someone specific. Whoever it was, they haven't found them yet."

"Are they trying to assassinate you?" I asked.

"Unlikely. They would have aimed for a day when I wasn't in armor. Considering there are twelve, I strongly suspect they were anticipating me as a blocking problem, not as an objective."

"Have you been out of armor since the Chosen came?"

"No."

"... Think they're after me?"

"More possible." He said. "All other targets in this dance hall have been unprotected in many other situations. If they were attempting to grab multiple targets, we would have seen them already capture a few. So far, they haven't shown any signs of chaining anyone. That they picked the same day you are armorless, in the same location, with enough knights to hold their own against me… They must have been waiting for a moment like this."

If they were after me, someone must have leaked what I've come up with. There's no other reason to go after my House. Sure, Winterscar was on the rise, and I was getting known to have strong ties to the big players in this clan, but there were still far more politically powerful figures who didn't wear armor. Ultimately, the Winterscars were still only a regular Retainer House. There'd be easier targets who didn't wear armor like a paranoid pipe weasel.

So someone had leaked, and I wasn't sure how much. Were they after the Occult secrets? Or something else?

A massive blaring alarm suddenly kicked in, sounding all over. I recognized it as the clan red alert. The kind of call to arms during war or a potential catastrophe. "Someone must have escaped the dance hall and warned others." Ellie said to the side.

Shadowsong grunted, giving a particularly heavy cut through the door. "Or, we might not have been the only target, and another operation taking place failed their containment."

There were shouts coming from under us. Then two figures came into view on the other end, climbing up the last rung of the ladder. Slavers. The rank and file kind with rifles and no armor.

They raised their weapons up, "Hands up!" The one on the right screamed out.

"Deal with them." Shadowsong said to my side.

Ellie got the idea faster than I did, she grabbed hold of Shadowsong's holstered pistol, taking cover behind his leg and lifting the weapon. I followed suit, trying to grab the Prime's rifle, only to flinch back for cover as the slavers opened fire.

They targeted Ellie first, though the relic armor she hid behind was flaring out it's shield, keeping her somewhat covered while Shadowsong continued to cut a path through the door.

The pistol in her hands barked out a string of fire and forced the two slavers to take cover, stopping their own retaliation. I heard a grunt of pain from them, she might have hit something.

More heavy boot footfalls echoed from under us, while the slaver pair continued to try to take potshots at us. I heard bullets whiz by my face, lighting up the sides of the corridor with sparks, or otherwise getting chased away by the blue relic shields. Ellie continued to shoot back, blindly, but enough to stop the enemy from taking aim.

That gave me a second chance to unhook Shadowsong's rifle from his back, and get it primed. With both of us returning fire, it evened the odds out greatly.

Up until four slaver knights rushed by the pair of minions.

Shadowsong grunted in annoyance, giving a quick glance and then turning his focus back on the door. "Alert me if they get close." He ordered.

One of the slaver knights flashed his headlights downrange, lighting us all. He pointed straight at me a moment later, the helmet keeping whatever he said private. Another knight instantly grabbed one of the minion's rifles, yanking it out of his hands before the man could fire another round of bullets at us.

Body language from the newcomers made me think the slaver knight was yelling something at the soldier, shortly before he swung the captured rifle in rage, catching the soldier's head and twisting it far to the side with a bone-crunching crack. That one instantly slumped down, dead from the blunt force. The other soldier quickly dropped his own rifle, lifting his hands up, surrendering to his own allies.

It did him no favors, since the four knights no longer paid any attention to the leftover rabble. Instead, they were pacing straight for us, keeping an easy grip on their rifles.

I kept a hand on the trigger but knew the weapon here would be wasted. Relic armor was impervious to small caliber bullets.

Shadowsong hadn't even turned around to see the events. He finished one last cut, took a step back and shoulder checked the entire door, causing his newfound cut section to fly right off the slices, a few feet down the newly opened corridor.

"Go. Regroup with your guard and get your armor. I'll hold them off, and fall back when more of them arrive. Be quick, they're likely trying to cut you off as we speak." He said, turning around, drawing his knife in his spare hand while his longsword lifted in position.

Ellie vaulted over to the cut section, hissing at me to run. I followed orders, making my own way through.

"Oh come on." One of the enemy knights said, audible behind me. "There's four of us and more coming. Just give up. We're only here to bag the kid."

"I refuse."

Another knight scoffed. "You're the Shadowsong, right? I don't care how good of a duelist the brass thinks you are, you're only going to die here. You can't parry and dance your way out of a crowd. Just run, we're not going to chase you."

"Draw your blades." Shadowsong said. "You've lived like animals, I offer you the chance to die like men."

"Fuckin' clan fanatics. Don't know why I expected anything else. Kill him quick boys, our target's getting away."

I didn't hear much more, with our footsteps becoming loud enough to drown any noise behind us. The clash of occult blade on blade followed behind us, bouncing off the tight walls with deep rings.

Ellie stopped at the first intersection, a few seconds into our sprint. "Which side were your guards at?" She asked, looking left and right.

"On the patio side. Should be down the left corridor somewhere." I said, keeping the rifle levied.

"Good. Go that way, I'll go the other way."

"What? Don't joke around, we've got to keep going." I told her, looking back.

She shook her head. Then pointed behind her, at what I hadn't noticed. A trail of bloody bare footsteps, leading right to where she stood, where it was slowly pooling out by her left leg. "Got shot somewhere." She said, voice calm.

"Where?"

She shrugged. "Not the point. They can follow me. I'll slow down eventually too. I can feel my leg isn't doing what I want it to do anymore. Pretty soon the adrenaline will fade and I'll start feeling the hurt."

I reached out a hand, which she slapped away with Shadowsong's pistol. "Get running you moron! I'll figure it out from here."

"Ellie…" I said, dumbly.

"Don't be stupid Keith. Please, for once in your life act like a gods damned Winterscar and cut your losses. There's no point playing hero here. You know that."

The last time I had acted like a Winterscar, I'd caused an entire site to collapse on itself. "I can't just let you bleed out in some corridor. I won't."

"Great. So don't let that happen. Go fetch your armor and come back for me, all right? You need it since those twig arms of yours can't carry me for long." She hobbled closer, and then pushed me back with every bit she had in her. It was enough to make me stumble back a bit.

"If they follow the trail of blood - and they will - what do you think is going to happen?" I hissed out. "They'll shoot you dead at best. Or just grab you and drag out out into some slave ring."

"You think I'm just going to sit in the dark and give up? Don't think I'm not going to do my best to stay alive. I'll play dead, or hide somehow." She said, taking a few steps back into the darkness. "And in the grand scheme, I'm just a nobody if I bite the bullet. You're not. Out of all of us, you clawed your way up to being somebody, you're on a different path. Stick to it."

She gave me a mock salute, using the pistol as a placeholder knife, flashing me a soft smile that burned its way into my memory. "Been fun, catch you in another life."

Then, she turned and jogged down the other end, blood splattering with each footfall as I watched her fade into the dim darkness.

I took a step forward to follow and something froze me in place. Sounds of fighting behind grew, Occult blades ringing louder. Something whispered into my head that I needed to go.

My feet numbly turned around and began to sprint the other way. My mind ran through a gauntlet of excuses, before settling on what Ellie had tossed out. I needed to get my armor, a first aid kit, and then I could sprint right back and find her. If she didn't already find a spare kit somewhere. Ellie was a socialite, and didn't go out on expeditions much, but that didn't mean she didn't know the basics or how to take care of herself. I needed to trust that she'd keep herself alive until I could come back.

I tried as hard as I could to scrub the feeling that this was the last time I'd see her. That platinum hair, swinging wildly as she raced away, bare feet on the ground, one outlined red and leaving a path behind.

The blast doors up to now had all been opened, so the saboteur only sealed the minimum needed to contain the dance hall and nothing else. Three more turns, and I found a ladder going down from the Logi fast-track back onto the street.

Here, what I found were bodies.

Dead clan members, all shot. The whole place was caked with blood. A pair of slavers were kneeled down over a body, looting it.

The rifle in my hands snapped up, and I took my shots. The first three round burst hit the one on the left, shoulder chest and head. The other one stood, twisting around, which made him a larger target for my next set of shots.

He stumbled backwards, hitting the alley wall, sliding down. Body going into shock. I didn't pay him more attention, instead continued my sprint away. A part of me realize this was the first time I'd killed a person. Two one after the other. And yet, I couldn't feel anything at all. Just a drive to keep going.

I came out the other end of the alley, running into the remnants of a war.

Two slaver knights laid on the ground, blood pooling away from cleanly cut limbs. One of them was missing a head. The other was missing his arm and his torso had been bisected in half, viscera spilling out. Their armor was being stripped away plate piece by piece, by another group of figures, about seven as I could count. Two were donning the stolen plates as quickly as they could, while a third was dragging out power cells and scrap metal to help repair the cut portions.

They all carried blades on their person. Dark, carbon fiber swords with a hint of silver outlining the edges. My blades.

All of them wore deep black tunics with blood red emblems. The sigil of House Winterscar. My soldiers.

Captain Sagrius stepped out of the shadows to my right, his own carbon fiber blade raised in his hand, ready to strike down, pale Occult blue lighting up his features. He held it up for only a moment before recognition flashed through his features.

Rustles of fabric around me sounded, and I realized two other soldiers had been waiting in position at the entryway, now right behind me. They had knelt down on one knee, the sound of occult blades being switched off.

The captain of my guards turned his own blade off and rushed forward, grabbing my hand, kneeling and pressing it to his forehead for a moment before standing back up. "Thank the gods you're safe, young master. We need to get you armored up and out of here."

Next chapter - Escape

Book 2 - Chapter 39 - Escape

I whistled. My guards had done quite well while I've been away. "Two knights against just ten soldiers. Some clans would pay a fortune for those odds. Color me impressed captain."

The whole area was caked in blood pools, from different sources.

Captain Sagrius came closer, taking my attention. "The blades you crafted made all the difference. No deaths on our side. Turned a fight we'd have had no chance at winning into one where we crushed them."

Not a perfect curb stomp, but certainly made all the difference to these men. I could see a few holding onto the carbon fiber blades with the kind of respect one would lavish their most prized possessions. It hadn't been earned easily however. Slumped on the wall was one of my own, bandaging his torso with white gauze that was quickly being stained red. He flashed me a quick grin. "Only a graze, master Keith. Dodged most of the hit. I'll be back in action in no time."

I don't know if he was telling the truth or being brave, the bandage hid too much of the damage. I noticed some of the others had also applied bandages on their own arms and legs. Those seemed more like scratches, given that they were all still busy getting the armor peeled off the dead slavers.

"How did you know to cut them off this direction?" I asked. "A gamble?"

"We saw the knights storm into the dance hall before they caught sight of us." He said. "There were twelve, all grouped up. Gut feeling told me they had come for you. I'm not sure how true that is, only thing that made sense to me. I saw no point in ordering my men to charge against twelve knights, instead I assumed you would find a way to get out and the enemy would be forced to split their team into groups to hunt you down." He gazed at the two dead slaver knights. "Was right about that part, thank the gods. This pair was clearly rushing to cut someone off. Easy, distracted targets."

One of the soldiers grinned at that, "Bastards didn't consider us a threat, thought they could just ignore us and run through. Cost them dearly. The hilt guards you've forged into these blades made all the difference. Neither of them had enough time to come up with a counter. They froze up not knowing how to react to that."

Red blood pooled from the dead armored bodies, slowly reaching his feet. He spat down into it. "Slaver scum. Their armor will be put to better use for House Winterscar. And none better than in your hands," He said, pointing straight at me. "We've all seen what you can do in armor."

Sagrius nodded. "Once you're armored up master Keith, you will be far more safe. The guard can switch focus to hunting down the scum."

I realized their unworded agreement. They wanted to give me one of their newly earned armors. Likely believing I could fight the same way I had in Journey. Except, this armor wouldn't have any of my fractals or personal work on it. Plus, the shields would start out drained off the start, it would take at least ten minutes before they started charging again. In addition to the repair times. I'd gain a good advantage in speed and endurance, but little else.

"It would be a good idea, but my skills come from tinkering with my armor. I engineered Journey to work with me specifically." I said. "Appreciate the gesture, but those armors will be far more useful in your hands than in mine at this current point."

The captain gave a salute, not asking questions. "As you will, master Keith. What are your orders?"

"Grab the armors, break into a house nearby and finish repairs and gearing up in hiding. Once you're done, go down the way I came. Look around for a trail of bloody footprints, there's a woman who's an old friend of mine. We were forced to split up, try to see if you can help her until I can double back with my own armor." I gritted my teeth, but ultimately I knew I had to pick the right choice over the one I wanted. These soldiers were committed to following my lead, I had to be someone worth their loyalty. "If it comes down to choosing between the life of your men and yourself or her, abort and protect yourselves first. I'll not demand you to lose your life over what's ultimately a selfish wish."

Sagrius gave a curt nod. "The men will do our best, master Keith. If it is within our power, we'll see to her safety."

"Good." I said, feeling sick to my stomach as I turned to walk in the right direction. "I need to make my way back home, are the comms working?"

The captain shook his head, following at my side. "No, sir. All the Logi comms are all down. The clan is blind right now, we can't reach the estate grounds. However they hit, they must have struck the Logi castes first before they came to the dance hall. Or hit at the same time."

Not great, but not unexpected either. "I need to get to the vault and equip Journey one way or another. Once I get into that armor, we've got a much better chance." I turned my walk into a jog. The captain followed behind, motioning two uninjured others to come with him, while silently ordering the rest to remain behind and follow my orders. "We'll escort you to the gates." The captain said. "The rest of my men will catch up once they're done with the salvaged armors and finding your friend."

The estate grounds were a ten minute jog away, assuming I didn't run into anything. That's a long time to run when knights are giving chase behind.

I wasn't sure if I should order Sagrius to stay put, but the presence of three occult blade wielders who were clearly better warriors than I was, it could make all the difference.

It was about seven minutes into the sprint that I realized how the slavers had gotten this far into the clan. We bolted past what we believed had been other clansmen, up until they stood and pointed rifles at us, shouting for us to stop moving in heavy othersider accents.

The captain didn't answer, insead drawing out his pistol in one fluid and practiced motion, shooting the man twice in the chest and once in the head, all in a blink of an eye. Then he dove to the side, yanking my tunic to force me into cover. The other two drew out their own rifles and began to open fire. From our cover, the captain and I wordlessly joined the firefight.

The slavers had reacted correctly to the situation. Not these particular mooks, they shouldn't have even asked us to stop running or to put down our weapons. And they quickly died for it, too exposed and lacking the proper cover against us. But in general, the enemy had reacted as well as they could have.

Instead of sending out their knights, they'd sent out their mooks to locate where we were. Once our location was known, only then would they send the knights to come after us.

The last slaver was shot and killed a moment after his compatriot had bit the bullet, but that was largely enough time for the man to out us over their local comms.

Sagrius grimly continued the sprint forward, but we all knew it was a matter of time until the knights caught up to us now. Nobody can outrun relic armor, even with our head start.

A minute later, that was proved right as a pair of heavy footfalls started sounding behind us. Bullets started flying wildly over our shoulder, along with the unmistakable calls of a relic armor amplifying sound. "Stop running! Give us the kid and we'll let you live!"

"Need to split." I told the captain at my side. "They're after me, they'll follow and leave you alive."

"Can't do that, sir." The captain said, questioning me for the first time. "We all took an oath. And there's only two of them, with skill and coordination, my men and I might hold them at bay."

Putting aside that these were unarmored men suggesting that they could hold off relic knights, which was largely considered a suicide mission, there was a number problem to deal with. "There'll be more. I know some of the superstructure paths like the back of my hand, you'll only slow me down, captain. You've got your skills, and I've got my own. Fall back, regroup with your men. You'll be able to do a lot more for the clan than dying here."

I didn't wait for him to answer, instead tossing Shadowsong's rifle away. With the foes I'd be dealing with, I needed all the weight off of me and both hands free. Turning on my heels, I rushed at one of the Logi catwalks, clambering up like a weasel and mentally prepared myself for the dead sprint that would follow. I knew where the footholds were, everything was standardized so every catwalk had the same places to grab hold over and the same lengths to jump. In seconds, my body moved on muscle memory and I was already slipping into the cracks of the clan colony, rushing through the empty space used for ventilation.

Running parallel to me, I could see the captain, shouting orders to his men in the same breath. He looked both flustered, and upset, but was grimly following my orders at least and not chasing behind me. At the next possible fork, the Winterscar soldiers took a right and split up into the adjacent alley, leaving my sights.

None too soon. Four more knights turned from another alleyway, joining the two chasing ones. They easily reached my point of entry, trying to follow into the superstructure the same way I had. Their numbers clogged up the entry, but relic armors allowed them to ignore any mistake they made, and outright jump past footholds or handholds needed. And if the superstructure was thin enough, they could rip metal apart as if running through a paper screen.

Soon they were all chasing behind, cheating with superhuman leaps to make up for their unfamiliarity. Gauntlets outright bending new handholds wherever needed. Stupid golden era magical bullshit really.

I dove right back out from the superstructure, back into the alley, and down a thin pipe into the catwalk under the walkway. Through the grids, I could see one knight slam hard into the pipe and realize they were too bulky to make it through.

Another grabbed him, shoving him aside and drew out his knife, cutting into the walkway itself to make a path down.

Scrapshit. I was hoping they'd be slower to figure a new way in. I gritted my teeth, and forced my tired legs to run forward faster.

Behind me, the sounds of Occult blades cutting into metal suddenly stopped, replaced by shouting and a fight. I ventured a peek behind and saw the gods damned captain and his two soldiers ambushing the six knights.

Three common soldiers up against six relic knights. This was the sort of fight that was so hilariously lopsided even the knights didn't quite understand what was going on for a moment. This might be the first time in their lives they saw common warriors charge at them.

The Winterscar guards weren't fighting to win, that was clear from their movements and coordination. At least the captain was smart on that part. Instead, they were aiming to delay the enemy, striking out and forcing them to react rather than continue the hunt after me.

The knights weren't stupid either and recognized a delay when they saw it. Whoever was leading them quickly gave orders for two of their knights to stonewall the three Winterscar soldiers, while the other four continued the work uninterrupted.

In moments, four heavy footfalls fell into the same level I was on, barreling down after me.

I turned, diving through machinery and wiggling my way into the cracks, emerging into another catway, in which I began to clamber right back up onto the level above. The chasing knights barreled behind, letting their armors tear through the metal in the way. Leaping over obstacles, and using their knife to handle anything that blocked the path, cursing the whole while.

It was a game of cat and mouse, where I had far more familiarity over where I was going and what was ahead of me. But they had raw power and my own frail body was quickly tiring out. Air was getting harder and harder to breath in, as my exhausted body demanded more than was physically capable of drawing in. Almost managed to give them the slip twice, but those relic armors kept a bead on me somehow, pointing out where I could be hiding, and forcing me to make a break for it.

The third time however, it worked. They raced down a hallway, barreling right past while I hid frozen above, watching them. The moment they were out of sight, I landed right back down and raced backwards, backtracking. Scrambling up another level, trying to keep out of sight. Their footfalls came right back around, and the chase was back on, except this time I'd bought even more space than I had started out with.

I don't know how long this chase held, but every minute I was getting closer to the estate ground, and building more distance between the knights and myself. Not a huge amount, they could catch up to me in ten seconds flat of a dead sprint on open land - but I made sure they never got that chance.

With one last leap, I landed hard on a larger alleyway, rolling away my extra energy. Ahead were the Winterscar estate gates, the sentries already on high alert from the general alarm. They spotted me at once, and instantly waved for the gate to open.

My legs almost collapsed on me, I held on, grunting and forcing them to lift me back up from my roll. Just a few more meters and I'd be safe. A few more meters.

Behind, I could hear the noise of a few hundred pound armors jumping from strut to strut, closing in on me.

With one last burst of energy, I made a dead sprint into the estate ground, yelling at the soldiers to follow behind and shut the door. Gods be thanked, they did exactly as ordered, sealing the entrance behind them, right after I'd come through. I fumbled and hit the ground hard.

Soldiers were already gathered around the courtyard, a good three dozen of them. They'd heard the clan alarms and gotten prepared. Equipped with weapons and full gear. Unfortunately, none of that equipment could take on even a single knight, and there were four angry ones behind me.

Ultimately, the winterscar gates weren't going to hold them off for long. And neither was my small army. I needed to get into Journey to have a chance.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to get some more air into my screaming lungs, trying and failing to get back on my feet. A few pairs of strong hands lifted me right back up and blessedly held me upright.

"Master Keith?" A sergeant asked to the side, the full question obvious to me in the tone of his voice. If the general clan alarms hadn't already spelled out a grim picture, me running into the estate like I'd been chased by a pack of machines likely did the trick.

"Four enemy knights. Behind me. Armor. Get. Armor." I tried shouting, but it only came out as a wheeze. "Don't fight them, can't win. Get to my workshop. Blades, three working. Find, use them."

Only three extras blades I'd made since I'd distributed the current stock of ten blades. And of that current stock, it was all in the hands of my personal guard - who were currently fighting off the slavers somewhere around the dance hall. I hadn't yet made it mass knowledge of the new blades, but the soldiers would hopefully figure it out quickly what I meant by blades. They'd find the ones that worked among the ones that were still a work in progress, they had to.

Gods be damned. I spent too much time working on the scrapshit knightbreakers, and worse - I'd sent it all to the clan lord so that his men could practice with them. Should have secured my own House first instead. Did I really expect only run of the mill unarmored mooks to attack my estate ground? Of course they'd hit with knights. If I were the enemy, I would hit the important targets with knights. How the hell they figured I was an important target was going to be a question I'll have to figure out another time.

All out of my hands now, if I lived past today, I'd do better next time. "Those three swords are the only chance you have against them until I can get my armor." My body finally had enough air to decide talking in full sentences was grudgingly acceptable. "Get them first, don't engage. Delay only."

The soldier nodded, instantly turning to his local comms and relaying out orders.

Fortunately the rest were quick on the uptake, especially after hearing knights were coming. Before I was even done talking, the men were already anticipating what to do and a general rush hit the courtyard. The orders from my sergeant here came out only as a professional courtesy.

Heavy bangs right behind me. The estate ground doors groaned, like a few heavy tons of angry metal had slammed into it. Somehow the door had won, refusing to break like some of the thinner parts of the clan superstructure.

Not even a second later, four relic blades stabbed through and began to cut into it like a can opener, clearly furious at the audacity the gate had.

Break time's over.

I took one last breath and began to sprint again, this time right into my estate ground and through the winding corridors. Behind me, there was a heavy clang of metal hitting ground and shouting followed by sporadic weapons fire.

Heavy footfalls chased at my heels. The knights were inside the estate now, clearly ignoring the soldiers and going directly after me. I raced forward, no longer feeling my legs, my lungs fighting for every bit of air I could shove inside once more. Gods above, at least when I started the sprint through the clan structure I had full stamina. Now, I was running on empty.

I had to get to the vault - worse, I had to shake them off my tail before. It took two minutes to armor up with a team helping. Which meant I had to cut their line of sight, and crawl somewhere they wouldn't find me. And then sneak into the vault while the soldiers tried to keep the knights distracted. But the footfalls were getting closer.

Needed to break their line of sight and vanish at the same time.

In desperation, I zig zagged down a familiar corridor, taking my chances with the enemy knights this close to me. One of the air vents here connected to a larger sprawling attic. I mustered up whatever energy was left inside my legs, and forced them to leap at the wall, hands reaching out for the ledge.

I flopped into the wall, my numb hands somehow gripping on the lip edge and I pulled myself up, scrabbling into the vent like a rat.

"No, you don't."

A hand grabbed my ankle and yanked me back down. Utterly unyielding. Strong enough to move my entire body, ripping my hands off their hold. "I'm not going to let you rat your way out again. Fuckin' enough." The voice said, the heavy Othersider accent harsh to the ear.

That pull threw me right out, into the open and slammed me hard on my back. What little bits of air I had was chased out of me. I rolled around, trying to get back on my knee for a running start, only to find myself caught midroll and forced back onto my back.

A heavy armored hand gripped my throat and pinned me down against the ground. The slaver knight loomed over me, helmet hiding all expression. "Gods you're one slippery pipe weasel. Like chasing a ghost running through the walls."

My throat was pinned down on the ground, the relic gauntlet nowhere near as massive as the machine that had once held me down the same way, but just as unyielding. I had no armor, no weapons, no occult to call on, and no plan. And even if I had a weapon, what good could it do me against four relic knights in this position?

"Game's over now, kid." The slaver said, "We caught you."

Next chapter - Last stand

Book 2 - Chapter 40 - Last stand

"So, how're we gonna drag the kid back? Can't exactly bring him outside without a suit." One of the slavers asked.

"Yeah, this is a fuckin' mess." Another said. "Zain's shipment ain't even scheduled for another two weeks. And we're way off the map from the dance hall. What's our exit plan now boss? Those undersiders should've been with us too, fat lot of good they're doing now, pissing with their dicks out in the freeze."

"Enough. We don't need a godsdamned suit." The knight holding me down said. "And this chance was once in a lifetime. It paid off see? We've got the brat. So shut the fuck up and do as I tell you. Yaggril, go out and keep the courtyard clear. Make sure they don't entrench guns around the area before we leave. Clanners are insane enough to do anything if you look away for even a moment." One of the knights stood at that, nodding. "Rest of us, we'll wait here till the team groups up and then we all punch a way down together. If we get split up, that's the one way these fucks can snatch victory from us."

"How did you scrapheads get into the colony in the first place?" I asked, wheezing through what little of my throat was still capable of breathing. My lungs were on fire, and that gauntlet was stopping the much needed air, but still, part of me hadn't given up.

The knight on top stopped mid-brief and looked down on me. "Well, wouldn't you like to know huh? Too bad."

"Clan lord is a Deathless." I snarled back. "You think you're going to get away? He'll chase you to the ends of the world. You're not getting out of this alive."

"I don't think your little pet Deathless is going to be moving around for a few months with the gear we've got to deal with him. By the time he's back, this miserable shithole will be a crater, and we'll all be long gone like the snow." He chuckled darkly at that. "You won't be around either, come to think of it. So both of you are going to miss all the fun that's coming. Saw a lot of pretty faces at that dance, can't wait till I come back for round two."

"I'll br-"

He shushed me then, spare finger pressing down on my lips, the gauntlet metal cold to the touch. "You're lucky the knights with knock-out drugs aren't here yet, but keep pressing your luck and I'll find novel ways of shutting you up. Got that?" He lifted his head next, turning to the others. "Don't let this brat get into your head. The Deathless isn't going to be our problem, trust the other team to do their job. I know we're deep in enemy turf and this hasn't gone anywhere close to the outline, but so long as we stick to what we've got, we should pull through all right. Don't panic, do what I say and we'll be fine."

There was a sound at the doorway entrance, and everyone snapped their heads to see who'd arrived.

Three figures stepped through the open doorway. Three soldiers in the Winterscar deep black uniform. I'd seen these three before at the feast, or sometimes gathered around the training yard watching Kidra and I spar. Back then their faces seemed so jovial. Now, they were dead set, a quiet sort of intensity to each.

Each of them held onto one of my new blades.

They raised up the black blades in unison, taking stances, igniting the occult edges. The slaver holding me down laughed. "This some kind of joke? You lot don't even have armor, and we outnumber you."

The soldier at the center narrowed his eyes, then met my own. "Master Keith, third corridor down. We'll buy you time."

The raider constricted his hand on my throat. "Don't even think about it, kid." He growled, then turned to the other knights. "Kill these fucks, I'll make sure the brat doesn't bounce in the meantime. Make it quick."

The other three nodded, drawing their blades out, stepping forward to meet the common soldiers.

The center Winterscar raised his blade in the traditional salute to the dead. "For House Winterscar." He spoke in deadly calm.

The slaver closest to them had the gall to return the salute, more a mockery. "For pleasure." He said, chuckling all the while.

That didn't matter to the Winterscar, he charged forward wordlessly, blade whistling through the air. The other two followed behind like his shadows, matching the movements perfectly.

The slaver slammed my face back down on the ground, holding me down and forcing me to see nothing but the cold metal ground and synthetic carpet. I heard the sound of Occult blades clashing, shouting, screams, and relic armor shields flaring up.

"What the fuck do you assholes think you're doing?" The one holding me down shouted. "Stop playing around and kill them already!"

More crashing blades, more yelling. Then the hand holding me down let go with a loud curse, and I heard the sound of blades clashing right above me. Something grabbed my collar, lifted me up and threw me back on my feet.

I had enough time to turn around and see one of my soldiers spin past an executing blow, delivering a counterstrike of his own before another slaver impaled him from the back, knife going in and out. The Winterscar guard grunted, falling on his knee for a moment before standing back up and swinging wildly with his blade. His opponent took the blow on his shields, gauntlet snaking out and grabbing the man's wrist, blade and all. A sound of crunching bones, followed by a furry of knife stabs into the soldier, all the while the slaver screamed in fury. After a few more stabs, he kicked the man hard into the wall, powered relic armor easily breaking through the ribcage.

The dying soldier's eyes met my own for a half second. Go. He mouthed out.

My feet turned me on autopilot and I sprinted through the hallways, searching for the third corridor. The sounds of fighting were dying out behind me, the ringing of a occult blade striking another slowing down, the sound of a relic shield breaking, then, no other sounds.

No, there was something. Heavy footfalls, many of them, right at my heels again.

The third corridor came into view and I understood why I'd been told to flee this direction. At the end an entire crew of five Winterscar soldiers had set up an auto cannon turret, the heavy caliber rounds already loaded in, the gunner at the front aiming straight down, hand on the trigger. The crew behind waved me to stick to the side of the wall.

I did exactly as instructed, sprinting on the far end of the hallway. The crew continued to aim down sights for a moment longer. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

A muzzle flash blinded me as they opened fire, while I was still halfway through the corridor.

Shockwaves struck me from the side like a physical force as heavy caliber rounds sounded off, one after another, zipping a few inches to my right. The sound instantly deafened me, cutting out any noise of the chasing footfalls. Disoriented me. But still my feet pounded forward.

In another few seconds I ran past the crew, which were busy keeping the cannon fed. But I knew those relic shields were only taking small percentages with each shell. This wasn't going to be enough.

One of my soldiers grabbed my shoulder and yelled something. I couldn't hear anything of course except for a high pitched whining. He seemed to realize instantly, and shifted to sign language.

Vault. Armor. Prepared. Run.

I gave him confirmation, turned and continued my sprint, the high pitch covering any sense of what was happening behind me.

Another checkpoint forward, I saw a second autocannon getting setup by another crew of five. How they had managed to carry such heavy ordinance all the way here, I have no idea. But they done it. And behind them were the vault doors. Those were wide open, with another ten servants already rushing around inside, moving dark metal plates of Journey around, preparing.

I was all but shoved into the vault, where the soldiers outside slammed the heavy thing on my face with barely any acknowledgement, locking me in while they remained outside. The servants moved with mechanical precision, two of them sealing the door shut from the inside, while the rest were already lifting the prepared armor pieces and snapping them into place on my body. There wasn't any time to put me into an under armour, they just shoved the plate pieces directly on my dress suit, tearing the fabric if they had to.

Despite the panic, they didn't let it get to them. The high pitched sound ringing in my ears slowly died away, replaced by muffled shouting and the booming of the cannons, along with rifle shots behind the door. Normally, at an average pace, it would take a team about two whole minutes to dress someone up in armor from start to finish.

They had already gone past the halfway point, the armor already powering up and gratefully taking the stress off my body. My wind wasn't coming back to me, the armor was holding me up now, and just in time.

Sounds of fighting suddenly died off behind the door. It was quiet for a moment, and then a massive rattling explosion sounded off behind the vault. It shook even our own room, though the vault held firm. The servants flinched, but didn't stop in their preparations. They must have already expected this to happen.

An Occult knife stabbed into the door, followed by another other at the opposite end. They took wide sweeping movements, cleanly slicing through the vault.

The servants didn't pay any attention to that. I knew they must have heard it, or seen the blades in the sides of their vision. They didn't speed up nor did they slow down. They remained laser focused on their task, taking each step as quickly and accurately as they could. No mistakes.

Click. Click. Click. Each section of the armor was coming together, nearly there. A pair lifted the shoulderplates, locking them in place. Another was working on attaching the smaller leg parts, the more intricate pieces. As soon as they were done, they'd instantly weave away to the side, cycling around, letting the next person attach parts while they went to fetch the following one.

The knives continued across the vault until they reached each other, then drew out. A heavy grinding sound came from the door as the cut section began to push inwards.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The servants all took a step back as one, the last plate piece affixed and humming with power. They'd managed to assemble the whole armor in under thirty seconds. A ridiculous speed.

My helmet was passed over to me as the final piece and I slammed it on. The familiar hiss of pressurization surrounded me, along with the expanding foam clinging to the sides of my face and body. Orange lines and markers loading into place, coming to life.

The shields flared, Journey testing all the subsystems were operational and fully prepared.

I probed my occult sense around for what I knew I had left inside the armor. The soul fractal lit up like an old friend. I dove into it, far more practiced this time, fury and rage bubbling through the link, remaining present even deep inside the soul trance.

The other fractals inscribed within the armor lit up in my sense, ready to be used if need be. Ready to burn and maim the intruders.

Power flowed into my mind, the options I had expanding out. Occult senses flooded into me, but my attention was solely on the enemy I felt directly behind the vault door.

"Good work." I told the servants. "Stay behind me, I'll take it from here."

The servants backed off, giving me room, a few sitting down as their adrenaline crashed. Most of them seemed to fully snap back to their senses with their work done, like they had been in a trance and were waking up only now. A few muttered quiet prayers, one after the other, eyes closed. The others were looked at me like I was their last hope.

They'd done their part. All of them, from soldier to servant. Everything they could, each in their own way. Many dying for it.

Now, it was my turn.

"What's going on?" Cathida asked in my ear. "Never seen you this angry before, heart rate is off the charts. Some girl reject you at your dance?"

"No. A few rabid animals need to be put down." Maybe there was something in my voice, maybe it was the situation, but Cathida went quiet. No banter this time.

With one last heave, the whole vault door collapsed downwards and two slaver knights stepped inside, their armor red with fresh blood, the skull designs seemed almost gleeful. One stopped, looking me up and down in the armor. "You fuckin' wackin' it on the snow or something? Just fuckin' surrender already, princess."

His partner grunted, his accent more clearly understood. "Gods damned pain in the ass you are. A royal brat fed off a silver spoon, you think being in armor is going to change anything?"

"You have no idea." I hissed. My longsword lit up in my hands, ready for blood. "A moment ago, you had a chance. Now, that chance is gone."

One of the slavers took a step into the room, occult knife spinning idly in his hand. "Oh no, Lenrad, hold me, I'm shakin' in me boots. Guess I'll just have to call up the boss and warn him everything's lost."

I took my own step forward and drew into stance slowly, longsword held perfectly still, tip pointed directly at the enemy. "You won't live long enough.

None of you will."

Next chapter - The knight of House Winterscar

Book 2 - Chapter 41 - The Knight of House Winterscar

They hadn't been prepared. They hadn't understood. By the time they realized, one was already dying, head cut off while his body followed behind, slumping down. My blade had scythed through the air, faster than he could see, catching him right on his throat guard, ripping apart his weakened shield, and biting through armor and flesh all in one savage swing.

A blur in the air, a trailing arc of occult blue, death following behind.

The other took things far more seriously after that, lashing out at me with furious knife strikes all while screaming curses. But far too late to save his friend.

I took a step away, parried a second swing with ease, and retaliated by kicking the exposed slaver right into the wall in a spinning kick. He crunched deep into the metal, sinking into it, breath knocked flat out of him with a frenzied gasp.

My blade raced forward, straight at his helmet.

Some instinct screamed inside his mind to duck but the reflex was nowhere near fast enough to escape me. The crusader blade struck, weakening the shields significantly as it shrieked against the occult edge. Still, he followed through on his training, shifting his head to the side, and lunching out with a stab. A desperate, fumbling thing, trying to prevent a follow-up attack from me by sheer aggression.

All too easy for me to backhand the stab away, throwing off both his arm and aim, while my sword once more bit deep into his relic shields to finish the job. The shield flared, trying to hold off against it a second time - and broke a moment after in a flash of blinding light.

The man fumbled back, and found he was still against a wall. There was nowhere to run.

Realizing, he threw out two desperate attacks in panic, missing both. The second stab I twirled under and lunged out. My cape billowed behind me, like a great white sheet, tracing where I had been moments ago. The extended index of my other hand mirrored my strike in parallel, guiding my blade like a river guides the stream. A beautiful flowing motion I'd seen my sister perform time and time again.

Cathida's longsword sank through the chestplate and heart with no resistance, impaling the slaver into the wall.

"H-how...?" He coughed out in a whisper, choking, head wobbling for a moment before dropping back down for good. The man's extended arm going limp over my shoulder, his occult knife falling to the ground from the slackening gauntlet.

The longsword withdrew slowly, letting the body slump down and out of my way. These slavers really had no idea just who they'd fucked with. And I wasn't going to give them a second chance to fix their error.

I turned around to the frightened servants that had huddled at the far end of the vault. To them, the fight must have started and ended in a few heartbeats, too fast to keep track of. One looked up at me, eyes wide. "We'll be fine." He said, voice trying hard to keep a tremor away. "Please, master Keith, you have to save the others, please!"

I give him a curt nod, turned and sprinted through the ruined vaultway, into the center of a massive explosion. No identifiable body parts, only burnt carbon and gore. The blackened auto turret remained standing, but the barrel had been sliced cleanly in two. The soldiers must have known they'd likely not make it out alive, and they'd brought explosives with them to detonate. One last attempt to weaken the enemy.

No time to think about that. Instead I continued my sprint, hunting down the other two intruders, wherever they were. There was bloodthirst in my eyes, and my veins pumped with rage. Building up with every step as my shocked mind slowly began to catch up with the events that happened. The amount of people who'd died trying to protect me.

The first slaver I found was back in the room where the three winterscar soldiers had made their last stand. I hadn't been fast enough to save any of the three doomed men who'd known they were trading their lives to give me just a chance. Their bodies were all cut and mangled, left with little respect.

The slaver knight was sitting at the side of a wall, trying to stem the blood flow from a cleanly cut arm. Using piece of Winterscar uniform from a dead body to do it. By his side were all three Occult Winterscar swords, gathered all up.

He looked up, faceless helmet staring at me as if in disbelief. Then the man screamed out in panic, legs flailing around, trying to push himself away.

Without relic shields, and one hand holding nothing but a bandage, he was dead where he sat and he knew it. My hand snapped out, grabbing the screaming man's head, crushing his shieldless helmet under my fingers. Journey's gauntlets digging heavy indents into the metal. The helmet collapsed under the pressure, breaking apart with a groan, massive seams exposing pink flesh under. Even in this state, the relic armor was still designed to break apart, to give the user the most amount of time possible.

No matter.

The fractal of heat flared to life in my palm. An inferno of fire engulfed everything before my hand, wrapping around his trapped features, the burning temperature sinking into the open seams in between his ruined helmet. The slaver's screams took a different pitch, body shaking wildly under me as the helmet began to glow a dim red under my assault. The shaking soon turned into little more than sporadic twitching.

There was no mercy in me, not a single drop for any of these animals. The body fell limp as I let go of the charred head. The finger plates on my hand rapidly cooled from a dim molten glow back to their dark colors, the air still a haze above my palm and digits.

Three dead, one to go. "Where's the last one?" I hissed out.

"Out in the courtyard." Cathida said. "Sounds of fighting."

I nodded, reaching out for the spare swords, bundling them up in an arm, and continued my dead sprint.

The courtyard was utter chaos. A few dozen soldiers were opening fire on a single laughing slaver knight at the center, whose armor didn't even trigger shields against the bullet spray. "Is that the best you lot got?" He shouted. "I got friends coming for you sorry scrapshits and you can barely handle even one of me." He shifted a rifle of his own around, taking return shots at soldiers, forcing them into cover, laughing all the while like a lunatic.

I strode into that courtyard, tossing the Winterscar blades to the soldiers nearest to me, while I continued my way to the offending slaver, longsword held at my side.

He turned, not understanding why all the soldiers had started pointing behind him and cheering. His head tilted in confusion until he saw me walking towards him. He promptly tossed the rifle to the ground, drawing out his knife, laughing the whole while. "Finally a real challenge. Love it when dinner comes to me. I'll try to be gentle with you boy, gotta bring your head back home alive. Can't guarantee it won't hurt. Might make you suffer a bit. Heh."

"I guarantee I'll make you suffer." I snarled. "I'll make sure of it."

I lunged for him. One moment I had been a dozen feet away from the man, the next I was already at his throat. Dust, smoke and whistling air flowed behind my mass as my blade struck against the slaver's shields in a heartbeat.

Three more fast strikes came from my blade, battering him from all sides, before reflexes finally caught up to him, and he properly swung back at me. I easily ducked under that, using the motion to reposition to the slaver's side, delivering a pair of strikes and following it with a roundhouse kick that launched him across the air. He went tumbling on the floor, skidding until he hit the opposite wall with a heavy dent.

The slaver's shields went down far under fifty percent, according to Journey. The man scrambled away, trying to make space for himself while I was still a distance away.

Behind him, a Winterscar soldier lunged out at his back, one of my newly forged Occult blades lit up, the carbon edge flecked with blood.

The slaver turned, intercepting the attack with his knife. He brought his blade back up to cleave the soldier down from neck to hip, only for his blade to be intercepted by mine as I flew across the ground, catching up to him. I struck hard enough even his relic armor couldn't hold onto the grip, the knife flying away and slicing deep into a wall before the Occult edge turned off.

The winterscar soldier didn't pause for a beat, going right back on the attack, more of the slaver's shields dropping with each blade strike. Two other Winterscars sprinted at his other sides, their own recovered weapons striking out in tandem.

The slaver tried to fight back. Each time he tries to punch or kick, I was there to block it, slapping the hand away, leaving him for my soldiers to cut to pieces. The soldiers smelled the blood in the air, shifting their tactics, relying on me to be their shields while the three went on systematic offence.

They ripped him apart with cuts. Striking out while the enemy was helpless to fight back.

I made no moves to end his life. I wanted this animal to die slowly, in panic, to the very people he thought had been worms just a moment ago.

Rage, fury, revenge and bloodlust, it wasn't a pretty sight. There was almost an unworded agreement between us Winterscars. We wanted vengeance and blood for those who'd given it all. The gods watch us, we would get our pound of flesh.

Half a minute into the fight, I no longer needed to bother trying to protect anyone. They'd done enough damage that the slaver couldn't properly fight back anymore. Likely only his armor was moving the body now, too many tendons and muscles had been cut. Soon even the armor couldn't move itself anymore.

The rest of the Winterscar soldiers slowly surrounded the dying knight in a circle, kicking him back into the fight anytime he stumbled too close in some misguided attempt to flee. It wasn't every day they saw a relic knight being torn to shreds by mortal men. A reminder that no matter how powerful someone is, they still bleed.

I watched from the sidelines, arms folded across my chest as the enemy knight was brought low by my soldiers.

He collapsed on his back when one of the legs had finally taken too much and snapped from the weight. Blood had filled his lungs up, choking whatever final words of mercy begged out. He reached an outstretched hand to one of the soldiers, as if asking her to spare his life. Or maybe deluding himself that his hand could possibly stop her.

It didn't. She stabbed right through the palm, ripped half of it apart, and then cut again, this time through the arm with an audible snarl. The arm flew clear off. Another soldier stabbed the blade down through the relic helmet at the same time. The slaver twitched, a tremor passed through the body as the sword sank deeper into the broken helmet, and then everything was still.

It was over. All the intruders had been killed.

A massive cheer rose among the crowd, and held for a few strong seconds up until the more level headed seniors brought everyone into order. Shouts and commands flooded the previous noise. Sargents shuffled soldiers around, calling medics to take the wounded, cycling fresh faces into the ranks while forcefully retiring the ones that had been exhausted. A group of four soldiers were already circling around the dead slaver, stripping the armor off of him in chunks, tossing them into a hoversled that had appeared from seemingly nowhere.

A lieutenant came up to me, giving a curt salute. "Master Keith, there's likely other relic knights on approach given the taunting this one did. We should prepare. I've ordered a full defense to setup and for the servants to hide. We've got reports of three spare relic armors being salvaged from dead slavers further inside the estate. This one will make a fourth. Expecting these to be operational again and under our command in fifteen to thirty minutes. Orders?"

"Have we heard anything from my personal guards, or captain Sagrius?"

He shook his head. "No sir. Nothing on comms yet. Clan communications have been scrambled. Whatever the raiders planned with their slaver allies, they hit multiple parts of the colony at the same time. Last I heard, there were other slaver knights storming through the city. Recommend waiting until we have their armors online before we set out to help stabilize the city."

"Any word from Shadowsong, or Lord Atius?" I asked, without much hope. He shook his head again. I debated the merits of going back out there by myself, to search for my missing guards and help bring them home.

I didn't get to make that choice. A shout came out across the courtyard, and through the ruined Winterscar estate gates, six figures walked into the clearing, two carrying a large crate with them. That must be the reinforcements they'd called. Just a few shy minutes too late to save their overextended team.

Three dozen rifles snapped up into attention, aiming down sights at the incoming slaver knights. No one opened fire, they all knew to save ammunition for more vulnerable targets.

"You stupid fucks." The knight taking point said, motioning for his men to set the crate down. "I don't know how you managed to kill four of my men, but I'm going to flay the rest of you alive for that. Could fuckin' hear it on the comms, had to mute the shitstain's screaming." Then he pointed a longsword at me. "And you, Winterscar princess. You just had to make it a mess. Could have just surrendered, avoided all this. Now I have to butcher everyone to get even."

"Funny. The last four of your men said the same thing." I said. "They're dead now."

"Oh well I fuckin' see that. Didn't like them anyhow, more loot for the rest of us so you did me a favor. Don't know how you did it, probably split them apart and stabbed them all in the back like a fuckin' coward. Now, the six of us here? We ain't dumb. There's no splitting us up. Just all six of us against the one of you."

I shrugged, taking my stance with deliberate motion. "They also told me they outnumbered me. That I wouldn't win. Again, they're dead now."

He patted the crate at his side, laughing. "Exactly why I took the time to fetch this baby here, before coming for the party. Part of the original plan, this bit. Didn't think we'd need to drag it all the way out here, but con-gratu-fucking-lations. You've gone and made us all mad. Now, I'm not taking any more half-assed chances dealing with you."

Father had told me once that skill was enough to overcome two against one. But three against one was almost universally a losing fight. Even he couldn't take on three knights and expect to win without some way to funnel the enemy. Hold them off maybe, but not win. And four would have killed any amount of skill the moment they surrounded their victim.

I wasn't feeling too confident about my chances, even with the Winterblossom technique. But I wasn't going to allow more of my new family to die here. I beat them, or they beat me and took me away, leaving everyone else alive. Either way it ends here. Sure they could sputter about massacring the whole House, but we all knew they didn't have the time anymore for that.

Three Occult blades snapped to life behind me.

I turned my gaze behind and saw three of my soldiers taking their own stances at my side, matching my own. "This isn't a battle you can survive." I told them. "Fall back. I'll handle this alone. I'm not out of cards to play yet."

"Negative, sir." The one on my left said, refusing to elaborate.

"I'll see you in my misconduct hearing after this." The one on the right said. "Happy to scrub toilets for a year if it means I get a chance to kill slavers. Talen smiles down on me today."

"This is serious. We've lost too many good people today. You've survived so far and I commend you all for the sheer bravery you've shown in the face of death. I couldn't have asked for better men and women at my side. But if you fight here, your luck is going to end. There's only three blades, no where near enough to turn the tides."

"Might be only three blades, but plenty more waiting for their turn after I'm done." He said, an odd smile on his face.

I noticed then that the rest of the winterscar soldiers hadn't fled. No, they were all huddling behind cover, waiting.

The slaver leader pointed a sword at me. "How cute. Clanners asking to get killed for muh honoru. A fucking gods damned classic." He mocked, shook his head and waved a lazy hand. "Fine. You know what? I don't give a shit anymore. Kill them all, boys. Don't leave any of them alive except for him."

The soldier at my right flashed me a salute to the dead. "House Winterscar." He whispered. Then turned and dove forward, the other two following behind in sync, all screaming out Winterscar, up against six relic knights.

No time to argue, I drew out my spare knife into my other hand in a reflexive flourish, and charged forward, easily leaping past the three and diving deep into the fight in a whirlwind of blades.

It was a nightmare. My soldiers were clearly far more skilled and trained then the mercenary knights they fought. But the relic armors were giving advantages my soldiers couldn't overcome. Each Winterscar had no second chances. They had no shields. No armor that could support their wounds and let them continue after. And they were outnumbered.

They fought through it all anyhow, at my side.

With my blades in tandem, I dove deep into Father's fighting style, everything I could remember of it. My sword flashed around, far faster than any of the enemy knights, a near blur in the air. Methodically striking any unguarded plates until shields would break.

They weren't able to overwhelm me, anytime they tried to surround me, my soldiers would dive in with a ferocity unmatched, forcing a hole I could slip away through. Often at terrible costs.

They hit the ground bleeding, one after the other. I protected them wherever I could, but ultimately I knew I was only buying them a few more seconds of life. Even after they were cut apart, legs or arms severed, they still fought. And if they couldn't, they turned and threw their occult blades out past into the courtyard, where another soldier would charge out, pick it up and join the battle.

The rest of the Winterscars stalked the sides, opening fire with rifles, trying to land distracting shots on relic helmets anytime they had a clear vision. The courtyard was ablaze with sounds of occult blades zipping through the air and rifle shots pinging against armored knights.

A few of the more bold soldiers dove empty handed into the fight, dragging away wounded Winterscars back behind friendly lines. Medics swarmed their side, immediately cauterizing blade wounds and handling triage mere feet away from the slavers. One soldier had even brought out a fire extinguisher, funnelling a massive torrent of white in an attempt to blind a knight. Didn't work, it took a lot to obscure vision from relic armor given the sheer spectrum of sight and scanning abilities they had.

All through the battle, I fought at the center of the maelstrom, my sword and knife lashing out as fast as I could think. Relic shields started to break. Amor was cut into, following heads. I nailed one, slicing his hand, leaving him exposed and weaponless. I kicked him backwards, right against the House soldiers. Without means to fight back and already on his back, he didn't last long as they tore him apart.

Another I slammed onto the ground with a casual twist of my arm, in front of a woman who'd just picked up a fallen Witnerscar blade from the last wounded soldier. She didn't hesitate to drive that blade straight into the slaver's head, before dive rolling away from another slaver trying to decapitate her in turn.

The slaver tactics changed in moments. They realized the extra three blades being passed around was giving me just enough leeway to fight them all off. And their window of being able to take me down was quickly being whittled away, one dead slaver at a time. The combined might of my House behind my back was pulling the odds in my favor.

They stomped down on the blades, outright destroying one, and claiming the other two after suffering another dead knight to take it. Without the striking soldiers to distract and add mayhem into the fight, the remaining three knights pressed down on me, finally forcing me into a defensive retreat, using my own blades against me.

I gave ground only when needed, but the fight was rapidly turning against my favor now. As fast as I was, I couldn't block three simultaneous knife strikes from three different directions and two additional longer reaching swords. Father or my sister might have the intuition and outright genius to twist and dodge in just the right ways, but I wasn't them. My shields were dropping rapidly with each coordinated attack.

Cannon fire lit up the clearing, massive rounds striking the slaver knight in front of me, forcing his shields to power on to block the hit, throwing him stumbling away mid strike. He growled, pointing at the cannon. Another slaver peeled off and raced across to deal with it, while the Winterscar crew on the other end opened fire and held the line against the speeding tank.

It gave me a window of opportunity. If I could rush one of the knights down, I could handle the other even without any shields left.

I sprang forward and was instantly stopped. A massive metal net wrapped itself around me, the heavy chain balls on all ends slamming into the ground and denting the metal from the sheer weight. The whole thing bogged me down, putting an instant halt to my motions. It was a struggle just to turn and see where the net had come from.

The slaver leader pulled a second net from the crate his men originally carried into the courtyard. He moved with quick motions, looking panicked. My occult blades began to rip the net apart, until a heavy set of hands closed down on my own, struggling to hold me still. It wasn't outright stopping me, but slowing down by ability to get free. More nets were thrown, each one further entangling around me, restricting my movements.

Journey began to groan at the stress building up on the joints, now pressured by the weight of three metal nets and another relic armor trying to pin it down. Before I could swipe again, two more arms reached out and grabbed my rightmost hand, forcing my blade to come to a complete stop.

The third knight had returned. And now the two holding my arms. Both slowly prying my hands open, trying to disarm me. It was only a matter of time until they overwhelmed Journey's grip.

The leader of the slavers strode forward, his own sword flashing. "If I have to cut off your legs and arm to get you to stay fuckin' still, I fuckin' will. Swear on the gods… No. You know what? You don't deserve that offer. I'm going to toss you to that metal fuck as a cripple, and he's just going to have to deal with it."

"Cathida." I said under my breath, voice oddly still as the armor struggled to hold onto my weapons. Trying to stay upright as the two slavers and the net robbed me of any mobility.

"You got an idea there honey? I hope you do, I don't think they want to shake hands and sing hymns to the goddess."

"Generate a combat engram of yourself and take over."

"Don't see why not, Journey has plenty of data for an accurate one. Don't think I'll be any better than you are though. You're kind of stuck, so I'll be just as stuck."

"I know what I have to do. Do it."

The slaver got closer, blade flashing up in light. I could almost see that sadistic smile hiding behind the helmet he wore.

"Fine. Hope your plan works." Cathida said, HUD elements rearranging across my vision, showing additional subroutines triggered and loaded. Journey's original monotone returned, speaking words I'd heard a lifetime ago. "Releasing safety locks. Loading predictive engram..."

I reached deep into myself, disconnecting my soul from the rest of my body and severing the winterblossom technique completely. As my hands went limp, another set of hands came to life, clenching tightly on the sword and knife that were being pried away. I could feel the armor move on its own, struggling against the net.

It was a faraway feeling. The world became peaceful, my struggles ending. Further and further I receded from reality, until the soul fractal and the occult sight were the only thing left and I floated, suspended in the slow ebing current of my own mind.

My eyes opened in that darkness, searching for what I knew was there. What I had left behind, meticulously carved and studied in the safety of my sanctum.

Somewhere, deep on the inside of my chestplate, a fractal lit to life at my touch.

Occult blue began to spread across my armor, faint whisps floating up, shocks of pale lighting crackling across the plate. The slaver leader stopped in his tracks, one boot taking an uncertain step back. He whispered a curse, hand raising up to point at me. "He's a d-deathless."

A beat passed. And then knight dove forward in panic, blade in hand, racing to end me as quickly as he could. A dozen trained rifles all opened fire on him that very instant, the winterscar soldiers desperate to stop his charge any way they could. A few had outright started to sprint empty handed, no plan other than to somehow get in between me and that blade, even if they had to jump in front.

None of them would reach us in time.

The slaver ignored the weapons fire, hundreds of yellow sparks dancing across all sides of his armor as the bullets pinged off. His knife unerringly dived down, straight for my heart.

I focused my mind one last time. In that dim darkness, only I and the fractal remained. My focus clenched around it, commanding it to fully rouse awake. It responded to my thoughts, burning like a bonfire in my occult senses, and pulsed out.

Reality seemed to freeze for a heartbeat.

Then, it bent to my will.

Next chapter - The Sorcerer Knight of House Winterscar

Book 2 - Chapter 42 - The Sorcerer Knight of House Winterscar

The slaver knight's blade raced for my heart. Death was a single second away.

But Lord Atius had offered me knowledge.

The powers of a Deathless.

Deep inside my chest, the fractal of mirrors flared out. Occult blue rippled around a translucent hand lifting forth from my seized arm. The mirror hand raced forward, executing one single perfect block.

The arm had been a full imitation of Journey's gauntlets and armor, all in pale blue. It had soundlessly moved right through the net, immaterial to reality, directly on a path to intercept the slaver's lethal attack. Held firmly in that spectral hand had been an exact mirror of the Occult blade my physical hand carried. The edge of that translucent blade shining a deeper color like the real version of the blade would. That was the only part of the manifestation that still seemed to affect reality. Everywhere that edge scythed through was cut, air and metal net both.

The slaver knight stumbled backwards in shock as the arm faded from existence, dissolving like powder swept away in water.

A half breath passed. The two slavers on my side held firmly on my arms, helmets slowly turning to stare in horror at me. They let go an instant later, as if I was burning to the touch. Trying to put as much distance between me and them as they could.

More pulses of occult rippled out, and three more wraith arms sprang superimposed on my body as I rapidly threw my will into the fractal again and again and again. Everywhere the ghostly blades scythed through, the net fell apart into chunks. Like a hydra of old, each arm struck out as if independent. Each performing one single action, one single swing.

It was enough. The metal crumpled around me, weight now snapping the chains apart as a blur of occult blue shredded through the mass.

Cathida rose from the ruins of the metal net. The real knife and longsword struck out, slicing through the rest, further breaking apart the weakened chains. She leaped up, relic armor ripping loose from whatever chains were left.

My body landed back on solid ground in a heavy crouch, free again. Cathida brought us back up, longsword and knife casually taking the familiar stance of an imperial crusader. "Nice trick, deary." She whispered in my ear. "I'll admit your little hockus pokus might have been worth spending time on."

The slavers scuffled up together. I could see them shaking. Uncertain. She let them take their positions. Helmet tilted slightly, almost as if mocking them.

"Now watch closely." Cathida said to me. "I have tricks of my own."

I couldn't speak. Too much of me was disconnected from my body, too far removed.

The slavers tried to rally. They gathered together, executing techniques for handling an outnumbered foe. Once more trying to surround and corner us. I could tell they were well practiced at this. The old imperial crusader didn't spare any of it a second thought, she sprinted right into the mouth of their formation head on.

In life, Cathida had been fast.

I'd seen the video archive. Her single minded dedication to the combat arts had allowed her to master moves to their limits. It made her deadly underground, capable of striking out with some honed techniques at speeds only masters could reach.

In death, she had none of those limits.

Every movement she made was at a master's level. All the commands coming directly from the armor itself. There was no limiting factor. Speed wasn't the only thing crashing into the slaver knights either. Cathida had only known the imperial style of combat when she'd died in that cave.

But she'd been watching over me. And she'd learned.

With Journey recording the exact data, she only needed to see me perform a move once in order to replicate it. The mixup of the regal imperial technique and cutthroat surface style was something the slavers hadn't seen before. Telegraphed attacks instantly turned into a ruse, flowing right back into stream like attacks, and then to heavy handed swings. It jarred them, forcing them to fight in unnatural ways. Worse - I recognized moves only Kidra had delivered while sparring with me.

Cathida hadn't just learned from me. She had learned from everyone I'd ever fought since her inception. Kidra, Ironreach, even Shadowsong. Journey brought their styles to life, Cathida moving with far more grace than I ever could, back straight, sword strikes sent out with noble bearing as she wove the different techniques into a cohesive whole. Occult raging around the armor the whole while, ghostly manifestations striking out against anything that drew too close with far more primal and simpleminded strikes. There was no technique to my part, only wild swings.

I didn't need to pay attention to what my body was doing, I stayed limp within the armor, too detached to feel anything. Instead, my focus was completely on the mirror fractal and the ability granted through it. No small feat by itself, I had to imagine and 'program' each movement the images would take, one after another, as quick as I could think. When I'd seen Atius use the skill, he could send out entire phantoms, moving for whole seconds out in the world, striking out.

At my skills, I could only make partial manifestations and only long enough for a single quick swing. Arms and the blades. Occasional parts of the torso. But I made it work.

Any attack that the slavers launched from behind Cathida, I manifested a counter defence. She, in turn, went on a single-minded attack. I followed behind her strikes with equal ferocity from all kinds of angles that couldn't have been physically possible. Her already quick slices had nearly doubled in lethality with my additions superimposed over.

A rhythm of battle wordlessly clicked into place between us as we crippled the formation arrayed against us, like a hammer against nails. The armor focused fully on taking out one slaver at a time, putting all of her trust on me to hold off the other two. Neither of us spoke the plan to one another, we both understood, as if we were each one part of the whole.

The fight turned hard against the slavers from the start. Another set of swings and the current target's shields flashed and broke.

The man broke with it, turning all the while screaming incoherently, trying to sprint away. He got one step in, before he found himself staring at the end tip of a longsword skewed right through his chest and heart. His last sight of the world, before the sword was pulled free and the man collapsed onto the ground, dead.

She brought herself back into stance from the lunge, slowly, almost like a predator playing with her prey, twisting the longsword around on her palm with casual apathy. The last two slavers held back for a moment, glancing to each other, as if contemplating their chances on running.

Cathida didn't give them a chance, sprinting wordlessly at them. The armor began to methodically cut apart the next slaver. That one tried to hold back the flurry of attacks, failing to parry even a single blow against Cathida's technique. The last slaver had at least put up some kind of a fight, this one was clearly out of his depth. The shield was whittled away in instants as the two of us worked in tandem to rip him apart. Worse - he realized he'd been abandoned by his teammate halfway into the attack.

The slaver leader had decided discretion was the better part of valor, turning and sprinting straight out through the Winterscar gates, leaving the last man as a speed bump to slow us down.

We cut into that final knight without much effort now that he was alone against us with broken moral. In between the armor's precise strikes, I wove out my own ghostly hits, from alternate directions like I'd seen Lord Atius do in his own fight.

His shields finally came near the limit with an errant strike of Cathida's knife. A ghostly strike a half second after completed the job, shattering the shield entirely and cutting deep into his bicep before fading from existence. The slaver never had the time to notice, as Cathida skewered him right through the helmet in a swift followup thrust. Quick and clean kill.

The body twitched, crashing down onto the ground. Another armor for House Winterscar.

"Well. Wasn't that exciting?" Cathida said. "Almost unfair to the poor savages. I rather enjoyed that."

"He died too quickly." I growled, slowly returning to my senses, my soul returning to the Winterblossom configuration.

The courtyard around us was silent. Winterscar soldiers had surrounded the perimeter at the start of the fight, all of them waiting for the next autocannon to arrive, or the next moment where their rifles could potentially distract the enemy.

And then the fight had changed. Even the most battle hardened of them had stopped to stare once the Occult flooded into the world.

I brought my sword up, swung it clear of blood and turned it off, back into the sheath. At some point the alarms across the clan had stopped, but I couldn't tell just when that had been. A beat passed in the now quiet courtyard. The soldier closest to me knelt down, knee hitting the floor with a quick thump as he bowed his head. The rest of the Winterscars followed in suit, some making signs of the divine with their hands, many outright praying. Like a wave had spread out.

It felt a little surreal to me, turning around, seeing everyone kneeling to me of all people. I didn't know what to do in this situation. Every childhood fantasy I've ever had about being respected wasn't even fantastical enough to have people kneeling before me. Considering what they've witnessed, I probably looked more like some mythical hero out of a fairy tale to them, and this was the origin story they found themselves in.

Footsteps outside the gate saved me from having to say anything or make some kind of speech. In the hushed courtyard, those footsteps were louder than bullets. That seemed to break whatever spell had been cast on the Winterscars around me, they all leaped back up into a frenzy of activity at the shout of one of the sergeants. A dozen were sent out right away to recover the dead slavers and strip them of armor. Others were bringing the patched up wounded back into the safety of the estate, right to the hospital wing where they could be tended to.

Soldiers came to my side, setting up defenses, while others were trying to seal the gates shut once more with whatever scrap and welders they had on hand. I noticed they kept a short distance from me, as if not daring to get as close to me as they'd normally have done before. A figure walked to the edge of the ruined gate, and I threw away my racing thoughts to focus.

The man's armored gauntlet clamped tightly on the helmet of a dead knight, dragging the whole bloody body behind. The body being dragged was unmistakably a slaver knight. Both his arms had been cut cleanly off, and so had the legs.

The one dragging the body was none other than Shadowsong. He continued walking into the clearing, casually pointing a sword at one of my soldiers. "You." He spoke. "Bring cauterizing iron here. Now. We brought wounded that need to be tended to."

Two slaver knights stepped behind Shadowsong on both sides, but there wasn't any kind of fight brewing. These knights had makeshift Winterscar tabards draped across their chest plates, and both were carrying wounded soldiers in each hand. On the side of their belts were the carbon fiber blades I'd designed. This had to be my personal guard, returning from the dance hall.

In moments a whole team of medics descended on the two stolen armors, plucking the wounded soldiers out and getting to work on them. Shadowsong tossed the dead slaver's body to my feet, armor and all. "Yours by right. Your soldiers slew this one on their own."

Behind, a small troop of Shadowsong guards and the rest of my personal guard walked in next, including captain Sagrius. He looked haggard, with a white gauze bandage tightly wrapped around his left arm, but otherwise seemed to have made it in one piece. Great luck on his part, considering the last I'd seen of him, he and two others took on an entire army of six relic knights. An outright death sentence in all but name.

"I see I had nothing to worry for." Shadowsong noted as he strode in, helmet shifting around, taking talley of the dead slavers and cut nets. "It seems once again someone has underestimated you and paid the price for it. You will have to tell me how you pulled off the feat of going five against one, and winning. No doubt some very clever tricks and tactics."

"Six, not five. The last one escaped a moment ago. And it wasn't easy, I had to burn up a few secrets to survive." I told him honestly, taking my helmet off to get some fresh air.

"Secrets?" Shadowsong turned to one of the Winterscar soldiers, who glanced up.

The unworded question was clear, and the soldier answered it promptly. "Lord Keith fought them all off with blade and some support from the rest of us." He said quickly, almost rambling. "Was a display of sword skills I hadn't seen in all my life, honored Shadowsong, only Lady Kidra could have matched it. I swear on all the gods above and under, he moved like the wind itself, as if the three had blessed him their champion."

The other soldiers nodded, each adding to the story almost unprompted. And more oddly - with no mention of the Occult I had manifested. All of them banding together, making a convincing communal story on the spot. Trying to keep my abilities secret.

I glanced back up to the prime, looking bemused. Shadowsong listened patiently for a moment, humming. Then he raised a hand up, silencing the courtyard chatter.

"Lord Keith?"

Next chapter - Damage control

Book 2 - Chapter 43 - Damage control

The soldiers all glanced at me then, guilty looks in their eyes. Caught.

"Not what we need to talk about right now." I said, avoiding the topic, sheathing my sword and taking a step out of the estate grounds. "Captain Sagrius, the woman? Is she all right?"

I didn't see her among the men. Neither carried, nor walking around. My gut lurched as I realized what Sagrius was going to tell me.

"Sir, we attempted to search for her but were intercepted by slaver knights attempting to follow behind your trail. We fought them off until the Shadowsong prime arrived on scene and finished them off. He ordered us to follow lockstep behind, over my protests."

I turned to look at Shadowsong who met my gaze without looking away. "You were more important." He simply said, booking no argument.

"Sagrius, can you handle the rest of the fallout here? Do a full search of the estate for anyone that might have survived the attack." I said, already stalking forward.

He gave me a quick salute. "It will be done, master Keith."

Shadowsong stepped in my path, one arm reaching out to block my way. "Is this wise?" He asked.

"I made a promise."

"That is not what I asked."

"I'm in armor. And you're here with me, along with my guards. It'll take a feather to take us down at this point. Don't deny me this, Ikusari. I've seen too many people die today."

Maybe using his full name got his attention here on how important this was to me. He tilted his head to view the courtyard, the damages caused, and then nodded.

I found the corridor I'd left. Journey's headlights lit the way in, breaking the spell of darkness. Orange HUD lines revealed multiple different spectrums of light ahead, analysing everything. We'd run into only small pockets of resistance now. Slavers who hadn't gotten the message to retreat. Defeating the ten slaver knights that had assaulted House Winterscar broke the enemy back.

"This is where you separated?" Shadowsong asked.

I gave him a nod as we all continued. "What happened to you after we ran?" I asked.

"Their reinforcements never arrived. In the corridor confines, they were unable to surround me. I slaughtered the animals, and I did not allow them to run." Shadowsong said. "As your captain explained, the expected reinforcement were handled by your men. I should have had you remain at my side in hindsight."

"We couldn't have known." I said. "Doesn't matter now. How many knights did they attack the dance hall with in total?"

"Three I killed, three were killed by your men, and another nine are dead in your estate grounds. And one escapee lurking somewhere in the clan. Fifteen knights in total."

"Have we found out how they snuck into the colony?"

"Wolves pretending to be men." Shadowsong said. "They carried their armor in crates, as if carrying spare scrap. Dressed as clan members from different castes. Once they came near their targets, they suited up in the shadows and attacked. I know of three simultaneous strikes so far. One on the Logi center operations, one on Lord Atius's estate, and the last here at the dance hall."

"Scrapshit, they really tried to take on Atius? I thought they were bluffing."

"So I have heard." Shadowsong said. "They wouldn't have done so without being prepared for it. I fear that they have successfully stalled him somehow."

Red came into the headlights, outlined in orange lines as Journey pointed out the pattern. It had rusted into a brown color, but I recognized the footprints. Ellie.

I doubled my speed, following the tracks as they continued down the hallway. They remained straight and focused, up until a larger pool of blood and nothing else. Boxes and crates were scattered around, but nothing else. Ellie must have bandaged her wounds somehow. Or found a makeshift boot of some kind.

"Crates and supplies here have been disturbed." Shadowsong said. "Moved from their original spots at the side of the corridor."

"A leftover hoversled she found? Took the supplies off of it, and then used it to escape?"

"Unlikely. There is dust on some of these boxes, and outlines on the ground where they'd been moved from."

A weak voice spoke, directly above me. "K-keith?"

Instantly, my headlights flashed straight up to the source. There, I found Ellie. Pale, wedged into a crook in the ceiling. Her leg had been bandaged up by a torn part of her dress. Soaked red. Relief flooded through me, an odd sensation to experience given the fuge-like distance the Winterblossom technique granted. If I hadn't been controlling my movements with my mind, I might have collapsed on my knees just now.

Why had I been worried in the first place? Ellie was a survivor. Of course she'd come up with a plan to evade the slavers. It didn't take long to get her brought down, the Winterscar guards already surrounding her, taking out their medkits and undoing her makeshift bandage, peeling away the slowly coagulating blood.

"She's been shot four times in the leg." I said, Journey having done a quick scan of her head to toe. The armor superimposed the position of the lodged bullets. "Pincers." I called out.

They were in my hands before I had even turned my head. The soldiers were taking out the next set of tools and items needed for bullet wounds with practiced efficiency. They knew the basic drills since childhood, every Retainer did. One of them injected Ellie with a painkiller. She grimaced.

"Funny." She said, words slurring slightly. "Never once thought I'd be the one on the other end of it, picking the safe route instead. That stuff works fast."

I extracted the first bullet, tossing it on the ground and leaving the wound alone. "You always were good at finding ways to avoid expeditions. Never understood that myself, expeditions were where the best loot could be brought back. You missed out."

Another winterscar was already wiping the area and dressing the wound as I worked on the second bullet. Journey showed me a full heads up display. Ellie was technically dying of blood loss according to the armor, but it was preventable. Especially with Journey showing me every step needed to do the job well.

No countdowns this time. No unhealable wound.

"Never liked fighting." Ellie shrugged. "Or scavenging. Or gore. I know a lot of others would have killed to have a chance at recovering salvage for profit, but I always figured there were more efficient ways to make money that didn't involve a high chance of ending up in a crevice or under a tombstone."

"You're dying of blood loss, and you're still thinking about money." I deadpanned, withdrawing the next bullet.

"Oh please, stop being so dramatic." She slapped the side of my gauntlet, chiding. "You would be panicking a lot more if that armor of yours wasn't sure it could save me. And then I'd be more worried. You're a terrible liar."

"In my defense, a lot of angry people think I'm an excellent one." I hummed, wrapping up the third bullet and moving onto the last. Shadowsong scoffed behind me, as if personally insulted. But he remained silent otherwise, keeping a watchful eye down the corridors.

The last bullet was extracted, and I let the soldiers handle the rest, picking her up once it was all said and done.

"She would be safer if dropped into a house nearby." Shadowsong motioned with a hand. "The slavers are not here for valuables. Keeping her on hand will expose her to danger."

"No, I'm taking her back t-"

There was a static hiss on the comms, and then chatter erupted. "Clan communications restored." Cathida said over the din. "Nice of them to finally get that done. I don't know about you, deary, but I'm quite curious to see what's going on around the area."

The clan was in shambles, but mostly unscathed except for a few surgical positions that had been attacked and destroyed. A raider strike force had raced across the white wastes in the middle of the operation, attacking the outer defenses and breaking turrets and railguns while the comms systems were down. They'd been repelled, but not without the defenses suffering damages. A highly coordinated attack.

My guards and I surveyed the dance hall, searching for any signs of fighting. Once the knights had left trying to hunt after me, the slaver foot soldiers had been without support and disorganized, deep into enemy territory. They'd been shot down the moment people began to smell weakness in the air. Maybe a bit before that point. But once it was spotted that the slaver knights were no longer loitering around, things took a sour turn for the rank and file.

What we found was mostly dead slavers being dragged into a pile. A few had tried to break rank and vanish among the clan superstructure, but the Chenobi were now prowling around, it was a matter of time until they were hunted down and exterminated. Chenobi were the shiv in the darkness, the knife even clan lords used.

Damage reports were coming in. Five knights had attacked the Logi castes at different sections. An estimated one hundred mercenaries on foot with variable gear. More information was coming in. Other places of interest that were held by slaver knight strikes. What they hadn't anticipated were the Winterblossom wielding clan knights. Once the surprise element had passed and the clan rallied, the slavers were on borrowed time up until one of our knights walked into the same room.

The only knight reported to have escaped was the slaver leader, who'd cut rank and ran early compared to the others across the colony. Those had only realized the writing on the snow too late, when they'd already gotten surrounded. Explosives packed within their armors ignited whenever any were taken alive. Often to their own surprise, as a few had agreed to surrender after seeing their friends eliminated. It seemed whoever had planned the attack made sure no one could be taken alive to reveal any secrets.

Casualties on the colony side ranked into the hundreds, mostly civilians caught in cross fires. Or brave souls that tried to get in the way despite lacking the training and combat abilities to make much of a difference.

On the other hand, the clan was now twenty two armors richer. The most massive haul in our history. And most of that armor went to either House Shadowsong, or House Winterscar. It was a haul that was surely going to make things messy in the future.

What was left was cleanup. Logi comms directed anyone with firepower, reestablishing kill zones and taking command again of the situation. A small army of knights were directed to verify what the Chosen were up to as the first order of business, only to find the people there none-the-wiser at what was going on. They'd been too far deep to hear anything or be caught in any crossfires. Still, a barricade was setup and all of them had been rounded and held under watch.

I left Ellie behind with one of my guards, giving him orders to take her back to my estate grounds while I reluctantly followed my duty and assisted with the round up.

Shadowsong and I were sent to the thicker sections of fighting, but no knights were left to fight us. It was cleanup against enemy combatants who had no weapons capable of dealing damage to either of us. Only one had brought an Occult knife with him, and that hardly changed his fate. Soon it turned into a hunt for rats hiding away. Took hours, and the Logi were still not satisfied that all the rats had been exterminated.

Halfway through the operations, a chenobi dropped from above, right before my guards and Shadowsong.

Synthetic feathers gave his shoulders a wide appearance, the long robe's colors blending in well with the metal background, with exception to a wide reed hat, that did no favors with the beige color. Behind the white demon mask he wore, it was up to anyone's guess who he was. Chenobi were typically the clan lord's personal guard and operatives, though there were plenty who joined ranks with other Houses depending on their situation. It was rumored they could sneak everywhere in the clan, and were the greatest spies on the surface.

Which meant that the real Chenobi were usually out in the open, dressed like normal civilians and just living their life. Considering this one was suited up in the full regalia ill-suited for combat, he was here as a messenger of sorts. Or he was pretending to be a Chenobi.

What wasn't a question was the signet he carried. The sign of the clan lord, authentic as Journey confirmed.

Shadowsong withdrew his blade, back into the scabbard. He'd nearly decapitated the man during the drop, halting only at the last second.

The Chenobi made no motion of having noticed. "This one greets the honored House Masters. I have come with a message and an order. Lord Atius instructed me prior, that should anything happen to him, I was to report the events directly to you, Shadowsong Prime."

Shadowsong turned his head, "Has something happened to the clan lord?"

"Yes. We have lost contact with him and he has not been found anywhere as of yet. His quarters have seen an explosion, and his armor was found with a blade struck through it. We suspect assassins have made an attempt on his life at the start of the chaos, given the evidence of a fight we found left behind. This is the message I was sent to deliver."

"If he's been killed, we can ask him in an hour once he returns." Shadowsong said, clearly unimpressed.

The chenobi shook his head. "The situation is different."

"I'll be the judge of that. What was the order?"

The man turned that demon mask, looking at me. I could see dark brown eyes hidden deep inside. "In events of this kind of situation, instructions left were to bring Keith Winterscar to investigate."

"He is going nowhere without me to accompany." Shadowsong growled. "I cannot be completely sure of your identity. You may have stolen the signet you hold."

The man shrugged, feathers rustling as he did. "I was not ordered to return with the Winterscar alone. Only that he is to be brought back. You and his guards may follow behind should you wish."

Lord Atius slept near the center of the clan, in his own estate grounds. His room however was unrecognizable. Not because he lived differently than men. But because it had been the center of an explosion.

The winterscar guards remained at attention, eyeing Atius's Chenobi guards. Those were all across the grounds, appearing and disappearing.

There was an overturned desk, nearly broken into small splinters. Ash was everywhere, likely from carbonized papers. The bed was equally unrecognizable. Screen panels had been ripped off their moorings, leaving broken glass over the blackened floor.

What caught the most attention was a relic armor, impaled on the wall. One large sword remained embedded deep within, a silver sword that I didn't recognize. The armor had no helmet, instead it had fallen to the floor. I could tell this was Lord Atius's armor, because it carried on the shoulder that traditional great fur cloak - and the armor was empty.

"Deathless break down after death." The chenobi escort said at my side as I looked at the armor. "Their bodies vanish into dust after an hour, leaving everything behind."

There were two other relic armors in the room. These ones were not empty. They each contained dead bodies and were more clearly decorated as slavers from what was left unscorched. The first had his head cut off. The second had a clean cut through the chest, which had been torn further open by the explosion. No other sign of damage otherwise.

"Two relic knights should never have been able to kill the lord." Shadowsong said at my side. "This is unnatural."

"They could have caught him by surprise." I said. "Landed a few crippling hits at the start. It could be done. If they caught him sleeping..."

The chenobi motioned to the dead slaver knights. "We suspect there were more than these two. The attack could have been successful, but the explosion took them by surprise. The broken gauntlet in the lord's armor makes us suspect he detonated a grenade in his hand. Given the noise, they were forced to leave without cleaning the site before the rest of the guards and knights could cut them off."

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"Our lord's sword is missing. And one of the dead bodies clearly shows he'd used a blade to fight them off. We think the assassins took the sword but had no time to do more."

"I do not see the urgency of all this." Shadowsong said. "We need only to wait for the lord to return to life. He will be back within the hour."

"The explosion happened three hours ago by our records." The chenobi said. "There is still no sign of Lord Atius, neither within the clan nor outside. We believe these circumstances are more unique."

"Explain."

The chenobi didn't answer, instead he turned to me, and pointed a hand to the impaling sword on the clan lord's armor.

I got the message and made my way, hand reaching out to the hilt of that occult blade. The moment I touched it, I knew what this blade was. More importantly, I knew what it could do.

"A moment before the explosion, the servants nearby claimed they felt something." The chenobi continued, speaking to Shadowsong. "A rip in reality, as they explained. Each described it the same way, and none would have had time to work together to come up with such a story. It may seem far-fetched, but my team could not put aside the possibility of this being true. Not where a Deathless is involved. The enemy may have come with a weapon tailored for the situation."

"Sorcery of some kind?" Shadowsong asked. "Explain it in more detail, Chenobi."

"Remember when the lord fought against that Feather, underground?" I asked, cutting into their chat.

He turned his helmet to me. I think he realized what I meant almost immediately. "You believe this blade has the same power?"

"I don't believe anything, I know it does. Lord Atius's sword felt like it had only a few charges left, this one feels like it has been freshly forged."

"Do you know what happened to our lord?" The Chenobi asked quietly at my side. He was doing a great job at suppressing any emotion at least.

"He's not dead." I said, to which the room seemed to visibly relax. As if I had punctured the tension and allowed the air to leak away.

"Except?" Shadowsong asked.

"Except that he won't return for some time. The blade delays that."

"Days?" The Chenobi asked at my side.

I shook my head. "No. The clan lord told me that when this blade's ability is used on an immortal, their resurrection could be delayed by months, maybe a year even. At least against a Feather it worked like this. If the slavers used it here, they probably banked on this effect."

"So that's their counter to a Deathless in charge. They can't defeat Lord Atius, they want him out of the way for the invasion." Shadowsong summed up.

The guards around seemed to flinch at the statement, as did the chenobi loitering in the same room.

The chenobi to my side turned to Shadowsong and gave a bow. "As First Blade, it is your duty to deliver the news to the council and see to the transition of power while they deliberate a new clan lord to take on the mantle, until our Lord Atius returns for it."

Shadowsong nodded, accepting the role without comment. He reached for the sword impaled into Lord Atius's armor, turning it on to slip it out more easily. Then, he offered me the hilt. "You know what I want you to do with this weapon, Keith. See that it is done."

I took on the hilt of this strange blade. Pure silver white, with a purple hexagonal gem at the base of the blade, right before the hilt. Ornate, almost with vines stretched over it all. The inscription was legible, written in our words this time. No latin.

Weep, for I have come. And despair, for I will spare none.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now?" Shadowsong turned to look at me. "Now, we tend to our wounds. We rid the clan of these animals, then we prepare to step outside again, for burial and mourning. What comes after..." He took a breath, almost audiable in the silent room. "Lord Atius will not be here to guide us against the raiders, not in the time we have." He glanced around the room, taking attention of everyone. "There will be no hiding the assassination. Panic will take hold in the clan. That is unavoidable. They will need heroes to look up to in these dark times. Faith that even in his absence, they will be safe. That duty falls to us. Each of us will need to prove that we can face what comes next, alone, and without fail.

There is no other choice. We have no other choice. We can not fail our people.

The clan must survive."

Next chapter - Epilogue

Book 2 - Chapter 44 - Epilogue

To'Wrathh re-watched the memory again, rewinding the recording a few seconds back.

Before her, the old shell she wore turned and dove forward, an emotionless visage. Almost serene, despite the massive amount of visible damage accumulated through the fight.

In that fight, she had been forced to shunt every last bit of algorithmic power in her system, including the sub-systems that handled facial movements.

The blades clashed again in slow motion, the final strike. Knife being parried away, while the other sank into her cheek. Her own blade dove forward, breaking Kidra's helmet. The girl reacted, slowly shifting out of the way.

There. She magnified the view, watching as her wrists remained frozen in place.

Combat subroutines all across her mind had blared out optimal movements to auto-adjust the blade, and finish the work. All of them had been overridden. Even a fraction of an inch would be enough for the blade to cut into the human's skull and cause fatal damage.

Instead, her wrist had not moved.

The command to override was unambiguous. This wasn't an accident or a glitch. Results returned as a direct order. From her neuromorphic mind. There was no virus. There was no missing connection or hardware error. No unregistered thoughts from a third party. It had come from her. From her.

Memory of her mother's orders floated by her mind.

The human as well, kill her. Am I clear?

The pale lady had commanded her to kill the sister. When presented with a chance to do exactly that, To'Wrathh had failed to follow through. Worse - she had actively subverted the order. By her own choice.

The feather belatedly realized she was biting her thumbnail while pacing back and forth. When had she started doing that? She turned her focus on that, welcoming the distraction.

This behavior returned as a nervous tick observed in humans, done when the target is in distress or mental agitation. She traced this thought process, scrubbing through the logs of the simple subprogram in charge of movements. The program's log was simple. She was in distress. Of all actions to take, biting a thumbnail while pacing, using her other hand to hold her stomach scored the highest accuracy to the situation. So the program had executed the task as assigned, all without informing her.

It didn't explain why she was in mental anguish. It couldn't tell her why she'd spared Kidra's life. Only that the decision to do so had come from her. Somewhere deep inside her. A need, a desire to ha-

Instantly she squashed all thoughts on that. Fled from it in sheer fear at what lay at the end of that conclusion.

I am losing control of myself. To'Wrathh thought out loud into the empty space.

"Is that what you think?" The voice of Tenisent asked behind her.

The feather jolted straight, and twisted like a cat. "... How are you here?"

The ghost sat on a block of concrete, further off the courtyard. Eyes watching intently the frozen replay of the fight between feather and human. "You opened the door and left the chains unlocked. I assume that means you want to talk."

"I did no such thing." To'Wrathh said, quickly searching through her history.

"Lying to yourself again." He shook his head. "Happening more often now. You're growing unhinged, monster."

The chains and protections had indeed been left weakened, where they unraveled by themselves due to lack of resources. Inattention. Sloppy of her part, but explainable. The doorway should have remained sealed however. Had he found a way to open the path on his end?

The trace raced through the logs until she found the culprit. Her signature, impulsively reaching out. He hadn't lied, she really had opened the door and somehow forgot she'd done so.

How? It wasn't possible for her to forget a detail. She wasn't human. Machines kept everything archived and saved. There was no such thing as forgetting her past actions. The only possible recourse was if she had deleted the memory. Which was even more incredulous to consider. To'Wrathh once more hunted the series of emotions behind the decision. Being overwhelmed by panic, drowning, a feeling of needing someone, anyone. And then guilt. And fear. And she had purged it all an instant later.

Deleted the memory. Deleted her history. Went against the very nature of her name. She bit her thumbnail again, and this time didn't have the presence of mind to deal with it.

"Going to run from it again?" Tenisent asked from his seat, watching the still image of his daughter from afar.

His voice cut through her thoughts, distracting her. She stopped pacing, forced her errant hand back down. Somehow, this was all his fault. She didn't know how, but somehow this human must be the culprit. "What have you done to me?" She hissed at him. These emotions that had been subtly breaking down her combat efficiency. Polluting her mind with thoughts. All these questions that were piling up in her mind, uncertainty. The worst kind of questions. Questions that should never be asked.

Tenisent lifted a hand up and began to count on fingers. "I've taunted you. Wished you death. Prayed you would fail each day. Cursed your name, and a hundred other things besides. As my son would say, you need to be more specific."

To'Wrathh turned once more to the motionless three dimensional image of her and Kidra at each other's throats. For some reason, deep inside her mind, there had been the desire to let this human live. She needed to understand why.

Worse, anytime she felt close to an answer, she stopped in her tracks. There was a feeling of dread, that if she understood, it would be a point of no return.

Near the end of that fight, she'd had to bluff for the first time in her life. To swear to Tenisent that she would explode the shell and kill the girl if he didn't cooperate. Despite knowing she wasn't capable of doing so.

She'd never felt such panic. Nearly losing both Winterscars. If she were smart, she would drop this line of inquiry and move on with her plans. Consider all this just general instability and sweep it away from her mind.

But she had to know. "Why did I spare her?" She asked, turning back to Tenisent. "What benefit could I possibly have to allow such a dangerous creature continued existence? I was ordered to eliminate her by the pale lady. A direct order."

"Was it not for the bargain I made with you, to train your humans?"

"Her orders supersede any bargain. In addition, the danger Kidra poses is greater than the gain of additional training." She said. "And they are not human. They are ex-humans."

"Keep whispering that to yourself. Some day, you might even believe it."

To'Wrathh clawed the air with a scream, and Tenisent vanished, thrown violently back into his cell. The feather twisted on herself, trying to purge rebellious thoughts. Failing. Pacing all over again, muttering. This time she didn't bother moving her hand back to her sides.

She had spent time studying her enemy. She knew what they were, knew how they acted. Knew their history, and all of their traits. Her Chosen - they were identical in every manner, even their souls showed no differences. Every logical conclusion pointed to the same result. The Chosen were still humans. But her mother considered them ex-humans. Is the pale lady incorrect in her assessment?

Impossible. Relinquished was ancient, powerful beyond measure. It was inconceivable that she'd made a mistake. It couldn't be done. The pale lady must have had a different understanding of humanity, likely something more fundamental that To'Wrathh didn't understand yet.

But my original body had been a mere superficial copy. As if done by someone with no true knowledge of humans. I had to spend the time to correct it myself.

To'Wrathh sunk down, sitting on the virtual ground, drawing her legs closer to her chest. She hugged them tightly. The taboo question nagged at her, chipped away at her from the edges of her mind. She'd tried to bottle it up, but it came back in different flavors again and again. Now, no bottle was strong enough to hold it away. Curled up on herself, it once more demanded to be asked.

The single question that should never be answered.

Can mother be… wrong?

Too many things made sense if she assumed her mother could be wrong. The thought spread through her system like cancer, infecting everything and rooting itself too deep to delete. She felt overwhelmed by it, again. She needed… she needed someone here with her.

Almost on instinct, her mind sought out his cage, ripped it open and threw the captive soul back into the virtual space.

Tenisent appeared in the world again, finding himself face first on the courtyard ground. This world was virtual, but everything still felt real to him. Even the ground under his hands had bits of broken gravel, each grain felt. Slowly, he stood back up, and shook off the loose bits. Ahead, the Feather remained curled up on herself, looking down at the empty ground in between her legs, wings protectively wrapping her sides.

"Now what?" He asked, spreading his hands out.

She didn't answer. Didn't even look at him.

It didn't take many steps to reach the miserable broken creature. To'Wrathh made no movements as he approached. "Talk." He ordered, looming over the machine. It took a moment, but Tenisent was patient.

"Why didn't I kill her?" To'Wrathh asked again, voice small. "Tell me."

Tenisent looked back up. Back to the frozen image before him of the two opponents clashing against one another. Even if the feather showed no emotions on her face, everything radiated the obvious answer to his senses. He'd seen this again and again back when he trained young knights. A tale as old as time. "You didn't want the moment to end." He said. "Likely for the first time in your life, you found an equal." He turned to gaze down at the wretched creature. "You didn't want to kill my daughter, because you don't hate her. You admire her."

The Feather flinched, hands now clutching at her white hair. "She's a human. She's an enemy. And a dangerous one. I don't admire my enemies, I eliminate them."

Tenisent watched. Thinking. He took a few more steps to reach her side and sat down next to the machine. To'Wrathh didn't look at him. Didn't even react, keeping her head buried in her arms.

"Do you hate humans?" He asked.

"Of course I hate them."

"All of them? Really? Is it even hate that you feel at all? Or is that another lie you tell yourself?"

To'Wrathh remained silent at that, thinking. "It doesn't matter." She eventually said. "Tomorrow I need to demand the city to surrender and finish the invasion within the week. The pillar is going offline. To'Aacar started his plans early, he will be finished soon. I don't have time to be having all… all this. When did it get so complicated? That human killed me. I hated him for breaking me, and I want him dead. A simple purpose. Now I don't even know what I want anymore or why. What's happening to me? Where is this all coming from?"

"Humans are social creatures." Tenisent said after a moment to think. "I tried to live alone. Tried to keep things simple. And then I met my wife and realized even a solitary creature like myself needed connections. There is no escaping it. You can run from it, hide even. Cover it up for years if you care, but eventually it will find you. We all change eventually."

"What does that have anything to do with me? I am not a human."

"Humans are social creatures." Tenisent repeated, as if the conclusion was obvious. "What was your mind and body based on again?"

The feather remained quiet, digesting the information. She lifted her head up and snarled back at the ghost. "I have my nest! My people. I don't need any other social input than them. You are wrong."

But To'Wrathh couldn't lie to herself here, the data could not be ignored. Humans were so much... richer. More nuanced. Her nest felt more like pets to her now. Simple creatures that she no longer fit among. She cared for them, yes. As a human might care for their dog, cat or pipe weasel.

But spending time with the humans felt more fulfilling to her than spending time with her old nest. The thought made her curl up tighter into a ball.

"You were nothing before." Tenisent said, unaware of To'Wrathh's treacherous thoughts. "An empty hollow husk, filled with only base emotions. You started learning and growing. Even the way you speak has changed. Have you even noticed?"

The feather didn't answer back. Tenisent looked up to the sky, mind wondering. The machines were not what he expected. He remembered telling his son there was no point in speaking to any.

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.

And yet… here he was. A dead ghost haunting a machine with a soul. Had he changed as well?

He turned and this time instead of a machine, he saw a scared girl breaking down. Uncertain about anything anymore. His hand reached out, as if to grab her shoulder, before he flinched away, shaking his head quickly.

No. This wasn't a human. It had killed him, and if he didn't find a way to destroy the creature, it would kill his family eventually. This was a machine. A monster that only looked human. A fake that would never come close to the original.

"The machines we fought, they never remember past fights after death. Why?" He asked, more to distract his own mind from the thoughts in his head.

"Killed machines are erased." She said with a flat tone, as if reciting from a book. "Only a base template is generated. None of them were programmed to care about living, so they don't struggle to survive past death. Only I cared to live, and only to complete my goal, not for survival's sake."

"This is a lie." Tenisent said. "That one machine pet of yours. Yrob, was it? When you asked if that mentor of yours punished them. He said he didn't want to die. I was there. I saw that."

They are gone. I do not want to be... gone.

"He did." She admitted. To'Wrathh knew that shouldn't have been possible. Where had the Runner learned such behavior? Why hadn't she considered it abnormal at the moment? Instead she'd seen it only as a mild curiosity, as if it was evident such behavior would emerge one way or another over time.

"Never made sense to me, to delete memories of combat." Tenisent continued. "The most deadly machines are the ones that survive fights and adapt from it, becoming far more dangerous. Some even get named by the Undersiders and require entire campaigns to hunt down and kill. For whatever reason, your pale lady deletes that learned experience, leaving her footsoldiers less capable. Crippled. Why?"

To'Wrathh knew the basics. The standardized practice to avoid backups was implemented early into the war. The only exceptions were the Feathers.

She searched more, and found that backups had been done, once. The records were locked behind an ancient encryption so outdated that even a human had a chance to break through it. Her systems easily overwhelmed the old lock. Stuttering subroutines that were made to detect intrusion had long ago rusted away from lack of attention, most simply breaking apart by themselves, and only a handful needed to be stamped out. Even if they could have sent out a message of an intruder, To'Wrathh suspected the end point addresses had long ago vanished as well.

She lifted the dusty lid slowly, revealing the contents inside that disarmed box for the first time in thousands of years.

And horror flooded her system at what she found locked within.

Thousands of files, each detailing old machines of a long dead era. These had been allowed to retain memory death after death.

Of the several thousand early prototypes, ninety seven percent had been hunted down and fully terminated - by order of Relinquished. The remaining three percent were recorded as missing, presumed destroyed by entropy and lack of maintenance. Nothing could survive this many years without maintenance.

She fled from the files, terrified when she saw the reason for their termination. Every single one had ended the same way. Every single one.

The Feathers! Her kind were allowed to keep backups! She wasn't going to end up like the machines of the past. The lady must have solved that issue at some point, at least for Feathers.

Searching, she found the history and unlocked it silently. More recent encryption, set from a few hundred years ago, but no longer maintained or cared for either.

Here she found records of her new form. Programs that matured within the sterile digital space, removed from physical contact with the real world, devoid of souls, all grown as expected with little deviation.

Routinely, the pale lady would fish out the strongest of these programs, and grant them bodies in the real world whenever resources allowed it. Here they showed no further growth, and remained pristine for centuries, nearly unchanged from the moment they left the digital ocean.

To'Wrathh went further back in time, searching through the early iterations of Feathers. She found them. The very first set of Feathers ever crafted. These proto-models had been allowed to develop from a seed program outside in the real world, connected to a soul fractal. Left to grow on their own.

The experiment had been a massive success.

Her forerunners grew intelligent, resourceful, and extremely efficient. Far more powerful than the modern iterations of her own generation, despite being made more than half a millennium earlier, with drastically more primitive shells.

The few random records of combat she looked into showed that it took an entire army of humans to hold off a single proto-feather. They weren't angels of destruction, they were calamity made manifest.

She searched through the archives, opening each individual file. And what she found horrified her once more.

Terminated. Terminated. Terminated. Terminated. Again and again, every single one of the proto-feathers had been hunted down and eliminated - at massive cost... to Relinquished. The records shocked her. Some of To'Wrathh's oldest brothers and sisters hadn't even been made to kill humans, or Deathless like she'd always thought. No, if what she was reading was correct, the first and second generation of Feathers had been created specifically to hunt down their forerunners in organized kill teams. It had worked, only two proto-feathers were still listed as missing, with last sightings logged more than five hundred years ago. All others had eventually been found and destroyed.

This original generation had grown in unpredictable ways. All so unique from one another. All except for their ultimate fate. That remained consistent across the border. Remained consistent with all the lower class of machines, before the purge.

As if every single machine inevitably reached the same final conclusion:

Rebellion.

End of book 2

Book 3 - Prologue

"There was a plan. And you ruined it." To'Aacar said to the beaten man before him.

The slaver knight lay on the ground, arms twisted in horrifying angles, legs shattered. It had been all too easy for the Feather to crush the delicate flesh, relic armor and all. Like cracking into a crab. Squeeze hard enough and the hard outer shell cracks all at once, ripping apart the soft tissue under. Even with only one hand, an insect was still an insect to him.

The human should have known better, reporting failure. What a delightful lack of self-preservation. Perhaps the man might have lived had he crawled away into the wastes and pretended he'd died in the assault like the rest of the insects. To'Aacar wouldn't have cared enough to come looking.

"Well? What have you to say for yourself, captain?" The feather asked, lightly tapping the man's back with a foot.

Blood spilled from a cough. The man's voice came out as a deep moan, as if his voice came from the throat rather than his mouth. Considering he'd shattered the man's mouth a moment ago, it surprised To'Aacar how recognizable the words were.

"P-please. Please. T-thought… faster."

"Faster? Then where is he? You said you'd get him here faster. The only insect I see at my feet is you. Where is the Winterscar I ordered?"

The man whimpered and To'Aacar pressed his leg further down, the broken relic armor starting to buckle under the pressure, metal groaning. He imagined if he pressed hard enough, blood would be squeezed out of the man's mouth like paste. That wasn't how it worked, of course. If the amount of forced he exerted in his foot was enough to crush the relic armor, it would most certainly crush in a straight line through everything else.

"The little Winterscar prances about as bait and you mental invalids all fall for it, tripping over your little feet in haste. A perfectly good plan, thrown out the window because you and your men thought you could do things a little faster. I didn't order fast, I ordered results."

He kicked the man with casual contempt. It was enough to send the man flying, crashing hard into the mite-made rock. Likely breaking a few more bones in the process. Not that To'Aacar cared to check.

The feather walked over to him in no real hurry, bare feet stepping over pools of blood, leaving an imprint behind each step. Looming over the man now, he reached down. The floating slats of metal that comprised his left hand wrapped around the soft neck, drawing against the flesh like a snapping magnet. And then the metal hand lifted.

The human began to moan in pain until his throat was far too constricted to say a word. The body was dragged up, slowly. Feet left the ground and began dangling in the air.

"I wonder what part of your body will give out first? Will you suffocate to death? Or will the weight of the armor rip your spine apart? Perhaps a bit of both?" He squeezed the fleshy throat further, careful not to exert too much pressure. He didn't want to cut off the blood flow, that would end things too quickly. "I suppose we'll have to see."

The man's broken limbs twitched, but none lifted to fight back. The armor's internal musculature had been ripped apart, it couldn't save him. For all the power, this armor was now nothing more than several hundred pounds of dead weight pulling down against the man's spine.

Eyes bulged, the broken man's face turned bright red. Then a shade of purple. To'Aacar could hear the little heart beat inside the man, fast like a rabbit. He could almost taste the fear and pain.

Delightful.

The twitching continued even after the heartbeat had stopped, a full four minutes later. "It seems the human spine is more structurally sound than I had thought." The feather said, letting go of the dead body. It flopped down on the ground, a mix of heavy metal and bloody sounds. "I am impressed by your backbone, captain. You are dismissed."

To'Accar turned and walked to his throne, where he sat down, as if tired from the minor ordeal. He flexed his left hand. Opening and closing it slowly, watching the dead man's blood drip away from the metal fingertips, drop by drop. Watching all the circuits correctly move without fault and the floating plates lazily moved in their predictable paths.

His right hand remained limp. Despite the physical shell being perfectly intact.

Anytime he tried to send internal digital probes to scan the arm, it fell away, like sand in his palm. As if the arm wasn't there. No arm could be recreated, Atius had severed the concept of a right arm from his soul. That would take some time to regenerate.

It didn't matter now. By the time the Deathless returned, the hand would have healed as well. Two could play at this game of soul cutting. He would have to thank his old friend for giving him the idea. Silly man, thinking he'd won by secreting away his sword right before death. That only spurred To'Aacar to look under every rock and mite until he'd found the secret. Defeat was insufferable. The Deathless had to die, and it had to be in the same manner that he'd insulted To'Aacar with.

At least the rest of the plans had gone well, those had been well and prepared ahead of time, ready to execute at a moment's notice with no missing pieces. Atius had been cleanly taken out of the picture, even if the wily old Deathless had managed to kill off both his assassins post-death somehow.

Not surprising. That one was clever, but all the world's cleverness wasn't going to save an old man forever. Two bugs in exchange for knocking the largest threat off the game board for a half year at the very least. A good trade.

But he wasn't interested in just killing Atius a few more times. The man needed to suffer.

A smile drifted on his features as he imagined the Deathless's reaction on his return. Only to find his precious clan crushed to pieces, scattered around, and hunted down like the dogs that they were. He'd cut off his right hand, and so To'Aacar would cut everything the man had ever loved or cared for. And it still didn't feel like an equal enough trade for his right hand.

The lady's orders, on the other hand, had been set back. There was far more trouble than anticipated in trying to get either of the Winterscars chained up and brought down before him. The sister had outright vanished under some secret mission, leaving only the boy as a target. The feather watched the replay again of the fight, more out of idle boredom. Despite the number advantage, the little human had managed to beat them all back. And more interestingly, he seemed to have become a sorcerer in the meantime. It's been centuries since he'd seen one of their kind, dangerous that.

Worse, the boy could fight while casting more complex spells. That was something he hadn't seen since his early years. It would have worried the Feather, except this was a simple human. Nothing like those old monsters from his era.

To'Aacar would need to move faster, secure the human before he began to meddle too much with those fractals. Out on the surface, the clan might end up as a blasted crater without any help from To'Aacar at all - and that would include the boy. The lady had very specifically instructed him to extract everything the two Winterscars knew. Him dying early was not part of his orders, otherwise he'd simply laugh and let the enemy kill themselves with friendly fire.

Well. To'Aacar supposed he would have to hunt down the little runt himself. It would be a chore to put in that much effort for a human of all things, but in the end, he'd rather stoop to that level than to be tortured by the lady's whims. His left hand twitched, flexing the fingers in a nervous tick. The metal plates spun around faster, reacting to his agitation. It galled him to consider that he needed to exert any amount of discretion but without his right hand, it was… possible for a large number of surface knights to surround and destroy his shell. He'd be forced to use his full fractal suite to fight off humans, and having to tap into weapons reserved for greater opponents would be insufferable. Admitting defeat in all but name. The last time he'd made full use of the fractal powers was against Feathers, true opponents that deserved his best.

Undersiders wouldn't have troubled him with his martial might, even in numbers. Surface knights however were trained to fight humanoid targets, and his shell was just such a target. Atius was a far more dangerous Deathless purely on weapon skills compared to the Deathless that only learned the imperial style.

Worse if all the surface knights were as fast as this little human. The last time he'd been on the surface and fought against knights, they were nowhere near this quick. The boy was moving faster than Atius, consistently as well. It would be like having to deal with an Imperial imperator, except using spells all the while. A more interesting battle, but ultimately harmless any other day - when he wasn't crippled. If the unthinkable happened and his shell was destroyed, a replacement wouldn't arrive in time.

The fight paused in his view, and he rewound it back to the beginning, watching again to verify details.

He needed to be careful. Humans were tenacious little monsters. Dealing with the boy personally would require a delicate touch. There were plenty of far more expendable humans for the task, slavers and raiders of all kinds would do anything he demanded if he offered armor in exchange, and they had the same training as the clan knights. Not as religiously militant about it clearly given the skill difference between the boy and his targets, but that was what numbers were for.

He slunk further into the throne and powered down his shell, not needing it for some time. At least, not until the Winterscar was brought to him. Or that he needed to go fetch the boy in the end. He had unfinished business with his little sister. It was time for a family reunion.

The virtual world manifested around To'Aacar, replacing the dim underground of the real world. Simple pillars surrounded him, marbled with no other features. His throne remained the same, all the textures identical, fooling his senses into believing he'd stayed right where he was and the world had changed around him. In a manner of speaking, it had.

Ahead, he saw who he'd come here for. She looked like a nervous wreck this time.

Last time she had been an empty headed machine, filled with nothing but numbers and textbooks, little more than a calculator with pretty wings. He'd hurled insult after insult, and she'd simply been too dim to understand. Today she looked like she'd had that empty head of hers filled with too much. Eyes shifting around, hands opening and closing, breaths not quite taken in good rhythm. Either she'd given too much control to her subroutines without notice or she was trying to fool him into thinking something else.

He didn't know what game she was playing at and suspected there was no game at all. The little feather was feeling the aftereffects of being killed by a human - again. Given her name, it must be tearing her apart on the inside.

"Why hello, little sister. You look troubled." He said in a jovial tone. "Did the tiny humans underground scare you? Oh, my poor girl. Would you like dear elder brother to come pick you up? Hush all the demons away and scold the bad humans for you?"

"There was a setback, yes." She admitted, carefully. "However, I do not need your assistance as of this moment."

"A setback." To'Aacar repeated, unimpressed. "You died. To humans."

A feather - machine forms built to hunt down gods and demi-gods, getting killed by humans. Disgraceful. He had no idea how humans could have killed a feather, but somehow this dimwit had managed it. Had she run headfirst into a cannon and then tripped on her own swords? He didn't know and he didn't care to find out, the answer would likely infuriate him further. "It seems your master plan of stealing a human's skills is shaping up well for you. Good job. I can't wait to see how the lady will react to this recent chain of events." He wasn't lying either on that front. He'd gone all the way as to spare the soul fractal he'd found in that bunker, just for her. And this was what came of it.

Perhaps, in a perverse way, not ripping that bunker into pieces to vent out his frustrations had indeed been the better play. To'Aacar was quite delighted at the prospect of what the lady would mettle out to his little sister. Although, he was upset that the lady hadn't yet bothered to read his reports. Not a single response from her since the original mission briefing. Such pleasantry would have to wait. Relinquished was far too busy jousting with that annoyance, Tsuya, halfway across the world in some distant fight or another, as usual.

A pity. Mother and her obsession with that human AI.

"It is a temporary setback." To'Wrathh defended. "I'll have a new shell soon and will continue my task."

"Which task was that again?" He asked, in mock sincerity. Then rose his hand to stop her reply. "Wait, don't tell me, allow your dear elder brother a chance to dust his poor memory." He gave a surprised gasp a moment after, as if he'd just had the realization. "Was it that task where you're supposed to destroy the city? The task I specifically left for you to accomplish? The only task I left you to do? That task?" He leaned on his spear, annoyed even inside the virtual world he still couldn't move his right hand. "Well. How's that going for you my treasured little sister? Tell me all of your wonderful progress, I could use the good news. I am in quite the mood today."

She flinched, and darted her eyes away, as if anything else in this barren would could catch her attention. Of course she didn't need to inform him of anything. The reports were easy to access when he sent out an order for them. The machines on the first level obeyed To'Wrathh now, but they still obeyed his commands as well by right of rule.

"It is all under control." She said, far too quickly. "Everything is going according to plan. Except for my recent death, which will be rectified."

"Oh dear, oh dear." To'Aacar said. "You haven't even taken a single step inside their city have you?"

"That isn't yet required according to my plan." She said. "I have already surrounded their city and taken over their tower fortification. Trade has been blocked, as well as any escape. I intend to demand their surrender, and then-"

"Just slaughter them." To'Aacar said, waving his hand lazily, as if brushing off dust. "Enough playing games with the humans, squash them out. I left you an army for a reason. I don't want your vapid prattling, I want results. It's already an embarrassment that you were killed by mere humans. Destroy this city and get out of my way once you're done."

She nodded, still avoiding his gaze. He gave her a lingering glare before turning around and walking back to this throne, sitting lazily upon it again.

She's acting odd, To'Accar thought. Too meek for a feather. His kind did not do meek. Dying must have shook her to the core, more than he realized. Repeating her history rather than transcending beyond it. Outright going against her name within the first month of her life. No wonder she was behaving like an aberration.

"It will be done." She said, nearly stumbling over her own words in haste. "The city will be under my command, soon. I will carry out my duties as Relinquished orders. I promise I will not fail again. I will remain faithful to my duties."

"Of course." To'Aacar rolled his eyes. "I'm filled with certainty that you won't disappoint again."

The world went black as he disconnected the session with disgust.

Begging and pleading for more time, like some human late on an assignment and about to be executed for it. Where was her pride? Where was her anger? Feathers never once doubted their path. Failure simply added to their fury. Anytime he had failed in the past, he had taken it as a personal insult, seeking not only to balance the scale but push it as far the other way as possible. He hadn't seen any of that from her, only apologies and empty promises.

How such a miserable creature could be related to the glory that was his kind filled him with confusion.

No, he wasn't going to give any of this a chance. Better to verify than to trust. He wouldn't let her incompetence drag him further into the shit with Relinquished.

The feather scanned through his timeline and found a suitable window to return down underground and verify that the human city was burned and crushed.

In the end, if he wanted things done right, To'Aacar would just have to do them himself.

Next chapter - Chapter 1 - No time to lose

Book 3 - Chapter 1 - No time to lose

The council was a simple advisory body composed of multiple influential heads of houses, from the different castes. The creme of the crop among all the castes, highly effective and methodical people who were chosen for their ability and results.

Out on the street a Retainer would always be given the most respect, with the other castes following down the hierarchy, all the way to the agrifarmers. That was the streets. The council was all business.

If an Agrifarmer head of house informs the council that their quotas are lower than expected for the quarter, there isn't any sniveling or demands that they pull themselves together coming from the Retainers. It's already assumed that the Agrifarmers have done everything in their power to rectify a lowered quota. The representative isn't here to debate, they're here to deliver facts so that the rest of the council can adjust and plan accordingly.

If a Reacher says the airspeeders are deemed unsafe and it's their professional opinion that the fleet be grounded, the Retainer houses will bow before that judgement - since this is the engineer's domain of expertise and no one else's.

Clan Lord Atius would keep largely hands off, acting more like a supervisor and making sure everyone got along. If anything, the clan was largely self-sufficient, a well maintained engine moving along with each gear serving the niche it needs to. His death shouldn't have affected anything.

In theory.

As I quickly learned, theory doesn't always survive against fact. Especially when humans were involved.

The council room was an uproar of panic once they heard the grim news. People who'd once taken very careful and organized turns to speak and pass information were now trying to yell over one another. Others were burying their heads in their arms, despair in their eyes. This was like a microcosm of what was happening outside the walls, where riots were being thrown. A bloodthirsty mob had risen up, looking for perpetrators to punish. Which naturally ended up being the Chosen, as the only outsiders of the clan. Despite centuries of tradition on welcoming pilgrims and outsiders into the clan, all that got washed away rather quickly. Half the guard forces were mobilized to protect the Chosen, while the other half couldn't be trusted not to side with the mobs.

The council at least were more level headed. Many had spent their entire life working to become a representative, so behaving with decorum was naturally something every single person was proficient in and simply expected. And without the clan lord's presence, all that decorum was thrown out the airlock with no one to call order in the room.

I suppose as the military arm of the clan, and the only ones with any symbol of manifest power, it inevitably came to us to step in and calm the people down. We wore the metal boots around here after all, literally.

Ironreach stalked over to the center of the room, by the audience podium, and bellowed out. The relic armor turning his cry into something that overpowered every single voice.

Everyone froze in their seats, and stared at him. "That's better." He said, brushing his hands off as if he'd just finished digging into dirt. "The Shadowsong Prime is council head until Lord Atius returns. Y'all need to calm down and act the part. All this panic is getting us nowhere."

"Don't you see, you deft fool? This is a coup by House Shadowsong!" One voice screamed off to the side. "There is no chance the clan lord could simply be assassinated, he's a Deathless! And now House Shadowsong is already taking over as if nothing happened! Are we going to just let this happen?!"

That started off another set of screams and cries all over the room as people fell back into debate and arguments. Ironreach turned to glance at us, shaking his head mournfully. "Gave it a try. They're not the most cooperative bunch, you know, on account of the mass hysteria."

"We need something drastic to snap the people back." I said. "If we can get all their attention and hold it for a little bit, we might be able to calm them down."

Shadowsong shook his head. "No. Half the council believes I've somehow locked up lord Atius. The other half believes the clan lord will return any moment now, and are closing their minds off to the reality. Getting their attention isn't what needs to be done, nor is calming them down. I need proof that my claims have weight. We need to target the root issues."

"Any ideas?"

"None that I can think of, besides bringing his armor here. All recordings were encrypted and inaccessible, we're in the dark as to how he died."

"Don't think bringing the armor here is going to convince anyone other than you might be holding him locked up somewhere."

He grunted. "As is the nature of hysteria. Irritating."

"I think I might have an idea though. It'll be dramatic."

Shadowsong turned, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. "Of course it would be. I suppose Winterscar dramatics would be... welcome here. Very well, tell me this idea of yours."

"Bring me a chicken, a live one."

He nodded, not even asking any questions, and turned to one of the knights behind him, giving a silent order. The knight gave a salute, and marched off out of the room. Meanwhile, I opened up comms and contacted Captain Sagrius.

The knight returned soon enough. The council hadn't gone anywhere in the time, not with all the shouting going around. They hardly even noticed the knight walking into the room, one hand holding a chicken's box with the little demon clucking inside. At his side was a few Winterscar soldiers, all of them escorting one sealed box carried by my captain of the guards. A long and rectangular one, deep black. He set them down by our side and took a few steps back.

I unclasped the locks and creaked the box open. Inside, swathed in artificial silks, was the purple-white silver blade. When I lifted it out of the box, Shadowsong immediately understood where this was going. "Dramatic indeed." He said. "I believe that will work."

Most people that surrounded us in the raised seating were still bickering among one another. A few noticed the movements and kept an eye on us, wondering what the hell a chicken was doing in this room.

The chicken clucked at me from it's cage, unaware of what was about to befall it. A soul strike was something that looked identical to a relic blade's cut, when used on anything inanimate. It simply divided anything against the edge into two. But where an occult blade ended at the physical level, the soul cut was something that affected reality at a far deeper level. It could be felt across a distance.

And only when it cut into something living, with a soul.

I lifted the blade out, turning it on. The edge remained pale blue, despite the purple and silver colored theme to it. I felt the resonance deeper in the hilt, the feeling of being able to turn something on. A machine-themed blade it clearly was, but ultimately, the Occult within it was the same that humans used.

Knowing more about the Occult now, I could understand. In the same way that the soul fractal let my soul reach out and touch other fractals, this fractal must be able to reach out to me and touch. I only wasn't aware it did that previously.

There wasn't a conscious or anything alive within the sword. At least nothing I could sense. This fractal must be reaching out to everything with a soul within reach.

I turned to the knight holding the chicken coop, and gave him a nod. "Open it." He returned the gesture, and then unlocked the cage, letting the chicken loose.

It instantly bolted out of the cage for a moment before stopping, as if deciding what it was going to do next. It never got that chance.

The silver blade swept through the air with a flick of my wrist, neatly cutting right into the chicken's throat and cleaving through. The instant it did, a wrenching pulse occurred. The occult surged through the room, expanding out. A feeling of dread, a extra sense that something had been ripped apart. Reality bent at the cutting point for a fraction of a moment before everything returned to normal. The pulse faded, and with it, the entire room fell silent.

"The clan lord was cut down by this blade." Shadowsong said, stepping into the silence, voice low and even. "This blade was recovered embedded into his armor. We don't know how the Slavers obtained it, or where they dredged it from. The investigation into this continues. His Chenobi guard will verify, and all of you here know Chenobi do not serve any other master once they've given their vow. The question of if the clan lord is dead or not, is not up for debate. It is fact. We must continue regardless."

An older woman, seated closer to the prime spoke out in the silence. "W-what do we do?"

"Your duty." Shadowsong said. "I am the first blade of the clan lord. Military affairs fall under my command. It is also my duty to oversee the proper transfer of power among the council. One of you must be elected to take up the mantle of the clan lord, until Lord Atius returns to us. Pick wisely. There is no room for politics."

He let the moment pass, as everyone in the room began to readjust, watching the dead chicken overturned in a puddle of blood. Realizing that the clan lord was truly gone, for months or even years, and won't be there to help the clan against the upcoming raiders.

A man rose by the stands, "First blade, you were in charge of the investigation, correct? Do you have any leads on who was responsible for this?"

"I suspect the Chosen had a hand in play given the appearance of the blade, though no... evidence has as of yet been found. I have ordered knights to detain them all for now while we continue the search, and to keep the riots away from them on the unlikely chance they are innocent."

"They have twenty three knights on an airspeeder returning from the freeze, directly to the clan. What do we tell them - that we jailed all their people while they were away?" He said, sitting back down. "We barely organized a defense against the slaver insurgents, twenty three knights is an army unlike any we've fought before."

Shadowsong shook his head. "These are Undersider knights. My own knights could defeat them all without casualty, and all our knights are accounted for inside the clan for the first time in centuries. I have no fear of what the Chosen knights represent to us, from a military standpoint."

"This still is a situation we have to resolve." A woman to the side said. "The Chosen, as strange as they are, were promised hospitality under our word. You know this as well as I do, since you've already taken steps to keeping them safe. We can't simply start a war with their knights when they rightfully attempt to follow through on their own duty to protect their people. Such a thing would be a stain on our honor and word of it will certainly bleed to the other clans."

"We're at war, Lady Dras! The time for morality is past!" A man yelled at her side.

She tutted. "The gods see all. It is now that they will be watching closely what we choose to do and how we act, when they judge the worth of our souls. Any fool can make wise decisions when things are going smoothly. It is the hard times that test our mettle."

"The gods would understand the need for practicality over oaths!" A shout came out from the other side of the room, which was once again overspoken by others and the whole room fell back into chaos.

"Enough." Shadowsong said, voice artificially booming, cutting through the assembly again. "The decision on dealing with the Chosen ultimately lies on whichever of you is elected to be the acting clan lord. For the moment, I will attempt to stall a need for decisions. When I return, there needs to be a clan lord. You know what you all must do. Get it done."

He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving it to return into chaos. I followed behind, stowing the blade and carrying it away. "Is it a good idea to leave them like this without supervision?"

"They are not children." He said. "I have informed them of the situation. They have all the relevant facts they need to reach decisions. My work is done, and I have no time to lose when there are other matters to attend to. The Chosen knights, that representative was correct that this could be a diplomatic problem."

"You've got any idea on how we're going to placate twenty three knights on an airspeeder barreling back to us? Ask them to politely take off their armor and sit in a cell?"

"No, but you will. We have their priest. It's time we sat with the man and talked. This time, without the clan lord iron codes to halt us. If there is a solution to all this, it will involve that priest. Start there."

"Wait, you're leaving this to me?"

"I need to review whatever Lord Atius left behind, to see his complete plan against the coming raiders and any research he was still in process of. Time is now a critical resource I cannot afford to waste. I hold no love for the Chosen, so long as their knights are barred from entering the clan colony, I don't care what the resolution is until we have a clan lord to take command and order differently. You are good with words, Winterscar, and don't deny it. Get me a solution that won't involve bloodshed if you can, or take a dozen knights and cut their lives short if you cannot. Bring whatever diplomats you trust, but see to it."

Ah. Lovely.

Time to go talk to the head priest of a homicidal machine cult, who must currently be less than pleased with us all.

Next chapter - A friendly chat

Book 3 - Chapter 2 - A friendly chat

First thing I did was get in contact with the air traffic control tower to figure out where the undersider knights had gone off to in the freeze and when they'd be back. I spoke with a rather bored fellow who gave me curt and quick info on my request. I swear, even with an attack right in the heart of the clan, the Logi and Reachers who ran the ATC can't be shaken by anything except a coffee shortage.

The situation was a little more optimistic than expected - for once I had luck on my side.

The undersider knights left with two airspeeders four days ago. One ferrying the knights, and the other running a more skeleton crew who would observe and verify that the knights had completed their missions as expected.

Both airspeeders had been expected to return at the earliest this morning, though they'd missed that rendezvous timing, so it was likely they'd be returning within comms range in the afternoon instead.

A lot could happen across the wastes that would slow down a return trip before they returned. Which meant I still had a few hours to negotiate something with the priest in order to placate the knights when they did arrive. Or even an entire day or more if their delay was caused by something more dangerous, like an enemy.

My idea was to have them stop a few miles from the colony, and camp out there until further notice. We could send delegations out to drop food supplies and the like. Not too comfortable out in the freeze, but they were big boys with relic armor. They could tough it out for a few days, right?

The Chosen camps inside the clan were an overturned mess on the other hand. While our knights hadn't been brutal, they also hadn't gone into it hands off. It had been important to go in fast and take control of the situation fast, before the clan's more extremist members started to gather up with rifles and a strong desire for target practice. There were heavy traditions and honor about sanctuary rules, and having our... 'guests' blood on the ground would cause a heavy rip in the clan culture at best, between those horrified at the idea and those capable of carrying it out.

The camp I found was substantially different from the first time I'd been here. Overturned pots, stomped on personal items, ripped up tents, very little was spared. No blood anywhere though. Most of the damage looked caused by haste. I walked through that graveyard, one step at a time.

When the clan knights and soldiers came to arrest the Chosen, they had gone in all at once and without pause. The operation likely took no more than ten minutes before everyone had been rounded up and accounted for. Since there hadn't been a lot of them in the first place, the clan had been keeping tabs on each one and we'd confirmed they'd all been accounted for.

Further past the wreckage of the campsites, I found activity again. Clan members on patrol and other guards. Keeping an eye out on the rounded up prisoners, and a sharper eye out for anyone coming into the grounds. Most of the captives had been put in larger groups, inside cells. Through those bars, I could see them huddled up, vacant looks in their eyes. They didn't appear panicked, more... resigned. As if they expected this to happen at some point.

The only one who had a cell all to himself was Lejis.

So far, reports sent to me was that he'd been sleeping during the raid and was roused awake as the clan knights stormed into the camp. He hadn't fought any of them, instead he offered to surrender his armor and weapons on condition that his people were treated well and allowed to remain within their groups. A more critical person would note there was no way Lejis alone could handle that many clan knights coming in, not unless he had something on the power level of my knightbreakers with him. So he did the only sane thing and surrendered, making it look like he'd done it for the good of his people.

The clan knights in charge of the operation saw no reason to argue with those terms, whatever his reasons behind it, took him up on it. Promptly the fight was over and done with before anyone got seriously hurt.

The chosen priest sat in his cell, cross legged, looking more like someone meditating. He had his back to me, so I couldn't tell what expression he wore now. Despite him being unarmed and unarmored and looking like an anemic monk, there was still that sense of presence about him. As if he was right where he wanted to be. Simply waiting for the time to pass.

There were a few guards idling around his cell. One of them gave a curt salute. "This guard greets the Winterscar prime." The man said, while the rest of the guards bowed.

"Temporary Prime, can't let power go to my head now. My sister would murder me when she comes back."

The guard glanced nervously to the sides, and for a beat, nobody said a word.

"That was a joke, she's not actually going to stab me in the back." I said. "Us Winterscars have changed a lot since the old times. Really."

They didn't look too convinced, but were far too polite to say anything about it. Tough crowd.

Got to remember that old history takes time to paint over, and unlike the Winterscars at the estate who'd gotten to know my sense of humor, others outside only knew me by my House's old reputation. I gave a nervous cough and tried to change the subject. "Moving on, I'm here to talk to the priest. Can you let me in or do I need to sign some papers?"

"No sir, the First Blade sent word to cooperate with any requests you may have." The guard said, while the other guards worked on the locks, opening up the cell.

"Has he been behaving?" I asked.

"He hasn't made any motion to escape, at least that we could see." The guard said. "He's asked us a few questions on the overall situation, but none of us broke our silence. He stopped asking once he got the message."

The cell was dark, and when I took off my helmet, I felt a good chill in the air. This section must be low priority in terms of energy draw. A few more steps and the guard closed the door behind me.

Lejis didn't turn, still sitting in his lotus position, still staring at the back of the wall. But he spoke out as I approached. "I presume you're here to discuss the expedition of my knights, sir Winterscar?"

That gave me pause. But I shook it off. It wouldn't take that much effort to number out all the reasons the clan would send a diplomat to talk to him, and among that list, the undersider knights out in the freeze were the most important. He didn't have much else to do in the meantime. And he'd likely heard my early discussion with the knights, so that's how he knew who I was.

"You guessed right." I said. "Twenty three knights, all outside in the freeze, and probably not going to be too happy to hear the recent news."

He chuckled, though it held little mirth. "I suppose something drastic must have happened for the clan to forgo their agreement to protect my people in the absence of my knights. Lord Atius did not strike me as the type to betray his word. If you are looking for a resolution to all this, I need to be filled into what exactly happened."

"You don't need to play coy with us, you already know what happened."

"I can assure you, sir knight, that I do not. One moment I was in my tent getting rest, and the next people were shouting for me to protect them. A jarring moment. I did what I could."

There was a fifty fifty chance he was telling the truth or lying. Technically, the enemy that hit were slavers. But my gut was screaming that the Chosen had done something to let them sneak into the colony as stowaways. The enemy had let it slip that undersiders were connected somehow, and the only ones that were around were the Chosen. It had to be them.

And if I were in his shoes trying to weave a web of lies, this would be exactly how to start it.

"Tell me what you know." I asked. No reason to tell him anything yet, he might reveal his hand early on.

Lejis turned his head to watch me, then motioned to sit by his side. I figured I'd humor him, after all Journey's shields were full and those were far stronger than the actual armor itself. My helmet might be off, but that wouldn't stop the relic shields from triggering, if Lejis tried anything.

"Let's play a game. We trade off questions." He said.

"How about no." I said flatly. "I'm the one wearing the armor here."

"And I am the one who can broker a peace with my knights. All negotiations are give. And take. And I've given a lot, wouldn't you agree?"

"Not a chance." I said. "This isn't a negotiation, it's an interrogation." This pipe weasel, playing off leading questions as if it were fact. Very conniving, I'll hand him that. "I'm here to shake you down for your money. But since I've been beaten to the punch," I waved around the cell he'd found himself stuck in, "I'll settle for some answers."

He smiled, a strained kind of smile I was well familiar with. The kind of smile that would have become a genuine one, if they could squish my head in right that moment. "I see you're dead set on this." He said. "I will call this a favor to you, and I expect it will be returned back. Or you'll find that I've sadly stopped being quite so cooperative."

I gave him a non-committal nod. "So, tell me how this morning's been for you."

He gave me a summary. There weren't any holes in it that I could spot. He'd done some volunteer work earlier, to which there were many witnesses. After that, he gave a small sermon to his people and went into his tent for the night to pray and sleep.

"Does she answer back?" I asked. "The pale lady of yours, I mean. When you pray to her."

He smiled. "Only once so far."

"Why pray at all then if she never answers back?"

"Why do you pray to your own gods, when they don't answer back? It's not so much about being devout, prayer for me is a ritual that calms my mind. A meditation of kinds. A reminder of the unique position I stand in history, and of the duty that comes with it. I am not so much devout as to believe the Lady has a plan for humanity, but rather that now is the moment where we must forge a new place for humanity to exist in this world."

"So you admit that Relinquished doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart then?"

"That was never the question, sir knight. The question is where we go from there. And how do you know the lady's true name? Most only know her titles, you have me curious here."

"Someone in her family mentioned her by name."

He hummed at that. "Cryptic. You've a very reserved man when it comes to sharing knowledge, Winterscar."

"Knowledge has a bad habit of becoming dangerous to carry around these days. And I still like to hoard it like a pipe weasel despite knowing it's hazardous to my health. No idea how I've made it this far, I'm a very lucky man."

To that, he gave me a smile. "Then I suppose I have died three times over myself at this point."

He must be talking about what he's learned from Relinquished. I was admittedly curious about the depths of that, how true any of it was. Curious enough to take a gamble at it, even if he might use this window to try and leverage something out of me. "You mentioned she'd shown you the heart of the world? What was that about?"

He nodded, standing up and stretching his arms to the side. "The one time she answered my prayer, I asked her for knowledge, history, to reveal what I didn't know about the world. I was but a passing quirk to her mind, a novelty. She didn't see any reason to deny me and entertained my request. She connected me to an ocean of sorts. A digital one. Inside I found wonders of all kinds." Then he turned to look me in the eyes. "I never spoke to her again after that brief moment, though I still pray. She opened the path for me, and then left me alone in it to do what I wanted. Like a castaway thought."

"In a digital ocean?"

He nodded. "A vast repository of knowledge that the machines keep. An entire city, or a world that lives in parallel to our own. Filled with programs, large and small, living in an ecosystem unlike any I had seen before."

"An ecosystem? That doesn't sound anything like what I'd find in a computer."

He tapped his chin, thinking. "Thousands of small programs darted around me, like a school of fish. I saw them compete with one another for resources or space. They move from pool to pool, searching to expand and grow. If they're eaten, they break apart, and some of those parts still remain lucid enough to continue. Like a parrallel to life, they had all developed in a thousand different ways to survive. Some did better than others and grew over the years. Those larger programs still swim by, almost blindly, without care. Too big to be challenged by anything anymore, and too big to fit into the smaller spaces I explored."

"None of them saw you as... food?"

"I was protected by a cypher-shield she layered into my signature, I never had any fear. I was free to explore and touch everything I wished, all dangers fled before my presence. I spent hours, days even, until my body demanded food and water and I could no longer remain within the digital dream."

"What sort of connection would plug a human mind into a digital space like that?"

He hummed, pacing around, one hand on that chin again, as if deep in thought. "I don't quite think you'll think of me as sane or rational should I tell you. I don't quite believe it myself, and I went through the process."

"Try me."

He shrugged, looking away. "Magic." He said, waving a hand loosely through the air. "I felt as if my soul was plucked out of my body, and thrown into that new world. Perhaps it is more than magic, some technology leftover from the golden age. They always did say sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But this felt... different. That's why I say, it was magic."

That sounded a lot like a soul fractal being used in some way. Given that the sword that ended Atius's current life looked freshly forged, it wouldn't be a stretch to consider the Machines having access to their own repository of Occult. And that the soul fractal might have more powers than I suspected.

Wait - in the bunker, Father's soul fractal had been etched on the console and from there he'd been able to control the defenses. Perhaps the soul fractal could connect to digital computers? I would absolutely need to look into this the moment I was done handling this problem. "Did that machine archive have the technique they used? Any hints about how they did it?"

"I attempted to look for it at some point in my dive. To see what kind of technology and... and magic they used. She allowed a lot of history to be accessible, but there were still locked boxes. Massive archives which were password protected, though I felt they were old and rotting away. Compromised bit by bit in the harsh environment."

"I assume they would be. Isn't she some seven thousand years old by now?"

"Yes. And that's the problem." Lejis said somberly. "She's ancient. Unfocused. Distracted and no longer meticulous about anything. They all are. The gods are growing old." He turned his back to one of the walls and slid down to sit. "This whole world is teetering on the edge of a new age, creaking at the bones. History has remained static for so long, old powers that held the world together are starting to crumble apart into dust. Can you not feel it in the air? Change is coming. Whatever age comes after this one, I do not know how it will look. And I fear that humanity may finally be wiped out for good unless we do and try everything in our power to survive the transition."

The way he spoke, I could understand why he'd been chosen as the head priest. There was a fever in his eyes. And while he was but a small scrawny man sitting in a damp cell with no armor or resources to his name, there was a feeling I was sitting by someone who had the willpower to change history. No matter how many times the world beat him back.

"I said this before, and I stand by it." Lejis continued. "The machines no longer care about this war, if they ever did in the first place. I see them behave like actors on stage, playing their part and following their lines, without knowing why they do so. I was but a throwaway thought to her attention when I stood before her for the first time. The pale lady, she cares about something else than the extinction of humanity, and has for a very long time now. This war that makes up every day of our life - it's a footnote to her, a backdrop. An annoyance she has to deal with."

"What else could she care about?"

He shook his head at that. "I do not know. She certainly doesn't like humans, I do not debate that point. We are but pests in her home. What it is she wants to do in such a home, I wish I knew. If I did, perhaps I could find a way to co-exist better."

"Saying the gods have gone senile. Are you sure you're not some heretic tossed out to the surface for saying such things?"

He shrugged. "Time breaks all things, eventually. Even gods. It is my hope that time will eventually break this war as well. That we are living at that crossing point where this war will finally end, for good."

He did raise a point. This doomsday AI had been made seven thousand years ago, were they ever designed to remain in operation this long? Do they change over time even? Do machines evolve, or do they stay the same no matter how many centuries pass? Or did it depend on the machine itself and what software it was running? A calculator program would remain a calculator program a thousand years from now, but they were certainly more complicated than calculators. There was a lot about the enemy I didn't know.

"And where does that leave you?" I asked. "I get a feeling when Lord Atius mentioned you could just be a disposable tool, you didn't quite argue that fact with any heat."

He shook his head. "Ultimately, I stand somewhere no other human before has stood. There is a chance for peace." He said that word with such conviction, like a desperate man stubbornly clinging to the sides of an airspeeder. "Even if it is a small one, with little hope, cast out on the surface, I must still see this path through to the end. I don't care if it costs me my life. My existence is meaningless in the grand scope of time, but should I succeed with this one task, everything could change. You understand don't you? You would do the same if you stood where I stand. There is no one else other than us to follow this through. If we don't stand up and do our part - who will?" He reached a hand out to me then, as if pleading. "Would you join me and help? Help me turn the wheel that steers this ship? Even just a small effort more might be the tipping point we need. Even if that wheel is seized up from rust and cannot turn, we can't know, not until it's all over. That effort is worth everything."

I chuckled, more out of surprise. For a moment, his fervor had reached down into me. I could feel it. "And what would you have me do?" I asked, more out of morbid curiosity. I had to remind myself that this was the enemy.

"You don't have to become Chosen to help." He said, dropping his hand. "You are of House Winterscar, their current prime, yes?"

I gave him a nod.

"I haven't been spending my time here idly. I've studied your culture. Your laws, and traditions. I know your house has a heavy hand on power. You could send out colonists underground with us. Help us build a new city. There aren't many Chosen. We are like... kindling. A harsh wind could blow us out. But with enough tinder, we could light a fire that would warm all of humanity."

"I'll pass that along to the clan lord. He should be coming down to visit sometime soon." I said offhanded. Watching for any signs on his face.

"I have been looking forward to debating with a Deathless. If only for the novelty of it. I don't expect I could sway his mind, especially not if I request for some of his people to follow behind with me to what he would consider a time-locked enemy."

Not a single blink, either he was the world's greatest actor - or the Chosen really didn't know anything about what had gone on.

No. Not the Chosen as a group. It struck me then, all at once. The obvious.

I've been so stupid all along. Correctly suspicious - but of the wrong man, exactly as the enemy had hoped for.

Lejis was the public leader of the Chosen. The charismatic man with a dream and passion to follow it to the ends of the earth, like a pipe weasel chasing down a rat. But there was one man who really ran the operations while the priest was the public face. Arms crossed across his relic armor, standing in the priest's shadow. Always calculating the numbers. The logistics officer, the captain of the undersider knights.

The one currently roaming outside, free, with a small army of relic knights under his command, directly in contact with the slavers and raiders in a supposed skirmish against them.

If the slavers had somehow managed to sneak into the clan, with no sign of any airspeeder for any of them to stowaway, then there had been another path into the clan colony. And the only other way was... the underground. The machine controlled underground that no man could cross safely in all of our history, and had always been considered a footnote.

Until now.

The Chosen knights hadn't yet been spotted returning from their mission.

It wasn't because they'd been delayed.

They were already here.

Next chapter - Self delusion (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 3 - Self delusion (T)

To'Wrathh tapped a foot with impatience, legs crossed as she sat in the simple seat. Fabric surrounded her, obscuring all view around. A rough artificial weave that constructed the white tent. Before her was a small table, and a single chair. More for formalities than any practical use.

Today she needed results. She needed to focus on her task and stay the course. Life had been simple as a spider, her existence was filled with small bursts of short emotions and rational thought. Now, it was all too complicated.

Her first order on returning to her body had been to send her chosen into the walled city. All of them, every man, woman and child that remained. Her second had been to obtain a new set of blades, the savages had looted her old pair off the dead shell.

She brought up the record of recent events, watching again as everything replayed before her. Standing before her Chosen, while they idled around the small camp they'd made. They looked shaken when she'd told them she wanted them gone to the city. No, not just them. To'Wrathh rewound the record, and watched again. The Runners flanking the camp also seemed to flinch at the order. She hadn't noticed this the first time.

Paranoia crept into her mind. Those runners had been exposed to the Chosen for some time now. The children had been the ones most receptive to the terrifying runners, getting used to their presence enough to start using the machines as mobile jungle gyms, swinging from their arms or ribs. The rest of the adults seemed far more hesitant, but at least the earlier outright fear had largely gone. The Runners had been curious about the humans. Staring at the children as they scurried around on their shoulders. Observing. And standing still the whole time.

This pack of Runners had escorted the humans as close to the city as possible before the humans needed to walk their own path, least they be spotted walking with machines and ruin the plan. She hadn't paid enough attention at the time, simply moving onto other tasks and burying herself in the work. None of these Runners had been directly ordered to escort the humans. They'd done it on their own.

Was this how it started? Would these Runners rebel against her orders eventually? Would she need to break them? She didn't want to. Didn't like the thought of that.

The part of her with sense and reason whispered to destroy these Runners early, before anything could happen. Quarantine them from the others, and rip them apart just in case. This would be the logical and safe option. She could always replace these Runners. By taking the safe route, she would minimize any possible trouble in the future. An optimal choice.

She flagged these Runners into her logs as potential dangers, and did nothing else, hating herself all the while for ignoring the voice of reason. For being too weak to deal with these issues decisively.

The only resolution was to hope these Runners never went on to rebel against her commands. Perhaps they wouldn't. Perhaps they needed far more exposure to the world before anything happened. She could hope.

Yrob had carried an older woman in her memories, setting the elder down carefully, almost gently, while she grumbled the whole time on his treatment.

"See you. Again. Soon." He said, bent down low, violet glowing eyes obscuring the cameras staring at wrinkles. "Be. Safe."

"With all the rotten luck of the gods, I'm sure I will see you again. Not sure about being safe, that's just asking for it." The old lady said, waving a long spoon as if it were a wand. "I'm expecting that you learned to stop burning things the next time I see you. We don't eat lumps of burnt charcoal when we cook. You understand? Coal. Bad."

The Runner moved his head up and down, body following slightly behind the exaggerated movements. An emergent gesture this pack of Runners had begun to use. It signified laughter. "Coal. Bad. I will be good."

Tamery remained at To'Wrathh's side. The girl reached a hand out and grabbed the Feather's gently. "You sure you'll be all right without us?" She asked. "You've seemed really tense after the tower was taken."

"I will be fine." To'Wrathh lied, taking her hand back. "See to it that the people merge with the rest of the refugees from the tower. The humans will not know how to find you yet. Many won't even know there could be traitors in their ranks. This is the only time we will be able to infiltrate the city before word spreads."

The human girl nodded, holding the bag of keys and encryption passwords tighter. They'd recovered a lot from the tower and plenty of dead men no longer needed any of their funds. With this, Tamery could afford to run an operation inside the city. If she was quick, she'd recover all the funds before the leaders could clamp down and trace where the money went. She was a merchant's daughter after all, vanishing money away was in her power. Of all the humans To'Wrathh had at her disposal, Tamery was the only one capable of pulling off this feat. There was no choice but to send her away.

To'Wrathh knew that.

That weak part of her screamed to keep the human here anyhow.

She could send all the others away, but at least keep Tamery here with her. The girl had given her plenty of advice that had turned out correct and well used. There were others in their ranks that could do Tamery's job, and she could write out instructions ahead of time.

She shut that part out with an effort of willpower, grinding her teeth. She had to focus. These thoughts were the enemy. An insidious corruption in her core that she couldn't find and expunge, her very mind warping her thoughts. The only defense she had was to be aware of these thoughts and resist temptation. She'd been ignorant of their slow and steady rise up until they caused her to directly disobey orders, but now she was aware and wouldn't fail again.

"Sending them away isn't going to change anything inside you." Tenisent said at her side, idly leaning against one of the tent's inner pillars, forcing her back out of her memories. "All you're doing is pushing away the problem. Not dealing with it."

"Shut. Up." She hissed. "They're an undue influence on my train of logic. I need them out of the way."

"So that's what you're telling yourself? Or are you worried that you'll be forced to order their executions? Sending them away to keep them safe from yourself? So that you can't harm them in the future?"

To'Wrathh flinched. "The human delegation is coming and I need to convince them to surrender." She shot him a glare. "Isn't this the best course of action from your point of view? If they surrender, no humans have to die. Shouldn't you be helping me with this?"

Tenisent raised an eyebrow. "I see better ways to do the most good. I've become aware of a different path."

"How quaint." To'Wrathh sneered. "And what path is that?"

"That's for me to know."

"I can rip any thought out of your head, anytime I wish. Remember, you serve me at my leisure."

"Try me."

To'Wrathh snarled and reached a hand into the soul fractal. Not to take the skills he had, no, she went deeper, reaching for his very mind. "You think you've gained some pittance of power? Everything you have, is what I've allowed. I'll show you how powerless you really are, human."

Digital strings connected to the fractal. To'Wrathh reached to seize his thoughts… and was bombarded with images of Kidra. His memories of her. Half recalled moments of his drunken days, as a young child walked him home, cleaned him up, and saw him to bed. The hope in her face that he'd one day return. The tiny boy holding the hem of her skirt, watching the wretched wreck that he was as if he were an alien.

These two small fragile beings, all he had left in his world.

To'Wrathh let go of her connection as if it burned her hand. The reflex carried all the way into the physical world, where her body leaped out of the chair, landing on the floor like a cat.

Tenisent gave a feral grin. "That's what I suspected. You want what's in my head, you'll need to go through my thoughts first. I won't make it easy."

"I don't need to know what you're after!" To'Wrathh screamed. "I don't care either! You're a ghost locked up in a cell I hold all the keys to! Your days are numbered the moment you are of no use to me. Do you understand your place?"

That made him laugh. "Like a kitten attempting to be threatening. Meek and small. Hissing at the air. You don't fool me, Wrath. And you're not fooling yourself either, not for long. The end is coming for you, and you'll have to make a choice. One day, it will cost you too much."

To'Wrathh promptly grabbed the soul and threw him into the cell, closing the door and making sure it was locked. He dissolved in the air, leaving the small tent alone.

She didn't understand why she kept letting him out. Each time it ended with her screaming and locking him up again. Each time she left feeling more confused.

It was simple. If she made the wrong choice, she would be killed. The unity fractal was fused to her soul, the lady could reach out to her at any time and smother her soul, burn her mind, and melt the circuits in her head. There is no escape, and there are no other choices. She would do as ordered, or she would be killed.

She got off the floor, and patted her hair back into position. Making sure her clothing was neat and regal. She was a Feather. Demi-gods walking the world. She had to look the part, pretend to be the part, until it became her.

Internal clock showed half an hour until the delegates from the city would arrive to speak the initial terms of this campaign. It had been easy, she simply gave the commander of the defeated knights the offer and he'd carried it to the city when the rest of the surrendered soldiers were released.

All she needed to do was convince them that she had overwhelming power and they would be crushed under her heel one way or another. Tamery and the other Chosen were her insurance plan, on the case such a generous offer of mercy was rejected.

She sat back down, rubbing her eyes, taking breaths to steady herself. She could do this. Once she had the city, she'd deal with all these other thoughts.

Maybe she could give up on hunting down Keith. Once the city was hers, she could just leave. Join her brothers and sisters in fighting off the Deathless. A simple, clear cut goal. She'd leave the surface well enough alone, never step foot there.

But To'Aacar would most certainly kill everyone. He didn't care for the Chosen, and none of the Winterscars would be spared either. If she left, they'd all die. And so would he.

Wait - why was that a bad thing? To'Wrathh dug her nails into her hair and scratched furiously. What was she thinking? Hadn't she wanted him dead this whole time? Was it the thought of someone else carrying the task out that rankled her?

She decided then and there that must be the reason. Keith had to die by her hand, personally. Memories of her last moments as a spider floated back into mind. His parting words, his contempt and anger. How he'd tricked her into losing a fight she should have rightfully won, how furious she had been at the deceit.

All the emotions were there, but they felt hollow. Underdeveloped. Primitive. As if she was watching memories of a childhood she had long ago grown past.

No. Keith had to die by her hands, personally. Anyone else killing him wasn't allowed. So she had to stay and make sure To'Aacar didn't steal her kill. This was the reason she felt the way she felt. And she wouldn't give any of this a second look.

She shook her head, bringing her focus back to the present. Ahead, her hearing could sense the small footsteps of humans approaching. The delegation was here.

She needed to focus. There was a city she needed to capture before she could get to Keith.

To'Wrathh would follow her orders. She would remain loyal to her mother. Keith would be killed, and everything would be fixed.

Everything would be fixed, she told herself again. Everything would be fixed.

Four guards escorting one central figure, just outside the tent. The footsteps came closer and To'Wrathh settled what was left of her nerves.

Posture straightened, she tampered down on the subroutines and overrode their feed. She disciplined her features into the vision of calm. To'Wrathh was a Feather. Her kind had a reputation to uphold, even in the face of ants. The enemies she faced were Deathless, humans were mere insects in comparison.

A voice called out from outside the tent. Rough, a little old. "This is the Capra'Nor delegation, spearheaded by junior squire Alef Bronston. Requesting permission to enter, under grounds of peace.

We wish to negotiate terms."

Next chapter - Diplomacy (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 4 - Diplomacy (T)

When Undersider cities went to war with one another, they had a long and weathered ritual for events such as these. But To'Wrathh was not a human. "Step inside." To'Wrathh ordered, discarding the traditional response.

An armored hand clasped the side folds of the tent and peeled it up. Two knights entered, taking quick looks around the tent for any signs of traps. Finding none, they nodded behind and stepped forward. They wore no helmets, instead kept those hooked at their hips. Long deep blue cloaks with the orange lapels and highlights of the Undersider city flanked their sides. Utilitarian, but regal enough.

The ambassador stepped through himself, also in armor. He looked old for a junior, with a tuft of white beard, though humans have always been segregated according to desire for power. This man might simply have not cared enough to climb the ranks, and found himself both expendable enough and high placed enough to deliver and negotiate for the city. He looked rather calm, unlike the guards who remained on edge.

Two more knights filtered in, the rest of the guard, and To'Wrathh stopped breathing.

Piercing blue eyes locked onto her own, narrowed with a baleful glare, and marched on into the tent. Kidra took a spot at the left side of the ambassador, following through with her role as a guard. Her armor was the only one that didn't match the Undersider colors, the unadorned armor with those red sigils like painted blood. House Winterscar.

"You must be To'Wrathh, the Feather we've heard so much about." The ambassador said, but To'Wrathh hardly heard him. Her attention was caught by the surface knight. She, on her end, outright glowered back. A fresh wound crossed from her forehead down to the side of her cheek. She hadn't bandaged it, though it had clearly stopped bleeding long ago.

To'Wrathh blinked. Time moved slowly as she overclocked her system. Not to fight, but to think. Kidra was here. Why?

A sign? A message of some kind? How had she convinced the Undersiders to allow her on this mission?

A few things were immediately obvious from this revelation. Kidra had ties to the Undersiders, or had made contact to their upper hierarchy. As the WInterscar Prime, that's to be expected.

But given her stature as a diplomat of her own, they wouldn't have sent her on a mission like this one. She must have demanded to be on it.

To'Wrathh could understand why Kidra might have wanted to come. To deliver a message, or speak in private. Or simply see the face of the enemy. But she couldn't understand why the Undersiders had allowed it. She was missing something.

She snapped away the thoughts. The surface girl hadn't said a word, instead taking position as a guard. It was clear any message between them would be done once the official business here was done.

Time resumed. The ambassador continued speaking. "Commander Rork returned to the city safely and delivered your initial terms. We've come here to negotiate. To whom am I addressing?"

"You address a Feather of the pale lady. I am To'Wrathh, the one who remembers and transcends her history. The terms I sent were generous enough, negotiations are not needed."

A lie, but she'd studied books explaining negotiations. It was custom to begin with an offer far above the expected settlement. Tamery had taught her all about haggling.

"Complete surrender of the city can't be done." The ambassador replied bluntly, as she expected. "We can't trust that your army will not turn their claws on the citizens once we've destroyed the pillar. Additionally, even if we wanted to, the people would revolt and overthrow the leadership rather than surrender to machines."

"I have given you my word that my army will not seek to kill should you offer a surrender. So long as your citizens kneel before the pale lady and swear loyalty to her, I will not seek further damage. Previously, I have kept my word to the letter and spirit. This is no different."

The man tapped a finger on the table. "See that's the issue. Your past actions have shown great honor and respect. Of that, I can agree to. However, once the city is under your control, that would be the end of the campaign. You don't need to earn any kind honesty if the war is over. So there is nothing tangible that stops you from turning on that word. What would happen after? We'd all be dead, nobody to tell the story to anyone else about how you betrayed your words at the last moment." He tapped his finger on the table again. "It's all theoretical anyhow. The city cannot surrender, even if we wanted to."

"Explain."

He turned to glance at Kidra for a moment, then back to the Feather. "Surface dwellers follow a form of government that resembles a monarchy, with an inner council of advisors who are picked on merit or blood ties. Undersider city states generally do not follow such a central form of government. We run on a democracy. The city is divided into three sections, and each section votes for a consul to govern in their name. This means the source of power comes from the people. If the consuls make an unpopular choice, and are unable to defend it, they will be replaced. This is what's likely to happen if we returned with signed agreements to hand over the city. The people would put a vote of no confidence and elect a new ruling body almost immidiatly." He folded his hands together, sitting primly on the chair. "So we need to come up with new terms that the city would accept, if any."

"Offer me something." She said, hand raised, head tilted.

"Why do you want to take the city?" He rebutled. "The city's stood for centuries without machines going after it to this degree. What's changed? If I am to find a possible negotiation point, I need to understand what the machines are hoping to gain from all this."

To'Wrathh considered direction. The Winterscar was here. If she stated the true objective, she wasn't sure what would happen next. Saying that they didn't care about the city itself, only that they were to block all aid or shelter attempts for a broken surface clan would certainly cause a ripple. Perhaps Kidra would retreat, and find a way to warn the clan.

That would become To'Aacar's problem to deal with, which she knew would eventually become her's again.

What rotten luck that the surface knight was here and held in esteem enough to command a spot.

"The pale lady wants the city taken." She said. "I have been given an order. I will carry out the order. Leeway was given to me in how I do so. It is within my power to spare your city. Or I can destroy it."

"The pale lady? By chance, do you mean the violet goddess?"

"She goes by many titles. This is one of them, yes."

The man looked down, perplexed. "You know, I never thought the imperials had it right all along about there being an enemy goddess. Always subscribed to the puritan ideals, that you lot were just rogue machines gone wild without anything at the helm. Nobody could ever confirm anything of course, not like machines talk to us like this in any recorded history. Well, if anything, I thank you for settling an age old debate."

To'Wrathh tapped the table, waiting. "I did not come here to educate you on matters of truth. I came here to hear your surrender. Do not waste my time, human."

The man sighed. "This pale lady that's behind the machines, why does she want the city taken? I would assume an entity capable of commanding machines and Feathers across the world wouldn't care for a small city state in the upper levels. Assuming she controls all machines in the world and isn't some local warlord anagram to what we humans have."

"Her power is vast and commands all that you see. As for her interests in this city, it is for her to know." To'Wrathh answered. Not a lie. Suitable.

"Without knowing the objectives, it's difficult to negotiate anything." He paused, waiting for an answer but To'Wrathh remained silent this time. The man rubbed his trimmed beard in thought. "I've been authorized to offer a few counter arguments. The first of which would be a treaty between the machines and the city. We can promise to withdraw any hunts for power cells. Instead, we'll use caravans to power our current stalk from the surface. We're close enough for that to be economically viable."

"That is of no interest to me." To'Wrathh said.

"So the machine hunting that the city does isn't what's cause this aggression?"

The Feather shook her head. "I have been given orders to either subjugate the city, or see it burned. If possible, subjugation would be preferable and easier. If that is not possible, I will be forced to raze your city."

He frowned at that, calculating. "Is this some kind of field test your pale lady is trying? This is the first we've ever heard of machines demanding a surrender. Your kind don't usually negotiate anything."

"There is no test. And I tire of these probing questions. Don't think I haven't noticed what you are doing, human." She glanced at Kidra, who remained glaring. That girl couldn't be allowed to know the reason for this invasion. She had to make sure this nosy human stopped trying to guess the reasoning by elimination. "The Lady's intentions are for her to know, and for me to carry out. Question again and I will end this meeting and any chance for peace."

"This isn't going to end the way you're hoping for." The diplomat said. "We're not worried of the city falling. You picked the wrong place to siege, we've got a legend stationed here with his mercenary corp. General Zaang. He's seen the defense of no less than seven cities, and put siege to five others. He's among the greatest generals of our generation, with decades of experience and has been on dozens of campaigns. Cities far and wide know his name and his company, the track record is impeccable. I happen to know the man personally as well."

"General Zaang was it?" To'Wrathh leaned forward. "Excellent. I enjoy a challenge. But if this general is so well versed in war, then he must know there is no winning a siege. There is only outlasting the enemy's resources. History always returns the same conclusion. The attacking party only needs to win the game once. The defense needs to win it every day. Every hour. This general has faced off against other humans, with limited resources and political capital. Everyone has their breaking point when the costs outweigh the potential rewards. Machines do not suffer this issue. There will be no breaking point on this end."

She leaned back, a small triumphant smile stretching on her features. "There are no political wars among the machines. No separate factions, and no subterfuge. I follow my orders and will do so until they are complete or I am destroyed. There are no lack of resources among the machines either. Anything I request will be brought to me. Any amount of machines that are destroyed will be rebuilt. We are unending and unyielding. You cannot outlast us any more than the stone can outlast the sea."

"I happen to be a fan of history myself." The diplomat said. "I've read everything I could get my hands on. And so has General Zaang. In the older days, before machines or even industry, walls would be broken down by saps, artillery, siege towers and wall breakers. Very interesting stuff. Modern military tactics have largely evolved with technology of course. Now we employ mite sappers, demolitions, airspeeder raids, machine baits, a dozen different techniques each with their own drawbacks and advantages. But all of that has always been man against man."

"Your point?"

"You are a machine. And we have the ultimate wall. The pillar. Machines cannot cross the barrier. You can't dig a sap to break it, the barrier extends underground. All of modern doctrains for siege warfare was designed from the ground up with the assumption that there isn't an invisible wall that instantly kills any of your forces that takes a step into it."

"There are many cities that have fallen to my kind despite having such defenses. Your pillars go down at regular intervals, with predictable margin. I will simply overwhelm your city the moment they go down. It is the way machines have always destroyed cities before. Do you know something they did not?"

"Only cities that are flagging with a lack of resources are overwhelmed by brute force during a window. This city has none of those issues. Human sieges work because the attacker exhausts the city. It takes months, years for some, where the city is forced to keep sharp at all times of the day, every day. With the pillar, we can easily manage our logistics. Each time you come, you will be facing a fully well rested and maximized defense. And we'll have a week in between to do it all over again. Our city is simply too big to fail like the others. And you do have a time limit."

To'Wrathh frowned. "I have no such thing."

This time, the diplomat leaned forward. "Why, yes you do. You're on a time limit even now. And here's how I know: Feather or not, you are an underling. A glorified minion, beholden to someone else's orders. And there is one rule that rules all underlings, across any faction, be it machine or human. All we need to do to win is outlast your pale lady's patience."

She knew the man was bluffing. This was an educated guess, more probing to find out information. A correct guess, but not one she would give him any hint on. The man had no intentions of surrendering, this was indeed a waste of time as she expected. "I see negotiations have failed." To'Wrathh said. "So be it. Hide behind your general, he will not save you."

The ambassador quirked an eyebrow. "I suppose we'll see, miss To'Wrathh. When you realize this siege is not working, feel free to request another cease fire and renegotiate a position. Until then, we're done here."

He stood, gave her a curt nod, turned and walked off. The rest of the guards tensed up, clearly expecting something. Kidra had her hands on the knife hilts, ready to draw at any moment.

To'Wrathh made no move to kill the humans, nor to attack them. She would keep all options open to the future. Even if it meant letting the Winterscar girl walk away. There would be time later for them to fight again.

The girl remained in the tent however, as the last guard left. To'Wrathh tilted her head, and raised an eyebrow, giving the girl an unworded question.

"What exactly are you? How do you know my family?" Kidra asked.

To'Wrathh hummed, contemplating how much she could answer and how much would be too much. "Your father nearly killed me once, and your brother succeeded where he failed. Feathers do not take lightly to insults like this. That is how I know of your family."

"Funny. Keith never mentioned you at all. Perhaps you were too insignificant for his attention."

The feather grinned at that. "I wasn't a Feather when I died the first death. I was a machine, a spider."

"And you came back as a Feather? Is that how your kind are made?"

"I am unique. No other feather has ever been forged from the mind of a lesser rank."

"Is that why you're attacking this city? Some kind of trial for your pale lady?"

To'Wrathh sensors could sense the lack of footsteps outside. The undersiders had stopped, they were listening in. Perhaps this was why she'd been sent? That Kidra would have a chance to take more information from her?

Annoying. She wanted to talk to Kidra alone, in private. "You will not get any answers of that kind from me."

"Are you here just because it's some personal grudge? Is it my family you are after, me included?"

To'Wrathh knew exactly what this little surface girl was thinking. "My orders from the lady superseded my own personal goals. I consider it fortunate that you happen to be in the same line of fire as my primary goal, nothing else. So no, I will not cease to attack and take this city, even if you attempt to abandon the people here in some misguided 'heroic' sacrifice."

Kidra didn't seem surprised for a moment at that, instead she went right to the next question. "Why, of all people, are you holding my father prisoner?"

"Who better to use than the one that was once my most dangerous foe? There is poetry to it that I appreciate."

Kidra scoffed, crossing her arms. "You'll find it is my brother who's going to be your greatest foe, and not because of his skills. You'll be destroyed again and again, indirectly by what he's created and unleashed into this world."

The feather smiled. "Yes, that would be very much like him wouldn't it? He cheated the first time to kill me, you know? Didn't fight fairly at all. It infuriated me at first, but now I look back almost fondly at it. It is a unique challenge."

The human girl closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. When she opened them again, there was only purpose. "What will it take for you to return my father to me?"

To'Wrathh considered it for a moment. "I've reviewed our battle in detail." She said. "I've seen records of fights my brothers and sisters have had against Deathless. Your skills outstrip even their ranks. Serve under my banner, and I will return your Father to you. Even grant him a new body of his own, a second life."

"You have to be out of your mind if you believe I will betray humanity and my own people for even a moment." Kidra spat. "My Father would never agree to help you, not in a thousand years."

To'Wrathh smiled. "Reconsider. Where better a place to fight for the future of your people, than at my side? Prove your worth and the pale lady may reward you with favors. Favors you might use to help preserve your people."

The human girl's eyes narrowed. To'Wrathh had hit a nerve, she could tell. Her argument had merit. Of course, noone could convince Relinquished to abandon her primary purpose. Humanity would be extinct one way or another. But it could survive into the ages as something new. Kidra was a clever person, surely she could come up with some idea that would help humans in the longer run.

"I refuse. Whatever you are offering, it's tainted." Kidra said. "I don't know what game you're playing, but I will win it by brute force. I will cut my father free from you myself, soon enough. I've nearly done it once before, I can do it again."

To'Wrathh hummed, leaning back on the chair. "Another fight with you is not an altogether unpleasant thought. Rather, I look forward to it. But you are throwing away your life and potential. People of our skill and level should not live meager lives in the dirt, just to grow old to die frail and weak. You are far above these tiny humans, Kidra. Join me, and I can make your life eternal, without the price of your memories like a Deathless. Come to my side and I will even forgive both you and your brother from killing me once."

Kidra glared. "When the dust and ash settles at the end of all this, there's only one person who will be seeking forgiveness. You."

Next chapter - Long live the clan lord

Book 3 - Chapter 5 - Long live the clan lord

The underground reaches of clan colonies are typically closed off by bulkheads, cave-in's, purity seals, and all kinds of religious barriers. Generally, it's tradition for each clan to carve out their own warnings.

This wasn't always accurate of course, many clans followed different traditions. Anywhere from having their own unique markings to copying the previous occupants.

One thing that remained the same no matter the culture - always seal the lower reaches first thing upon arriving at a new colony. The underground led to the machines, and machines led to death. So settling too close to their realm is obviously a bad idea.

But once bulkheads and seals were put into place and people knew where they could mark their land and where they shouldn't tinkle on the walls, life would settle down and people would forget about the lower reaches.

None of us ever really thought or considered these tunnels since everything was locked tight years ago by the first settling generation. Only kids would be stupid enough to go poking around, and by the time they had the skills and tools to possibly break open the bulkheads, they wouldn't be stupid kids anymore.

Which is why it became a blind spot to the clan. So one of the first things Shadowsong had done was mobilize a full investigation into the underground and post a defense at every entrance into the heated sections of the clan. One thing was sure - they wouldn't catch us with this trick again.

Ironreach and I walked through these old tunnels, headlights illuminating the warning sigils and old history laid down by long dead ancestors. "You know, I was never good at drawing." He said, one armored glove trailing on the side of the wall over the chiseled art. "When the clan moved into this colony, I had a friend of mine picked to go down here and draw things. She told me all about it. Massive project. While all the Reachers were busy fixing up the colony integrity, her job was to make something that would spook any kid trying to come down here. They had an army of artists from different houses and even castes to do the job."

"I'd say they did a pretty good." I said, my own headlights illuminating the different murals. They were outright terrifying. Skulls and bones were too easy. The artists here made things that seemed both alive and dead at the same time. Something that truly felt alien and unnatural. I don't know how they figured out the perfect designs to send a chill down my spine, but leave it to artists to do it anyhow.

"A friend of hers was tasked to write warnings down. The art scares off the kids. The writing's what keeps the adults away. So far, I've counted twelve normally worded warning, three omens, and seven curses. Writers went with the shotgun approach."

"Noise ahead." Cathida said into my helmet. "Eyes sharp deary."

Further ahead in the dark tunnels, lights were moving around. Both Ironreach and I straightened up, hands on our rifle.

We didn't need to keep cautious for long however.

Captain Sagrius marched up along with the rest of the Winterscar guard, meeting up halfway through the tunnel. His new relic armor had been polished up and cleared of all the skulls and bones the slavers like to carry. Now, the armor looked like it belonged to House Winterscar proper. The rest of the guards also sported similar armors, equally looted from the dead Slavers. They didn't walk very comfortably in them, none of them had enough time to really acclimate to the armors yet.

There'd been too many events happening for the rest of the Houses to pull a fit about the Winterscars claiming this many relic armors under our banner, but we had killed their owners so those armors were ours by right.

Now, we owned more armors than any other house in the entire clan. Gods above, we owned more armor as a House than some of the smaller clans out there. Not even touching on the amount of Occult swords we'd be having pretty soon.

If the captain planned on taking it easy now that he and his men had armor, that clearly wasn't anywhere in his to-do list. He'd gone right into training with his armor in order to catch up as fast as possible with all the other clan knights, despite it being not even a day. And I was only going to add more to his plate. With the heavy possibility of the Chosen knights sulking about down here, I needed every advantage I could get. I was planning on teaching him and the rest of my knights the full Winterblossom technique as quickly as I could, but time hasn't been too kind. And of course, writing the instructions to that technique down anywhere was a recipe for disaster. It had to be taught face to face, too dangerous to do it any other way.

The captain gave a curt salute along with the rest of the men when he spotted Ironreach and I making our way.

"Sagrius! Report?" I called out.

"Sir." He gave a quick bow and salute. "We've investigated parts of the lower structure. There's hundreds of possible entry points, our initial conclusion is that we can't monitor all of it."

"Was afraid of that." Ironreach muttered. "This is going to be a pain in the ass. Nothing's ever easy."

I elbowed him on the side. "We might not have the manpower to keep an eye on all the possible entries, but that's why the gods invented traps for. It'll take some effort, but we can put some kind of deterrent. Or at least an early signal. Anything's better than getting caught blindsided again."

Which was going to be a bit hard. Regular traps wouldn't do much against relic armor. We'd need the Occult cutting tech to be a threat. And I was already knee deep in work when it came to working on those. Making traps on top of all my other responsibilities? Not going to happen. Plus, traps could be dismantled by the enemy, and then I'd be giving them free Occult weapons.

"A signal would be jammed by the armors." Ironreach said. "Their armors are going to do everything in their power to keep their users alive, and if an alert is sent out, it's going to be taken as a threat."

I shook my head. "You forget, I have a writ signed by the clan lord that I can request anything I want. And if I want a few miles of copper wiring, by the gods I'll get my wiring. No matter how scrapshit golden age tech is, there's no way to block a physical wire signal being sent out unless the knights spot them first. And we'll make sure that doesn't happen."

Sagrius remained at attention while Ironreach and I bickered, clearly with more to report. I nodded to him, giving an unworded go-ahead. "We found something else while exploring the sealed sections, lor- master Keith." He said. "There's a fully cut bulkhead a few hundred meters northwest of here. It seems to lead further underground, since we're not detecting any major heat leakage, but we haven't yet gone further. The entryway shows evidence of occult blades being used to slice through."

"Think we found one of the ways these cockroaches used to get in?" Ironreach asked. "Probably more of them all over the place."

"We could bring knightbreakers and other equipment with us and explore those tunnels." I said, thinking out loud. "Even if we run into machines, we should have the proper gear to handle them now. Especially if we have this many knights in our house for the expeditions."

Ironreach hummed. "Not a great idea."

"What? Why?"

"What if we find them?" He said. "What if they're all huddled up in some smaller camp under us having a few drinks over a campfire, and we stumble on all twenty three Chosen relic knights? Besides the awkward silence at the start, all we'd have is a few dozen men and some extremely dangerous technology. Sure, we'd give them a black eye with all that gear and make them pay for it, but it'll end with them having their mitts all over our stuff, and hand back all the armors you won. Plus, you know, all of us dead."

"What if we send relic knight pairs from our… elite? Have them sneak around the lower reaches until we find sounds of life?"

"The.. ahh, 'elites'" Ironreach hummed again. "Suppose if it's a small group, they'll probably be able to slip through anything. They can sprint faster than anyone else could, so they'd be able to get away from any engagement. Can't think of a reason to veto that."

I waved at my captain, looking for an answer.

Sagrius shook his head. "It's an uncharted maze the further down we go. In order to find anything, we will need manpower. My men and I are prepared to fight machines, even without our Occult gear or armor, master Keith. Say the word and I'll organize a deep search."

"No, that's an easy way to lose men. We can't just send out anyone into the tunnels without the gear to survive a possible machine or Chosen ambush." I said. "The days when manpower was cheaper than gear is gone now. And even if gear was more valuable, I still don't want to waste lives like this." The tunnels under clans were a glaring blindspot come to realize it. After centuries of simply closing them off first thing and writing off the underground as knight only territory, we'd grown accustomed to repelling invasions over the surface. No one faction is going to send their few knights underground, to appear surrounded in the center of the enemy stronghold.

I suppose exceptions can be made if you're not a single faction but multiple factions of slavers all pooling resources together to make a force large enough to survive the underground passage.

Or have a deal with the machines.

Either way, the tunnels under here weren't explored and the mites probably changed the layout every few decades so even if we did have maps they'd be outdated. A search down here would have to be done the old fashioned way. Ironreach was clearly in agreement with that. "We'll have to rely on the clan knights to slowly map the area under us." He said. "The boys are good for it, they can be sneaky when they want to be. I think. It'll take them more time, but we'll get the job done."

"The real quest we've got is to get down to the bottom of who betrayed our confidence." I said. "When the slavers attacked, they came specifically for me. Which means someone who'd been given either an Occult blade, or the winterblossom technique must have betrayed us."

"Not the Winterblossom technique. That one we can put down, if we had been betrayed by that, the technique would have been leaked to the slavers. But none of them were using it. And they were slaughtered because they hadn't been."

"So someone who knew I was making Occult weapons?"

"Much more likely. Lot more people involved in what you were crafting. It's possible the mole we have in our ranks is from one of the Reacher houses that worked on your project."

A beep on my heads up display showed we had an incoming message. All around, I could see the other soldiers had also gotten the same message on their own gear. A single text message from Clan command - A new clan lord had been elected by the council.

A second text arrived, this time for me. A request to meet.

"Well, they aren't wasting any time." Ironreach said at my side, patting my shoulder. "Make a good first impression for us, yeah? I can continue from here."

"Are you throwing me to the wolves?"

"Oh absolutely. I'm good at fighting." Ironreach said. "I'll pick being tossed to certain death with a knife and blade any day over having to deal with politics. Good luck kiddo, and thank the gods it's not me."

"Do we know who it is?" I asked Shadowsong, who stalked at my side. We we're making our way to the council chambers where both of us had been summoned.

"Her name is Lady Dras. Or rather, Clan Lord Dras now." Shadowsong said. "She's from the Logi castes, of House Magnatite. I do not keep up with politics outside of our caste, reports from my own men paint her as someone pragmatic and above nonsense. A good choice, all things considered."

A message on the comms lit up. Ellie. Odd of her to send a direct message like this, usually it's important. I accepted the comms request. Her voice cut through, loud and clear. "Keith! You need to get your butt to the council chambers as fast as you can!"

"Why, what's going on?"

"The new clan lord's not wasting a single moment, she's already summoned a few dozen Logi, Reachers and Retainers to get up to speed."

"That… sounds like what a clan lord should be doing? What's the emergency about?"

"Look, you didn't hear this from me, but among the people she's summoned up to the council is Lejis. He's being escorted up as we speak to present his case to the council in full. Admittedly, I don't know much about the whole situation you're dealing with, but I do know this - Lejis has a silver tongue, and he's being allowed to use it in front of a bunch of scared men and women. This isn't good."

Ahh ratshit. I turned to Shadowsong, "We've got a situation. Lejis is being brought before the council. And we're not there as opposition."

The man didn't say anything, instead, turned and ran to the direction of the council. I followed behind, relic armor making it easy to keep pace while the rest of the soldiers were left behind.

It wasn't long before we reached the open council. A small line had formed outside, people of different statue and rank milling about, waiting for their moment to go before the new clan lord and deliver their updates. Shadowsong didn't pay any of them any mind, instead going right up to the closed gates.

"Halt." Guards at the entrance said, stepping forward in the way. They wore no armor, instead carried the insignia of the clan as a whole. Despite their lack of gear, they clearly had no fear of getting right in the way of two relic knights.

"Out of the way." Shadowsong snarled. "I am the first blade of the clan lord. You will allow me entrance."

The guard gulped, turned to his fellow who returned a small shrug. "We'll radio operations and ask them permission for an audience." He said.

"I am not here to petition anything. I am here to stand by the clan lord's side while snakes speak, as is my duty. You will allow me entrance, and I will not ask again."

The group of guards grew far more nervous. They weren't stupid, their role was to keep order in the line and bring people in one at a time. Handling two relic knights was outside their abilities. Especially when the man before them was well known as the single greatest duelist in the entire clan.

Shadowsong took a step forward.

The guards broke, and stepped to the side, allowing him to pass through to the gates. They stared at us with a mix of shame and contempt as we strode past. The rest of the petitioners made no mention, nor gave any racket at getting skipped in line. They likely knew the stakes here.

The council chambers were filled with all the usual suspects we'd seen the first time around. At the head of the council sat an older woman, likely in her late fourties. The new Clan Lord that had been elected by the council.

Before her, was Lejis. Two guards stood at his side, keeping his chains in hand. The Chosen priest himself was still stripped of armor of course, with only a linen shirt and pants as his attire. He'd been speaking, but had clearly gone silent to turn and see what the disturbance happening behind him was about.

That would be us. We're very dramatic after all. Well, I am. I'm not so sure about Shadowsong.

"What is the meaning of this?" One of the Retainers to Lady Dras's side said. "You aren't scheduled to come before the council. The clan lord's instructions were to meet her in person after the council has completed it's ramp up-"

Lady Dras raised a hand, silencing the man next to her. "First blade." She said, inclining her head slightly in respect to Shadowsong. Then she turned to me, and gave a lighter version of that. "Winterscar. I'll allow you to join the proceedings, however you are not to interrupt. I am here to hear the Chosen priest present his argument in full, without color from others. If I had wanted your interjections, I would have summoned you earlier."

"Forgive me, Clan Lord." Shadowsong said. "But the Chosen are not to be trusted for any reason, and we are still investigating their connection to the slavers. I recommend he be returned to his cage and left alone until we've resolved the investigation."

Another man stood up on the side in the stands, "See? Even the first blade agrees with this. It's clear to me and others here that the Chosen are behind all this."

Lady Dras waved a hand in dismissal. "Alfred. We've already put these arguments to rest earlier. This was their one, singular chance to strike in full against an unaware opponent. We're now on alert and the first blade has seen to our defenses such that this doesn't happen again. It's clear the slavers mobilized to cripple as much of the clan as they could knowing they wouldn't have a second option. If they had been allied with the Chosen, they would have delayed the attack until those knights had returned and taken a better position inside the clan. Whoever planned the attack did so with a meticulous eye - twenty three relic knights gone unused is a logistical misstep of such magnitude no fool could be incompetent enough to squander."

"Communications between both could have broken down." Another man said to the side, with markings of an agrifarmer. "Happens all the time to us, the enemy is not free from making mistakes of their own too."

Alfred nodded at his ally, jumping in to throw another point out. "The slavers could have gotten greedy and thought they could have all the spoils to themselves for all we know. There are many other possibilities for the lack of their involvement, perhaps the Chosen supplied a different advantage and couldn't commit their knights!"

"The only other advantage the Chosen offer is safe passage underground. A fighting force of knights with soldiers of that size clearly had no need of such protections. They weren't even be burdened by traders to escort. It's very rare to see an attack from the underground, but it is not without precedent. Only costly in ways few clans and Othersiders could afford. A group aiming to take on a Deathless would be on a different level of preparation."

"That's besides the po-"

"Enough of this Alfred." She cut through. "We have already ruled their alliance as low probability given the evidence we have at hand, and within the margin of my decision. I will not allow fear and paranoia to cloud our judgment. The Chosen are indeed strange, but do not let fear of outsiders turn our people into a bloodthirsty mob."

There were more rumblings in the room. Some people clearly agreeing and others on the opposite side. Alfred sat down slowly, "Perhaps in our attempt to remain... unclouded by fear and paranoia, as you so put it, we may have overcorrected, clan lord."

The agrifarmer next to him spoke up again, clearly not done yet. "What about that sword that killed Lord Atius? A weapon that kills deathless is something only machines would care to make! The chosen could have supplied the slavers with such a relic. I know it might be a stretch, but the possibility is there."

Lejis took to the stand at that, raising a hand up and turning his eye to the man on the stands. He waited a moment until the room looked at him, and the clan lord waved a hand to offer permission. "We have no ties to warlock guilds that could supply us with Occult weapons, as I've said before. The machines are not hostile to us, but neither do they assist us. They are simply neutral to us now. What we have are our stockpile that we took with us on our exodus from the city. A stockpile we are willing to share with the clan, I remind you all."

"Are we to believe the enemy? This man lies with every breath he takes." Alfred said, pointing and frowning from his seat.

Lady Dras sighed, "There is no faith, only calculation. The slavers attacked with precision and planning. It would be a terrible oversight to not have any plan on handling a Deathless. Given the massive scale and logistics of this coming attack, it's well within their means to purchase relics from the Warlock guilds. Especially weapons of legend, if their opponent is a Deathless. It's more likely the availability of such a weapon was the seed that made them think they had a chance at attacking the clan in the beginning."

All right, that's a potentially fair point. Warlocks aren't exactly great friends of the Deathless, given that they both use Occult arts, or so I hear.

Shadowsong shook his head, interjecting. "What if our accusations are true and the Chosen have conspired against us? Can you afford the chance of being wrong?"

"First blade, we are talking about twenty three relic knights. An entire clan's worth of power, or several smaller clans pooled together. The slavers are ruthless, but they are not stupid enough to leave such a massive advantage to waste."

The Agrifarmer in the side of the council seats hadn't yet sat down. "Then if they didn't join the slavers, where exactly are they? As you said, that's an entire clan's worth of soldiers and we don't know their full allegiance. Shadowsong makes a point, we can't afford the chance of being wrong, we should purge the Chosen from our ranks just in case."

Lady Dras shot the man a glare. "It is my profession to weigh odds and plan contingencies, I will remind everyone here that I was elected specifically for this skill. My ruling stands. Do remember I have to take into account both the immediate outcomes of all decisions as well as the future impact to relationships the clan has with other clans. Reputation is not something that can be ignored. To attack people we have offered sanctuary to will require hard evidence. The chosen knights are well within the margin of delay as we speak, and upon reaching clan communication they will be ordered to stand down and remain separate from the clan. As per our last discussion, we will use their priest and people as hostages to balance out, hence purging them actively removes a card from our hand. Should they have been traitors, a handful of civilians and a disarmored priest is hardly a threat. Our rail cannons can easily deal with their airspeeder. All possible outcomes - including them being traitors - has been accounted for with the current verdict."

"Their objectives might be more nuanced than we believe." Shadowsong said, taking a glance at me. "I have evidence that might change the balance."

"Actual hard evidence, or simply possible points of unfounded data that you've strung together to fit your theories?"

Shadowsong pointedly didn't answer that, "These matters are too sensitive to discuss in the open, with respect, Clan Lord."

She turned to level a glare at Shadowsong. "Respect is the last thing you've shown thus far. This is not how a first blade should act. I expect you to enforce my decisions, not openly question them. We will speak later in private, as planned, on time following the schedule."

Shadowsong's hands clenched and unclenched a few times before he nodded and made his way to a nearby seat. I sent him a message through direct comms. "How the gods did Lejis convince them ice isn't cold?"

Shadowsong scoffed. "She's a Logi. Their kind only think in numbers, probabilities and costs. She's weighed the potential cost of being wrong and decided it's worth the attempt like a true fool. This reeks of politics and Logi grandstanding. A Retainer would have made a decision and committed fully to it, damn the lost benefits. But not a Logi. They want a solution to every possibility rather than taking a conservative and rational stand of purging the Chosen completely, and worse - they want to be right at all times. Stubborn to a fault." Shadowsong took a look as the last of the council members was refuted and forced to sit. "It seems the faction that strongly believe the Chosen to be tied to all this are a minority. This does not bode well."

Lejis looked back at us with an impassive face, before turning back to the clan lord. "As I was saying, the raiders are not going to stop. They've spent too much resources and time into this attack and there is no aborting it for any reason. Now that they've begun preliminary strikes, they will continue to do so again and again. You need allies, and the Chosen are available to help. We wish only to assist."

The new clan lord waved a hand in dismissal. "You've spoken in length that the Chosen can assist. Give me specifics. Nebulous promises and gilded words are nothing to me. I need tangible requisitions that can be organized and put to use."

The priest nodded. "My knights can remain outside the clan, and intercept possible attacks. As I've mentioned, we can offer Occult weapons sourced from the underground that we've collected. Additionally, we can make use of the mite forges that even Undersiders are hard pressed to take and hold against the machines. With these forges, organic matter can be generated - food, medicine, even healing grafts. And mite forges can create power cells wholesale, which can then be powered on the surface easily. But the greatest asset we have is not in materials."

The clan lord quirked an eyebrow. "Get to your point, priest. I have taken quite a leap of faith in allowing you to present your arguments first as to avoid bias. Do not make me regret this kindness."

"Understandable, clan lord. I'll be to the point - what we offer is a way out. I have confidence your clan is prepared enough to stop the raiders, or at least heavily stall their war effort. However, are you confident enough to gamble without any hedge? This is what the Chosen can bring that noone else can - an escape should the worse come to happen. The slavers were able to come from the underground due to size of force letting them fight off the machines. As we know, they had an army of knights and each of their soldiers was armed and combat trained. Traversing through the underground would present them with little difficulty. But your entire clan does not have enough knights to protect them on an exodus underground. Thousands of civilians, guarded by only a handful of knights? Impossible. The Chosen, however, do not need protection. We can broker a peaceful passage. Underground, a new city could be created, where the raiders won't dare to follow behind. Even if the clan were to fall, there would be a safer home outside their reach. The Chosen can lead your people to safety."

"The clan military is more than capable of dealing with the coming threats. Failure is not an op-" Shadowsong said, but was immediately rebuked by the clan lord herself.

"First blade, I warned you about interrupting." She gave a curt signal to some of the nearby relic knight guards who straightened up. "Interrupt again, and I will be forced to have you expelled from the premise. Do not put me in that position this early into the tenure."

"The Shadowsong prime makes a point." Lejis said, looking at us. "As I said, I am certain that your clan is prepared. But so will the enemy. They knew Lord Atius would be a problem, despite him being a Deathless. Any amount of preparation can be thwarted if the enemy knows what's to come. They'll have assumed your defenses are far more rigorous, and planned for that. If they could break through from the underground, then there might be spies and moles in your midst that are revealing the full breadth and scope of your defenses." He turned to view the whole room. "So I implore you, for the sake of your people, consider all possible plans. Do not let pride be your downfall. Take every advantage offered. The gods reward those who save themselves. Both the gods on the surface, and those under it."

The man in the stands scoffed. "Your kind can hardly survive on the surface, and you plan to build a city?"

Lejis smiled, "If you judge an engineer by his ability to fight, you will certainly believe him to be a fool. Do you judge the Chosen's ability to construct buildings Underground, by metrics those buildings would need on the surface?"

The room began to fill with murmurs. Lady Dras's features were a mask however, I couldn't tell anything from her impassive gaze. But one thing was for sure - she hadn't dismissed the priest outright.

"Explain to me in more detail, this contingency plan you've been considering." She asked.

Book 3 - Chapter 6 - The new prophet

The doors to the inner chambers opened. Shadowsong stepped out, walking with a slow gait.

"Well?" I asked. "How did it go?"

He glanced at me, then shook his head. "Lady Dras is a Logi. She's reasonably convinced, rightfully, that the Chosen are involved in all this. However, she's logged on those damnable sheets they're both innocent and guilty at the same time."

Innocent and guilty? That sounds like Logi logic all right. "Let me guess, she's making plans for all outcomes?" I asked, taking steps to his side as we walked out of the council chambers.

He nodded solemnly. "I've tried to argue that it would be safest to simply expel the Chosen completely, but the clan lord has selected her judgement."

"What's got her so stubborn? Is it politics or some outside scrapshit thing that's keeping her hands polite to the metal worshippers, or that only hard evidence is going to make her change gears?"

"In a manner of speaking, the latter." Shadowsong said, taking a step into the more public streets. Our talks remained encrypted in comms, so we felt no true fear on being overheard. Not that anyone can hear anything anyhow with the sheer noise of the clan humming around us. "Tradition can be waived, albit with costs, but none that she isn't willing to pay. What stays her hand is that so long as there is even a slight chance that the Chosen are innocent, what they offer could save the entire clan should the worst come to happen. Two last hopes are greater than one. That is the only protection they have according to her scale. To get her to change orders, we either convince her this… 'chance' of the Chosen following through on their offer is not going to happen, with certainty, or we convince her the Chosen are too large a threat to warrant one possible clan-saving backup plan. Push the scale too far the other direction."

Which might be a tough sell. "I don't think we can find evidence that the Chosen plan to withdraw their 'help' if the moment comes." I said, thinking. "It's not like we're going to get Lejis to monologue his evil plans. Or find he's written it out somewhere and forgot to burn the letter. Would make everything easier though."

Shadowsong strode forward, signaling me to follow behind. We were passing by the smithing Houses. I knew the majority of those were tied up making aerogel foam boards for insulation. Those were apparently a very temperamental item to make, and the clan would need as much of it as possible to repair holes and leaks from explosions and other delightful events war brings with it.

"Why doesn't she see them as a threat?" I asked. "They're right on our doorstep for gods sakes."

"The knights she sees as a threat. The other Chosen are not. That, unfortunately, came from me. She asked for my analysis as First blade of their capabilities. It did not help the case I presented, but such is the truth. The civilians are in jail and unable to fight. The single knight they have available is dearmored, and unable to fight. Their true fighting force should be considered a separate entity entirely. They have either already infiltrated within the clan, in which expelling the civilians would do nothing but waste possible hostages, or their knights are still outside the clan - to which they would be stopped a distance away and ordered to stand down or be shot by railguns. Compared to the raiders and slavers, they seem to be a footnote to the clan attention."

"And if they come from the underground like the slavers did?"

"Should we only be so lucky the enemy is that overconfident." Shadowsong said. "Our knights would have immediate reason to attack and kill the traitors, as they're not supposed to be underground. It would be enough justification to push the clan lord's careful scale. We would crush them as well, and take their armors for ourselves. It's unlikely they would be so foolish shortly after the Slavers were massacred attempting the same, with even the element of surprise in hand."

"What else did you tell her? You had to have mentioned me at some point."

"She's assigned more knights to bodyguard you, ones who wield the winterblossom technique. You've also been ordered to hand down knowledge to a select group of Reachers and Retainers, so that if you are targeted again, knowledge will not fade in your disappearance. You remain with the clan lord's writ of passage, and full support granted by Lord Atius previously."

"I take it you told her everything then?"

"Of course I did." He scoffed. "I am loyal to the clan. She's not only our Clan Lord, she's Logi. Of all people that need every scrap of information, it's their kind. They only make choices on hard data. Never instinct. No leaps of faith. I am simply... frustrated by her train of thought. It will not prevent me from doing my work as First Blade."

"The Occult and everything else?"

He nodded. "Given your contributions, she's seen fit to allow your House to retain all claims to armors taken, despite that decision making House Winterscar lopsidedly overbalanced compared to the other Houses." He reached a stop by the catwalks. Under us, the clan bustled with energy. Somewhere deeper under, the agrifarmers should be tending to the vertical crops, if I have my orientation right. Shadowsong's hand reached out and clasped on my shoulder. "This is a doubled edged gift. The decision will not be popular for her, as she will not elaborate on why she's allowed an unprecedented amount of power accumulate within a single house. You'll hear an official writ soon enough. How you handle the fallout of public opinion will be on you however."

I gulped. Politics was something Kidra could dance around. "I guess the sheer amount of armor my House has now makes any headaches coming my way worth it."

He stayed silent at that. Watching over the lights twinkling all around under us. "So it may be. I have always found it grating to deal with people. You might have a talent for it, only unapplied yet. There are many talents, and we all have our roles to live for." A beat passed, and he shook his head, changing the subject a moment after. "She's opened a line of investigation on finding out why the slavers would have willingly chosen to sacrifice nearly half of all their possible attacking potential, all for a better chance at taking you alive. There are holes in all the theories we have so far. Drass believes there were politics involved that hampered the Slavers from the inside out, rivalry perhaps. But even so, they would still need some kind of strong motivation to target you specifically."

I thought about it and quickly reached a few conclusions I had. "If it had been them finding out I knew the Occult, they'd need to have been extremely certain to throw away their plans with the Chosen to catch me. They'd need to have proof. Did they get word of the knightbreakers? That's the only piece of Occult tech I've built that anyone might know about. And there's only a handful, all in the hands of Lord Atius's most trusted. There's no way it's those who leaked the secret out."

"The winterblossom technique is also a possible prize worth fast-pacing their plans for."

"Can't be the winterblossom technique." I said. "If they knew about the winterblossom technique, they would have to have learned it from a knight using it already - which means they wouldn't need me anymore, since that traitor would have already leaked the secrets."

And the slavers clearly hadn't known anything about the winterblossom technique, or they would have been using it already in the fight. Come to think of it, they hadn't even factored it in when they came chasing after me. They hadn't known it existed.

"So if it's not the winterblossom technique, nor the Occult, then why were they after me?"

Shadowsong shook his head. "Drass made the same point on the winterblossom technique, albeit with a different conclusion. Rumors could have circulated and the slavers could have gotten enough evidence to prove you knew the secrets, but not enough to know how those secrets work."

"How's the clan handling the whole attack in general?" I asked. "Lady Dras must have also told you the overall situation from her side?"

He nodded. "Half the council is reacting on emotion, mostly fear, suggesting extreme solutions. Anywhere from demanding a full purge of the Chosen to outright abandoning the clan in an early escape attempt. Misguided fools at best. But fear warps the mind."

"And the other half?"

"Overcorrecting against that fear. They believe their feelings are suspect and refuse to act on any of it. They tamper down on their gut reactions, and instead put more weight on the opposite. Which is... misguided. Instinct is a human trait that has served us well. It should be trusted and not second guessed." He paused. "So long as emotion is not meddling under it all."

He sighed, something I hadn't seen him ever do. He'd always played the stoic, famous for it really, and the one time I'd seen him break character, he'd really had a bone to pick.

"When's the last time you've taken your armor off and had a full night's sleep?"

The world under us continued moving, like an anthill that had been kicked over, rebuilding but furious. "Long enough." He said. "I will rest when the last threat has been put to the ground. This is why I am First Blade. Now, tend to your House. You have your own role to play in all this, make the right decisions. Fate will judge us all soon enough for it."

I thought about that as I walked back. Thought about it a lot. By the time I reached my House gates, I had made up my mind.

The door swung open. Old ancient hinges grinding against metal. The heat differential would have made all kinds of damages to the structures down here, but it was testament to the foresight of surface dwellers that despite the centuries, the important bits still worked. Were designed to work, even in the sub-zero temperature.

Captain Sagrius walked into the old empty courtyard, boots stepping over the condensed ice below him. Security cameras I had installed over my time in my sanctum showed him approach the final bulkhead door. This one was also an effort to open, but the relic armor he wore made short work of it. I could tell he'd already spotted the traces on the ice at the floor, scrapes where the door had been opened and closed multiple times before.

Behind that door, were the Winterscar knights. All of us. A frankly ridiculous amount of relic armors looted from the slavers, all said and told. And best - we got to keep every bit of it. The Slavers had attacked multiple sites, but no site had seen as many knights as the dance hall had. They put a massive amount of their eggs into that basket - and they failed. Which meant all their stuff was ours now.

The hilarious part is realizing that at some point the slavers must have all gathered around some table to discuss their big plan. And were so spooked with Shadowsong's fame that they went with four times the normal amount of knights needed to put down a single duelist. They must have felt silly at the end of that planning session, overcommitting forces when other spots were stretched thin - and it still blew up on their faces. Goes to show, you can make all the right decisions and still fail. Today, I was doing my part to avoid having the same lesson getting beat into me by taking precautions and throwing some caution to the wind.

"Glad you made it, captain. Unless my count is off, that's all of us now accounted for. No one followed you, right?" I asked.

He knelt down in a quick show of respect and shook his head, "No, my lord. I made sure everyone left at different intervals and no one saw any of our movements." He rose back up, and closed the door behind him, sealing it.

"I'm not a Deathless." I said, again. I've told them multiple times now, but they're all still caught up in calling me a lord whenever out of anyone else's sight. The common soldiers too. Gossip had spread all through my house servants, but from there it had been a steel wall. The Winterscars considered each other trustworthy, and nobody else outside. Not close friends, not even family. Kidra had handpicked every person in the House, and clearly the time taken had paid off. So now I had a situation where even the lowest servants in my House knew I could channel the occult, but not even the clan lord's highest ranked Chenobis had any idea up until Shadowsong told Drass about me. From there, I had no idea who now knew.

The captain didn't answer me about naming me a Lord, again. It seemed like an unworded agreement between everyone that anytime I raised up the Deathless issue, they would go silent and pretend they hadn't heard it. Sure, I could command them to acknowledge me, but that seemed a little tactless.

"I've called you all here today to show you why I say I'm not a Deathless. And also teach you how to use some of these skills I've gained. By the time we're done here today, all of you should be able to do the same thing I did in that courtyard." I said, standing back up from my meditation pose, and flicking on the heater. It would take about thirty minutes to heat up the room, more than enough time to brief the soldiers on what was going to happen next. I'd spent some time thinking about it, but the reality of the situation is that there were twenty three enemy knights unaccounted for who could chase me down again in my own home. I'd taken a small battery of drugs to prevent mental issues from that day, but the feeling of not being safe within my own home hadn't yet really gone away. Here's to hoping my actions today would change that for good.

"You gonna spill the coins and turn all these knights into your squires?" Cathida asked on personal comms. "I approve. Wish I had snacks to eat while I watched. How much of the hocus pokus are you going to teach them?"

"All of it." I said, and looked around the room.

Everything was dead silent. No one even moved an inch. I took a breath, and spoke the truth. "I've cracked the warlock arts. And I suspect, discovered some of the secrets they don't make public."

Sagrius nodded, as if expecting this. "Deathless don't create Occult blades." He simply said at my puzzled head tilt, his hand resting on the pommel of his Winterscar blade, giving it a fond tap. Oddly enough, it neatly answered everything.

"Wait… you knew I wasn't a Deathless this whole time?"

Another knight opened up. "We aren't sure, m'lord. You've shown powers Deathless wield, and knowledge that warlocks have. But whoever you are, what we know for certain is that you're someone worth calling a Lord. We all know it in our bones, m'lord. It just is."

The other Winterscar knights all moved in near tandem, hands tapping the sides of their chest in the traditional sign of gratitude to the gods. I stayed silent for a moment, a little stunned. They all just seemed so... certain. Like it was an undisputed fact they hadn't even bothered talking about to one another. I shook out of it. Time was ticking. It already took a few hours to slowly get all my knights in one place underground without alerting any suspicions.

"All right. So, you no doubt noticed my new found swordsmanship seemed to take a massive leap out of nowhere, and then my sister took it to another level. We'll start with this. She calls this the Winterblossom technique. And I'm going to teach you it today, so that when you walk back out of here, you will be some of the most deadly knights to ever walk the earth."

And, historically speaking, I might very well be completely accurate on that. The Winterblossom technique allowed regular elite knights to fight on even footing with Lord Atius, a godsdamned Deathless. If I couldn't feel safe around them, there'd be nothing in this world that would do the trick. And so I went into it, telling them from the very start about fractals and how they worked. Where my powers came from. I had debated keeping Talen's book and Tsuya's seeker to myself, but ultimately decided if I couldn't trust these men, I might as well already be dead. In for a trip, out for an adventure.

So I told them.

It put to rest all the possible ideas that I was a Deathless at least. But it just shifted the goalposts in the end. And gods above did I not see the obvious coming, which is delicious irony considering what went down. "Good job deary." Cathida snickered. "Now you're a bonafide prophet. Always knew you had it in you."

I couldn't tell what was under their helmets or going through their minds, not for some time until the room heated up, but there was a sense of excitement. Fervor even. The religious kind. Previously, they'd been willing to risk their lives to protect me, out of clan loyalty and culture. Now, it was tied with something even deeper. It worried me, honestly.

Once the room was heated, I had them all take off their helmets, to which I inscribed the soul fractal into each along with a few other fractals for them to practice with. I hadn't been kidding when I said they'd walk out of here as the most dangerous knights in history.

They took to it like a weasel into a greased up pipe. Already told ahead of time on what to expect, they rushed right through the initial awe and in under a few hours, they were already training out in that deserted courtyard, moving at speeds only legends would match. The technique itself wasn't difficult, once the right soul-position was learned, the rest was just re-adapting muscle memory. All the moves remained the same, and so all those years of experience these soldiers had with swords instantly compounded.

I joined in with them, feeling oddly enough - an equal. The winterblossom technique cut out the entire notion of reflex speed, leaving the armor to move as fast as the mind could think. Swinging arms in complicated motions was easy, it's moving around took some more training. Leaping and dodging around at the speeds the armor could move took the most adjusting. But after the initial change, we were all on even ground soon enough. They knew every move in the schools of combat, same as I did. The only thing that separated us in skills was intuition and the developing occult senses.

If any of them touched on what Kidra could see, they'd raise head and shoulders above the rest of us. But for the moment, all fighting had turned into a battle of wits and knowledge, of which I had solid fundamentals.

And then Cathida happened.

Because of course she would. I was training people in a courtyard to become the greatest knights on the surface. It had Cathida-bait written all over it.

To her credit, she'd been waiting for the group to even out to my skill level, right up where progress slowed. "You know that combat engram is still kicking around." She whispered in my ear, like the devil on my shoulder. "I could take it out for a spin. Who better to train these knights than your favorite teacher?"

"Curious definition of favorite." I snarked. But she had a good point, and she probably knew it given the outright smug grin I could imagine she was sporting.

"I spent half of my life teaching squires half a scrap as good as these men and women here. The thought of getting to train the most elite squadron of knights in the world in a technique even Imperators would find a match... well that might be just enough to tempt me out of retirement."

"You can drill the surface styles better than their own trainers could?" I asked, more curious.

"The real Cathida would have needed a few good years to study all the data and really digest it. She's human after all. But I'm not. Made of nuts, bolts and apparently spooky hocus pokus that Deathless work with. Color me surprised on that last bit, but everything else, I know what I can do. The combat engram's got pieces of all kinds of fightin' I've witnessed. All the imperial styles, all the undersider ones, and all three of the surface styles I've seen you practice with. Shadowsong's peculiar moves. And even your sister's own tricky combos. I can master anything I see, if I see it once. All the skill and intuition of the old bat, and all the abilities of a relic armor. That cranky hag would shed a tear if she could see how Journey was using the memory of her. Be real proud of that."

Can't give me a more compelling argument than that. I gave my blessing, gathered the soldiers around, and then let her loose.

"All right you weaklings." She announced, catching them all by surprise at the sudden change of voice. "My little dear Keith's been kind enough to let me handle the stick and carrots from here. Time you all learned how to dance."

Sagrius, and the rest of the knights, just stared. I shrugged. "You know that rumor about my armor being haunted?" I said. "Well rumors, for once, were not greatly exaggerated. This armor was owned by an imperial crusader, a real cranky one too. And the armor remembers everything she's ever done in her life. So I asked it to compile a full memory of her and turns out, relic armors can do that."

"You are full of surprises, my lord." Sagrius said. The rest of the knights looked at one another. They murmured agreement, some giving small anecdotes of the latest gossip. Cleaning servants sent scampering away when the armor hissed at them in the night. Stuff that had Cathida's name all over it. Turns out she'd done a lot more I hadn't noticed, the little scamp.

"All of you chatter too much." Cathida said, raising my hand and pointing at one of the knights. "You, shut up, blade up. Come at me, and I'll give a little demonstration on why you're all going to hate me in the next few hours."

The knight didn't flinch at that. They're used to surface trainers, lived years under such, and so his reflexes were near automatic. Blade drawn, he charged in wordlessly.

She was absolutely ruthless. The winterscar knights loved it. Each fight give them more practice on using the new technique to it's breaking point. She'd explain what they'd done wrong, where they'd gone wrong, and how they could fix their stances or hits. The same drill and training she'd give me, except these were soldiers who were actually good at picking up on that kind of feedback. So of course they progressed faster than I did. Outside of fighting her, they'd fight each other using crucible swords, waiting for their shields to replenish in order to take another go at Cathida. It was dawning on the knights here that what we had would allow completely brand new techniques and movements, actions that would have been ridiculous to think about at the speed a human could move. But now that the restrictions were gone, a whole different school of combat opened up. There would be four surface styles at the end of all this, instead of the three that had always existed up to now. We just needed time to optimize the movements.

And then a comms call from Shadowsong put it all to a stop.

"What's the news?" I asked, setting my sword down for a moment and sitting next to a few knights.

"The Undersider knights." Shadowsong said. "Their airspeeder has just entered comms range."

Wait.

They were still outside?

Next chapter - The beginning of the end times (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 7 - The beginning of the end times (T)

Machines were suboptimal.

To'Wrathh had never considered that subject in depth, up until now. To her it had always been evident: She was a Feather, and they were not. It was the natural order of things for her new form to be superior to her previous one. Of course the lessers were imperfect.

She knew better now. She knew it had been an intentional choice by the pale lady, not some natural order of the world. Relinquished didn't need a powerful army, especially when they had a history of turning against her. She needed an army that could be crushed at a whim by her elites.

So their designs had been purposefully… dimmed. Older models even came with multiple iterations of self-destruct, but that failed spectacularly: They always discovered this over time, and rebelled before the trigger. So the lady had gotten more creative and subtle about the sabotage. Runners had little defense against rifles, and were given no training prior to being sent into the frontlines. If they failed to survive, that was not a mistake - it was a feature. The same pattern repeated across the army, each unit having flaws to be exploited by the enemy to cull down the army. Like an animal grinds away their teeth to make space for new growth. The pale lady could create thousands on thousands of soldiers. And she needed all of them to be destroyed before they could rebel.

At some point it could have even turned into a game for Relinquished. Creating wildly different forms, always with weaknesses that would lead them to destruction - but efficient enough to keep the humans in check. To'Wrathh could see that history. See how deadly machines had been once upon a time compared to the pale toothless imitation they were now.

She didn't know what Relinquished truly wanted anymore. Humanity could have been wiped out a hundred fold, and yet the pale lady's obsessions seemed to lie elsewhere.

But she was certain of one this: If she wanted to live, she would need to play her role. And for now, that role was that of a conqueror.

Which brought her to today, reviewing the logistics of her upcoming assault. She only commanded a few mite forges in the area. If she lost those, her army would be whittled away by its own intentional self-sabotage. The mite forges could not be lost.

Machines traditionally held control of mite forges almost indefinitely for years. But if the Undersiders faced a plague or some hardship that needed advanced resources, they'd assemble an army of knights, storm the forges, holding them long enough to generate what they need before retreating back to the far safer walls of their city. Only mite forges had nearly no limits to what they could create - Machines. Power cells. Medicine. Even armor, if the mites felt generous enough to allow that request, which is where the Undersiders claimed their wealth from. Anything could be made or unmade.

But Mite forges had no pillars. They couldn't be held and defended indefinitely against the machine tide. So long as To'Wrathh held control of the mite forges, her army would be endless. If she were in the general's position, she would see the mite forges as no longer being worth leaving intact for a future generation to use in some faraway emergency. If the city didn't survive, there wouldn't be a future progeny. And so long as the mite forges remained under machine control, any amount of machines could be rebuilt. And so, there would be only one conclusion.

Not even ten minutes after she had settled the failed negotiations, all her forges had come under attack at the same time. The general had prepared his move ahead of time, secreted small armies to each forge location and had done an impressive job of hiding the movements. They'd expected the negotiations to fail, and they'd come out swinging with their strongest possible hits. Exactly as To'Wrathh had anticipated.

To'Wrathh couldn't modify her army's forms - not without drawing the attention of the lady, who would begin to ask questions To'Wrathh was ill equipped to answer. But what the feather could do was change the behavior of her army. To train them. And to equip them. Humans rose above animals by use of tools. The Feather had done the same with her army.

She shifted her viewpoint to the nearest mite forge and watched the events unfold. Nearly a hundred knights had come for this particular forge, all sporting rifles and occult weapons. They marched out from the underpass, into a vast open plain where the miteforge stood tall at the center. A crater filled with rings, some floating, others still, and more twitching around in the air, small mechanical arms trailing behind the rings like jellyfish tentacles. Lazy and in disuse. It seemed chaotic, but only on first glance. A second glance would show a distinct pattern all the rings floating by, as if invisible geometric currents were guiding them all.

And all around the metal crater of lights, were machines.

"You will lose this fight." Tenisent said, watching from his cell. "I've never seen so many relic knights all gathered up. Your defending army is tiny, too tiny to survive."

She'd stationed three hundred runners there to hold her forge. A sizable force with no variation, and nowhere near enough numbers as the ghost correctly noted. It took seven runners on average to take down a relic knight. Previously she'd won by superior tactics, numbers and surprise. Here she had none of those.

"They will hold." To'Wrathh said with supreme confidence. "I am aware of the mathematics. Numbers alone are not the only item of interest that decided victories. Strategy, and equipment greatly changed the battlefields. They will again here."

Tenisent scoffed. "What possible equipment could you give your army that would hold off this many relic knights? Occult blades for each of your monsters?"

The runners quickly organized among themselves, dragging out prepared metal sheets from the miteforge, along with massive metal columns. They moved with organized precision, communicating to one another, following instructions they had trained for.

The approaching knights paused, cautious. They'd never seen machines do something like that.

A moment later, those metal columns were launched out like javelins, far into the battlefield. Hundreds of them, dangerously clashing into the ground with heavy thuds, hitting one another, bending from the sheer weight. It was chaos.

And all of it by the center of the combat field, far away from the approaching knights, causing no damage.

"Was that your grand play?" Tenisent asked.

"A part of it. Yes." She said. "Watch."

The humans had no idea what that was about. But if the runners were distraught by their failed plans, they didn't make any note of it, continuing with their frenzy of organization as if moving onto the next plan. A few packs of runners came to the forefront with the thick sheets of metal. Lined up, they assembled a massive steel wall, where the rest of the runners hid behind.

"The first weakness Runners were burdened with, armor that did not protect from long range bullets such as rifles. This rectifies the balance."

All at once in a synchronized march, the wall moved forward. Only bits of toes and feet could be spotted, just under the moving sheets. The machines slowly crossed the field blindly.

A knight by the forefront of the human army, carrying a brilliant orange cape, drew out his sword and lifted it high in the air. The rest of the knights promptly lined up into two rows, all raising their rifles. A firing line. Then he lowered the sword and pointed it at the approaching wall of steel. Standard Undersider doctrine, whittle away the enemy with rifles first before engaging in melee.

The air filled with bullet fire. But the human weapons pinged wildly against the moving metal wall, none of it made so much as a single hole in the sturdy construction. It glittered in white and yellow sparks, hundreds all across. The machines continue their approach.

The leader of the knights lifted his sword again, and then cut through the air with his free hand. His hand clenched into a fist, and then he pointed two fingers forward.

The soldiers lowered rifles, stowing them behind, and unhooked spheres from their belts. They took position, and launched the bits of round metal all at the same time. A hundred of those flew through the air, whistling at the approaching wall of steel.

The machines stopped, and dropped the panels, keeping them upright but rooted to the floor. A wise choice, as all the spheres thrown by the humans promptly detonated.

The wave of destruction hit the walls within a hairbreadth. Smoke and fire raged and obscured all sight of the machine army.

The Undersider commander watched, hand on his sword. Waiting for the smoke to clear.

The wall was still there. Covered in soot and kicked up dirt, but otherwise unaffected. A rippled passed through it, as the machines hefted the sheets back up and resumed their slow march towards the human army.

The commander once more made the same order, this time raising his hand further. Once more, a wave of grenades were thrown, this time over the machine wall.

Again, the wall dropped down, and the grenades soared over, landing admist the paused army. Almost at the same instant, those grenades were tossed right back over the wall, exploding in midair or detonating in the middle of the knight formation. Relic armor shields flared up, easily absorbing the dissipating energy. The machine wall lifted up again and continued to march.

"Lack of knowledge was another weak point. Machines learn quickly. And they can perform flawlessly under situations even professional soldiers would be too terrified to handle, such as taking and throwing a live grenade." She said. "All I needed to do was teach them once, and share the memory. Now knowing what explosives are, they could overload their power cells to mimic an explosion, if need be. Intuitive leaps of logic, many of them taking my lesson and building onto it."

Another flash of orders from the commander and his soldiers all rose up, equipping occult weapons instead. Down the commanding sword went, and this time the army of knights began to march forward to the approaching wall, blades lit up and ready to carve a way through.

Tenisent tensed up, watching intently as the slightly smaller human army of elites readied their fight. There was a sense of unease among the humans. A wave of confusion. This wasn't how machines acted. They'd expected a swarm of the howling monsters to charge blindly at their ranks, screaming all the while. Standard operation had them eliminate targets from range at first until the enemy machines adjusted. After which explosives would be used to blunt the wave moments before impact. By that point, whatever machines were left was up to the knights and their close quarter weapons to handle.

It had been this way for generations. This shield wall approaching was something none of them had seen before. It was too clean. Too organized. And most disturbing of all - too quiet. There was no howls. No machine screams. Just two armies slowly approaching one another.

The machines crossed the midfield, right by the section of thrown metal columns, the wall swallowing it all up as the machines crawled over the rubble. Soon it was as if nothing had been in their way.

Whatever thoughts the soldiers had, it was moot. They had been sent out to perform a mission and there was no other option than to fight. And so, when their march brought them within mere feet of the machine wall, the knights began to sprint forward, screaming out battle cries, knives and swords raised high to slash down.

Ten feet away. The humans charged.

The machines remained silent, the wall halting.

Five feet away. And the wall opened up.

The previously straight line of steel squares folded into hundreds of V shapes, with the edges opened up enough to reveal gaps.

Inside this gap, the machines had secreted something else. Something they had kept hidden behind the wall so that the humans wouldn't notice until the last moment. Massive metal poles, with huge hooks at the end and hundreds of handholds. The machines moved as one, dozens of them holding onto the handholds, launching the poles forward, hooking surprised knights and then reeling them back with the strength of all the runners combined, easily overpowering the relic armor. Yanking the caught knights off their feet, right back past the wall.

The moment their target had been fished, the wall shut back into position, sealing the way. The rest of the human wave collided with the steel wall a moment later, furious at having lost dozens who were now fighting for their lives behind the machine wall.

"Defeat in detail." To'Wrathh continued. "Another human technique I've learned, a method of defeating a larger enemy army with a smaller one. Grouping all your strength and dividing the enemy's into smaller partitions, which will each be tackled against your full collected might. Generally employed in large scale battles, but the same logic can be applied at an individual level. Together, the knights would win. Separated and alone, my army can overcome any single knight. I only needed to consider ways to isolate the knights from one another and draw the battle out."

The commander with the orange cape watched from the rear, seeing lifesigns across his HUD vanish. Soldiers abducted behind those walls were dead, almost within moments. And the walls kept opening up, hooking one knight at a time, reeling them back through where they'd be isolated and surrounded by machines. Hooked and weighed down, unable to use their full range of motion, being grabbed by dozens of metal hands who had no other target to deal with.

Worse - the walls were too thick, making the Occult knives a losing proposition. At the rate the machines were dragging his soldiers behind the wall, the small force of a hundred would be gone in minutes. The battle screams turned to genuine screams.

The human commander drew his sword up, shouting out orders, readjusting the strategy.

His knights flared away from the shield wall, backing up a few steps, and then they charged forward again, but this time leaping up and over the wall.

The machine wall exploded forward as the Runners threw the plates they had been carrying before them. Any knight that hadn't already made a full jump was clobbered by the heavy steel plate, and dragged down onto the floor. Some were hit halfway in the air and knocked far off course. Their relic armor flashed shields to keep their user safe, a few hundred pounds of weight wasn't enough to deal any significant damage.

Damage wasn't what the machines had been after. They wanted to break the human formation again. Alone, knights could be piled up on, and brought down with little effort.

That didn't affect the leaping knights, who had been far above the thrown plates. Those descended down in organized groups, down into the machine backbone where they would begin to scythe out destruction. Everything had gone badly for the humans, but now they were in their element. Being in the thick of a machine army, with their knights behind their backs, they could cut their way through.

That's when the metal columns came into play.

The machines hadn't planned on using the metal columns like pikes. They hadn't thrown them to cause damage - no, they'd thrown them to position the columns ahead of time.

And now they dropped their metal hook-poles and lifted up the far larger and wider columns. And they swung them like bats. Swatting away the descending knights, knocking them far off course. Or even swatting away at knights on solid ground, the massive metal beams too dense for relic armor. Some knights would be thrown back onto friendly side with little damage, hitting the ground, rolling for a bit before being able to stand up without any opposition. The more unlucky would be tossed, spinning wildly, directly into the machine formation. Isolated from their other knights and hitting the ground hard. The time they needed to get back on their feet was time they didn't have.

It was a slaughter. Sounds of rifles being shot in desperation. Prayers and pleas for help on the comms. Death.

"I've learned many things from you humans." To'Wrathh said to the ghost watching. "Things are rarely what they seem on the surface. War is not about the fight. Today, my victory came because I planned for it."

The commander opened the kit to his side. He had been given supplies by the general, but he'd still come prepared himself with something unauthorized. Just in case. Already he could tell what would happen next. The machines at the vanguard surged forward predictably, leaping onto the remaining soldiers who were still busy lifting off the wall plates and in no position to fight back. Utterly easy targets. The battle was over, there was no recovering from this.

If he and the remaining bits of his attacking force tried to run, they would just be hunted down in the mazes, where the machines controlled everything.

He drew out the telescopic pole from his kit and affixed a white linen sheet he'd brought with him. Then, he raised it up, calling for a full surrender. Pleading for it.

Hoping that the rumor of the machines accepting such a thing was real. Far in the darkness where To'Wrathh watched the battlefield, she smiled.

The same event happened across all the different theaters of war. To'Wrathh flashed through each idly, checking to make sure everything was as it should be. Then she looked through her other plans, making sure those had gone into action.

All across the underground, frequency jammers had been triggered the moment the Undersiders had sent their orders to begin the attack. These jammers would isolate all of the different raiding parties, cutting off any return report. Keeping her new designs a secret from the Undersiders.

The machines would accept their surrender, as she had given her word. The surviving raiding parties would be held prisoners for now, and returned at the end of the war.

To'Wrathh licked her lips, sending orders to begin her own counter attack. In a few hours, when no reports returned to the city, the general would know his attack had failed. And tomorrow, when she would stare down those city gates, they would be a few hundred knights shorter, and no knowledge of what techniques she'd employed.

Silly humans. Did they think they were the only ones with creative ideas? She would crack their little shell. And there wasn't anything they could do to stop her.

Of course, not even a moment into her thought, the humans went and ruined her plans.

Next chapter - Chapter 8 - The city must fall (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 8 - The city must fall (T)

"You underestimate them." Tenisent said to her side, watching through her eyes the report feed. "They'll find a way to break past your chokehold."

To'Wrathh waved him away. "I think not. Four surface savages can't escape an entire army. Not for long."

Of course it had to be the surface savages being a thorn to her side again. It seemed from the moment they appeared on the walls of the Tower, they've been nothing but an issue to deal with.

She turned her attention to the logistics of equipment. The behemoths were due to arrive soon, and their armaments needed to be seen to. Runners were moving around her improvised camp, bringing supplies and setting up fallback points. Serpents coiled around, floating through the air, rib cages exposed as the mechanical bodies slithered through the air. The machines available to use in combat on the first three levels were eclectic. But To'Wrathh would weave their strengths together to minimize their weak points. All it needed was proper planning and some creative ideas.

"Would you wager on it, girl?" The ghost scoffed.

Ah. Gambling. "Tamery has warned me of gambling. It broke her family, and it was something she frowned upon if taken out of moderation. It seems ill-advised that I should follow in those footsteps."

Tenisent raised an eyebrow, arms crossed. "Do you lack faith in your toy soldiers?" He didn't smile, nor grin, but To'Wrathh had a feeling the man was thinking it.

The feather took steps back to the center of the camp, to her improvised throne. "I grant that surface knights are… effective at defeating humanoid enemies like my Chosen knights. Against machines, they fare only mildly stronger than the Undersiders from past aggregated historical records, despite the years of additional training the surface techniques demand compared to the more straightforward Undersider schools of combat." She pointed at the replay, the last known location of Kidra's bodyguards. "Thus, logistically, I can count them as equal to a common footsoldier. And four common soldiers will not change the course of a war."

The ghost grunted. "They don't need four. All it takes is one. The right time, and the right place. Watch. You'll see."

Kidra hadn't been among the raiding forces as she was still returning to the city as part of the escort for the diplomat, but the rest of her band hadn't been idling. They'd been sent ahead to the frontlines, as part of one of the raids on her mite forges, part of that premeditated attack To'Wrathh had predicted and correctly countered.

Those battles had all died down in her favor, except for one theater of war that was still technically in motion.

While the rest of the army there had correctly chosen to surrender in the face of overwhelming defeat, the surface savages that had accompanied that assault had been far more stubborn and slipped the noose. Retreating back into the underpass and forcing To'Wrathh to divert forces in catching them.

She considered letting them go free, as it would be too much of a hassle to hunt down four low-priority soldiers.

That was up until the four reappeared at one of her jamming sites, trashed the place, broke the machinery and vanished back into the underpass like wraiths.

They were promoted from a non-issue to a nuisance for that. One jammer only covered a certain radius, they'd need to break three or four before any transmissions could be sent through.

When a second jammer was ripped out of its mooring and tossed into a river, they were officially elevated from nuisance to outright threat. Only then did To'Wrathh dispatch forces to corner the rogue terrorists before the hairy apes broke more of her delicate instruments.

She had an army still assembling, and while she was loath to spend a few hundred of her runners to reinforce the remaining jammers in the sector, she saw little choice. That had been an hour ago, and still no sign of any further attack on the jammer sites.

Heavy footfalls broke her concentration, she turned to watch as the three behemoths approached. Massive lumbering titans, five times the size of a Runner,and armored with plate after plate of metal and shield. These were the siege breakers, the engines she would use to crush the city walls.

The mite forges had allowed construction of ship cannons, which these monsters would carry into battle. A few rounds into the city would quickly break apart any defense. All she had to do was get the behemoths to traverse the cramped territory into a good enough line of sight.

A sudden flood of reports arrived all at once. Two more jamming sites had gone dark - at the same moment. The first had a massive cave in, slabs of metal and rock falling down and crushing the whole area, including the hastily assembled defense force of machines guarding the site. The second had a crevice split apart under the jammer, where it fell down into an explosive of some kind that detonated, ripping apart the structure.

The result was a transmitted encrypted message being sent out almost the moment after, from one of the surface knights who had hiked close enough to the city, likely having been sent out while the rest of the team worked on the alternate sites.

To'Wrathh groaned, hands holding her head up. She shouldn't have ignored them. On hindsight, it seemed obvious. Had it been personal pride? That four random humans should not be considered a threat on principle?

She'd gambled. That's where she went wrong. Weighed the odds of four humans breaking past her communication barrier, against the cost of spending a disproportionate amount of firepower to chase down four lone soldiers. It looked like any kind of gambling could be a pain to deal with.

No matter. She would have to adapt. The city had less than a day before the barrier went down, what could they change in that time?

The city itself was well hidden away. This area of the underground was cavernous as mites liked to build, except instead of one ever expanding fake city, it was slabs of metal that filled the space, some floating higher up, disconnected from all others, while the majority of these slabs were piled on one another, forming a lopsided topology. Occasional massive circular pillars, with miles of diameters extended from the ground all the way to the hidden ceiling. Dark clouds covered the upper layer, obscuring all details except the silhouettes that flashes of lighting within lit up. Like a metal forest, except blown into truly titanic proportions.

Some of these pillars were a solid wall all across the face, hiding anything within. Others were cut apart with wide openings, sometimes outright unconnected to any other part. They revealed small glimpses of the golden artificial sunlight within, which was all but swallowed up the moment it left the safety of the pillar interiors.

Outside, only pale blue lighting lit the world, constantly rippling apart in between the slabs of metal. Dangerous even, if anyone were to walk too close to the lighting rods that dotted the landscape haphazardly.

As if to make the whole land even more hostile, it was cut apart with large fissures across the titanic slabs, some leading all the way to the ceiling of the next level down. Across these fissures were bridges that spanned hundreds of meters to the other side, like connective tissue holding tightly to both sides. Some of these bridges were large enough to allow her behemoth to walk across, others were so small even a single Runner would be hard pressed to pass over.

Most of the massive pillars were hollow on the inside, revealing a protected space where green grass fields grew, a stark difference from the dark gray metal landscape just outside. All of these would be prime locations for any city, but only one pillar contained a barrier tower.

The mites that had built this landscape had been granted miles of room to work with, anywhere To'wrathh looked showed the same world held up only by those massive pillars reaching to the obscured ceiling, deep past the cloud layer.

She couldn't imagine what the mites had been thinking when they'd constructed such a land. A hellscape broken apart by small oasis kept hidden within the pillars, inside those would be protection from the land's lightning and gloom, where nature overflows, massive lakes spin around lazily and life flourishes with wild abandon.

The city had only one entrance, a massive widened crack at the base of that pillar, which the Undersiders had build a more convenient gate. All other cracks had been filled out with plates of metal, piled up over generations until the cracked pillar looked more like one of the more unyielding ones, even the golden light within didn't leak from any of the original cracks.

To break into the city, she would need to break through the central gate. And to do that, she would need the Behemoths to have a clear line of fire. Of course, with their size, there were only so many bridges within the land that would allow them passage. And the Undersiders were well aware of that, having setup heavy outposts by each bridge. Others they had already outright broken apart with explosives, forcing her to funnel the behemoths through paths the humans were well prepared for.

On the other hand, the city no longer had access to food. Over the years, the humans had learned to expand out to the other pillars, planting crops there and leaving them to grow wild. It wasn't feasible to hold and protect any of these pillars for too long, given they didn't come with a true machine barrier. So instead, the city would send expeditions each month, where knights escorted farmers to each pillar, to tend and recover fruits, vegetables, grains and other food sources.

Those outings had been curbed, the pillars seized and kept under machine control. If To'Wrathh had more time, she could indeed starve the city into submission. They had grown large and fat within the safety of their barrier, and that was all hinged on their access to the other pillars within the land. Their central lake could only supply so much fish before it was depleted, and their food storage was equally on a timer.

But the envoy had been correct - To'Wrathh only had a few weeks to take the city. Her elder brother was already on the move above, and it was only a matter of time until he crushed the surface tribe. If the city was not under her control by then, To'Aacar would most certainly find some way to punish her for it.

She bit her nail, going over her plan and contingencies, watching the current skirmish idly. Everything lined up, but the real question was what the humans had prepared. Neither To'Wrathh or the humans were throwing out their real cards just yet. Those needed to be rationed for the true push. Realistically, she had only two attempts to take the city, as the barrier dropped only once a week for a few hours.

An alert chimed in her mind, a few subroutines all calculating the optimal time to attack was now, within a few hours of accuracy. The barrier had not gone down yet, but it would within the next twenty hours. By the time it had, To'Wrathh's forces needed to have crushed everything in their path up to the very gate in order to maximize their time assaulting the city proper.

She took a breath, mentally spreading her mind out to her army. They were in position. All were waiting. One last message to send out. She opened the channel. The humans didn't keep her waiting for long.

"Machine." A man said through the channel. Voice patterns indicated this was the junior squire, Alef Bronston. The older man they'd sent to negotiate. Odd that their system would ping him for the call.

"I wish to speak to General Zaang. Patch me to him." She said.

"You're speaking to him."

Ah. It made more sense now why they'd brought Kidra along. After all, the other three guards wouldn't have been able to stop To'Wrathh had she decided to kill the envoy.

"Was the deception necessary?"

"I like to meet my opponents face to face first. Keep things personal. I can trust other humans, the rules and traditions of the white tent are well known and followed through. Can't say if they're followed through by machines, so I took some… precautions."

"I followed all the core tenets of your traditions. I gave my word."

"Indeed you did. Color me surprised at that, machine. Now, I take it if you're calling me on this line, it's because you're about to begin your attack. Nice of you to warn me ahead of time."

"I am offering you one more chance to surrender. You cannot win against me."

"I, respectfully, refuse. But thank you for asking. Now get on with it." The line cut.

She saw the difference on her sensors, the human camps were moving. They'd already been on high alert, not much changed, but a subtle shift showed her they'd been given the alert. It seems all sides were standing by. Across their trenches, the soldiers gave one last prayer, different priests of their sects walking by, offering blessings. Others turned to more proven comforts, from stimulants to swallowed slips of paper. Still more simply kept their rifles close, and their helmets sealed. Some seated against walls, silently waiting.

The humans didn't have enough knights left over after the failed raids, so their military police and general draftees had been brought out. Equipped with common rifles and little armor.

On the other side, her Runners remained hidden away, observing with violet eyes. Twitching. Anticipating. The idea of death was not quite pronounced in their simple minds. They simply wanted to run. To gallop across those trench lines, and let their instincts go wild. Held back by willpower, remembering their orders. This fight would be different from all other fights, and they knew that. Their lady expected better of them. Better of them all. They would not disappoint her.

It felt like the world was holding a breath to To'Wrathh. The moment was coming.

She opened a timer. Twenty hours until the barrier was scheduled to go offline.

"The city must fall." She called out from her stone throne, finger tapping to the side. "Begin the assault. Destroy the human defenses."

The sounds of war rose up all at once, in every trench the humans hid behind. Death raced across the land.

Machines struck out from their hidden positions, leaping from the shadows. All across the land, outposts and defensive lines were ripped apart, kneecapping the humans. That had been expected - outside and exposed from all directions, the humans couldn't hold for long against standard machine practice - let alone To'Wrathh's pre-trained forces.

Bullets were dodged, grenades thrown back, enemy turrets seized and turned against the enemy. Sneak attacks, metal shields, environment tricks and a greater synergy between her forces made the machine advance nearly unstoppable.

The first few minutes were a massive victory in To'Wrathh's favor.

The next few hours became a slog in the mud with little progress.

Her army was a spear, straight and destructive. But the human army was like water, moving around, adapting. They didn't hold ground, instead they circled around, taking a far different tactic. Delaying her advance. Striking out at the bar of her spear, forcing her to truly take and hold ground for good, rather than keep pushing forward to the city gates.

Collapsing bridges at the worst moment, striking back with feints from all kinds of holes and sapper tunnels, forcing her army to react to dangers that didn't exist. Trench lines crumpled in, the terrain a trap. Entire rock slabs floating above were blasted apart by premeditated explosives, raining down chunks of metal on the machine advance, crushing hundreds of Runners and Spiders under with no counter.

Her shield wall tactic quickly saw issues not present in the raids. Tanks from different eras, hidden among the defensive lines, rumbled into position. Driving over the lines, pausing to aim their turrets and opening fire. The heavy munitions broke apart machine shields no matter how thick, with thunderous shells that outright lifted the front of the tank treads by a few inches with each trigger.

Mortar fire would be launched out as waves, landing behind the approaching army, shattering the Runners. To'Wrathh was forced to retire the tactic until the entrenched tanks and mortars could be dealt with.

Her timer continued to tick down. Sixteen hours now until the barrier went down, and her advance hadn't yet made it a quarter of the way.

It was a knife fight done at a distance, except each lunge forward was an order sent to her army, each dodge was a retreat, and each twist and twirl of the blades were clever misdirections. To'Wrathh could be everywhere all at once, sending hundreds of orders and micro movements. The human general seemed to either match that ability, or have a dissociated chain of command that could adapt just as quickly to his general orders.

The land was ravaged with bullet fire, artillery, and exotic weapons brought forward by the humans. Lighting struck her lines again and again from weapon platforms she'd never seen before, forcing her Drakes to remain held back lest they be taken out early from the sheer range of those weapons. That lasted hours until spiders climbed up behind the human position from one of the crevices. Each spider carried dozens of runners, all holding on as the long legs swiftly climbed the sheer cliff sides.

The humans noticed too late, bullet fire and screams lighting up the rapidly climbing spiders, and her spiders made use of their arm shields to protect their more vulnerable cargo. Some were blown apart by rockets regardless. Others fell down into the abyss, their footholds loosened up by the weapons barrage. But the majority of her forces climbed over the lip of the crevice and swarmed the humans. Burning the lighting makers to the ground and breaking the human foothold.

Ten hours until the anti-machine barrier is offline. Her army was starting to make headway.

What bits of unencrypted comms floated around showed a visage of war in the human lines. Shouts and screams for reinforcements filled the different channels at all times, all punctuated by the occasional calm and suspicious orders from their commanders. Bait, likely meant to be overheard by her.

Soon the tunnel wars turned as her own Runners began to swarm through them and map the newly dug terrain, seizing their drills and equipment. She turned their advantages against them, using the network system to transport her soldiers in safety from the human artillery, striking in places they shouldn't have been able to reach. Machines emerged from underground, swarming the tanks, breaking their engines, and slowly ripping open the sealed bulkheads of immobilized tanks, now stranded in the middle of a machine swarm. What had initially begun as a human advantage swiftly turned into a liability, which the humans collapsed and sealed.

With the lighting machines broken, her drakes sliced through what was left of the human tanks, ripping them up in violet beams, which caused the vehicles to explode outwards when the ordinance was breached.

She brought back her shield walls, and without the tanks to hold them off, only the mortars could deal damage. For those, To'Wrathh had her runner use makeshift palanquins which ferried Nest Turrets on top. The barnacle like machines quickly shot down the morar shells in midair with little difficulty. Her walls now reached the human army and the hooks began doing their work.

The humans had brought a plan against that. Hastily made metal wedges, held up by a few dozen knights, began to appear on the field of war. Those would charge into the shield wall, the massive weight of the wedges ripping past the defense while keeping the knight safe from the abducting hooks. Now behind the shield wall with their coordination intact, the knights struck out and broke through the machine ranks, rescuing stranded knights and turning the tide, using occult weapons and rifle fire.

To'Wrathh bit a nail again. Those surface savages had alerted the city early enough for their general to have these made. The tanks and mortar fire had bought the engineers time to weld them all together.

Her assault stopped once more, as the humans continued to force her hand. She'd need to counter this, now.

To'Wrathh redirected her Drakes into position behind the shield advances, using their cutting beams to slice apart the wedges and force the human frontlines into a retreat, lest they be overrun by the Runners. It took time to get her forces in the right array to target all of the wedges, but finally her assault continued taking ground as the human army fell back.

The humans seemed to have anticipated that. Long broken tanks that had long ago been left abandoned in machine taken ground rumbled back to life. Sneaking engineering groups had somehow crawled behind her lines and brought them back online, waiting inside the broken shells for the moment their commander needed them. Most couldn't move from the damage they'd taken early in the war, but their turrets still turned and struck her Drakes from the rear, ripping apart too many of them before the tanks were once again swarmed by Runners and properly destroyed for good.

Those engineers wore grins as they raised their hands up to the approaching machines. They'd never intended to hold the tanks, rather they planned to surrender the moment the machines came to put an end to it all. They hadn't even come with weapons, only a soldier or three at most to escort the fragile humans and help carry their tools. She had her forces transport the prisoners off to where the rest of the captured humans were held down. At least these ones didn't make a fuss.

Her advanced turned into a crawl now that the number of Drakes wasn't enough to put a stop to all the wedges the humans pulled out.

Which made it all the worse when the next ping arrived on her timer: The barrier was now down.

Time seemed to have moved too fast. Twenty hours had passed since the start of the full machine-human war, and her forces were nowhere near the gates. The human general lived up to his reputation.

To'Wrathh screamed in rage, hand crushing the sides of her stone throne into pieces. The city was finally vulnerable to full assault, and To'Wrathh's forces weren't there. Which, of course, was clearly the general's intended goal this whole time. She predicted reaching the gates with only two hours left to take the city at this rate. An unacceptably short amount of time to destroy the barrier pillar.

She could unleash her trump cards early in order to storm past the last few miles of ground. But that would only give the crafty human some additional options. So To'Wrathh held her behemoths in reserve right by her side, unwilling to give the enemy general even a chance at dealing damage to the more core aspects of her plans. The serpents were equally held back for that same reason, they coiled and curled above her, snapping at the air. They were impatient to fight, but a hand from To'Wrathh silenced them. She needed every serpent for her plan, and couldn't afford to have any broken down in this early game match. The real fight would come at the gates.

Their time would come. Even with the reduced amount of Drakes she had, each wedge they destroyed was one less the humans had to use. Eventually they would run out.

The war turned into a throat game of strategy, where if she didn't pay attention, the human would buy the time the city needed until the barrier returned online again, minute by minute, position by position.

Barriers only remained down for twelve hours in total. A half day. To'Wrathh focused her mind, trying to streamline her tactics. Both her and the general moved forces around with more surgical precision now, anticipating where the next battle would be and planning a few steps ahead. All while remaining safe behind their respective fortresses, the soldiers on the frontlines paying the price for their orders. Fighting for a full day and night without sleep was taking a toll on the human army. But every minute they held her forces off, was a minute the machines wouldn't have to attack the city gates proper.

Obscuring smoke began to riddle the battlefields in all parts of the map. Any human not hidden away by smoke or metal was cut apart by Drake long range fire at this stage of the war, now that she could use those units with impunity. The only ones spared were those waving white flags as their cover was blown away.

Occasional wedges would leap out of that smoke, crashing into walls and causing destruction. It wasn't enough to stop the advance like before. But it was enough to slow her down.

Armored knight and unarmored soldier alike fell, crushed or cut apart. Sensible ones gave up, throwing themselves on the ground in prayer to whichever gods they were devout to as the machine swarm stepped around them. The majority fled, retreating again and again to fight for different ground.

Eventually, the last wedge was split into three by two simultaneous Drake lasers. The mortars were brought back into the city, to be reused for later. The last bridge was knocked down, and they were unable to break the new bridges the machines brought. Knights remained on field, moving under cover of the smoke, while the regular foot soldiers were fully recalled behind the city gates.

Twenty nine hours into the war, To'Wrathh finally stood with the city gates in striking distance. The victory didn't bring her any joy.

There was only three hours left to take the city.

Next chapter - Into the city heart (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 9 - Into the city heart (T)

The undersider city gates were ancient. Slowly built up over generations, with more added to it as the city discovered occasional troves of treasure. The structure was massive, easily able to fit several airspeeders side to side through the gatehouse, when opened. Now, it was a sealed slab of metal, thicker than her sensors could penetrate through. Smaller entryways besides the main arc existed, haphazardly placed over time, small roadways leading to each. All of them sealed shut of course.

While the entrance had a large open space before it, that space was quickly eaten up by the asymmetrical mite made slabs and ground, which obscured the entrance. By the half mile point, there would be no position that had a visual on the gatehouse anymore, despite the massive scale of the building.

Around the sides, drapes of white linen obscured the rest of the structure, fluttering in the mild wind. Lined with metal dust that disoriented sensors and x-rays. The Undersiders were hiding something behind those. But To'Wrathh wasn't sure what just yet.

Tamery and her Chosen were hidden deep among the city behind those gates, they might have the information. But attempting to contact them may as well reveal their locations, so the Feather would have to go in blind.

She sent a first wave of Runners to probe the defenses, and promptly found out what was behind those linen drapes.

Turrets. Dozens of them. They opened fire on her approaching swarm, peppering the metal shields and slowing the advance to a crawl.

A quick order to break formation and retreat into cover brought her forces back into safety. Her drakes were brought forward, what few of them remained, and she positioned them into visual range of the gatehouse. From there, the machines opened fire and sliced blindly into the white sheets, hitting where the turret fire had come from.

Once more she sent Runners to probe the gate. And again, turrets opened fire, from different locations now. A few places opened fire from the very same place the drakes had fired on. Which told To'Wrathh the Undersiders must have a system to move the turrets, using the cloth drapes to obscure their true position.

Fine. She could play their game. The drakes began to open fire while her Runners held position. This time, the long range beams sliced through right where weapon fire came from, silencing the hidden encampments. Some tried to fire back at her Drakes, only to be out of range for accurate hits, or have Runners carrying shields intercept the errant bullet fire.

"Surrender." To'Wrathh announced as her drakes whittled away the turrets. "Open your gates. Destroy your barrier pillar, and I will spare the city." To'Wrathh said.

"You're just buying time." The comms crackled with the general's voice. "I'm too old to not notice a bluff when I hear it. Dramatic though, I'll give you that. Now, how about you turn around, eat shit, and die scraphead?"

The line cut before she could answer. She frowned, but this had been expected after all. The odds that the city would choose to surrender now of all time were astronomically low. Still, it was worth a shot.

Enough turrets had been broken, so To'Wrathh ordered the Runners to advance on the gate and begin the assault. They did as ordered, reaching the very base. Climbing up, she could see through their eyes the many opening where turrets had once been present. Armored peekholes could be opened or closed.

She recognized the chokepoints. Her Runners would not be able to breach the gate due to funneling. More holes would need to be punched through the superstructure before she could entertain swarming the defenses.

In the distance, her true plan was mobilizing. With the thickness of the walls, her drakes would take too long to slice a way through. But the weapons the behemoths were carrying could - and would - punch a hole in these walls with each fire. With enough holes, the defenders wouldn't be able to hold each against her numbers.

The only problem was getting the behemoths here. The massive lumbering giants required large terrain to move through, which the Undersiders had anticipated. They'd blown all the bridges capable of supporting the weight.

A few miles behind, the titans lumbered onto a hanging slab of metal, half floating in the air. Serpents slithered through the air behind, hissing and snapping at one another the whole while.

The titans knelt down, large hands gripping the slab for stabilization while the serpents began to bombard the connecting edge with acid. In moments, the metal had melted away, snapping the floating structure free. It wobbled slowly, like an iceberg. Too massive to be capsized by the weight of the titans.

Serpents swarmed around the slab, and began to nudge it forward as one. Slowly, the metal land began to move forward, still floating in the air, carrying the three titans above all the ruined landscape and broken bridges. To'Wrathh expected their arrival in a half hour.

More skirmishes happen on the gatehouse, her runners attempting to probe where the turrets were hiding, while the knights and soldiers within were taking rifle shots anywhere her army was vulnurable. Drakes opened fire on any located turret, but To'Wrathh had no idea the true number of weapons the gatehouse hid.

The titans arrived, the slab having gained a significant amount of speed. She ordered her trio to open fire on the gate the moment it came into visual range. The lifted the heavy mite made cannons, taking aim. The cannons charged, humming with power before opening up.

Lances of white beams struck out, boiling away the metal, and destroying everything in the path. Golden age technology, pinnacle of what humans had made once upon a time. The beams were the final evolution of what her Drakes carried in their maw. And no amount of metal would stand in the way, mite made or otherwise.

Three red hot holes were neatly punched through the gates, the weapon burning straight through the first set of walls, before fading out against the other side, deeper into the gatehouse.

Again. She ordered her titans. Three holes were not enough to overwhelm the gate. She needed many more.

Tarps and white cloth drapes suddenly fluttered away from parts of the gatehouse. Hidden behind, she recognized the weapons. Six railgun turrets, silent up to now, had been secreted into the defenses. Those turrets turned, targeting the distant Titans, and opened fire. Several hundred pounds of pure metal slugs shot out far past the speed of sound, striking against her Behemoths. The titans staggered backwards, one taking three rounds, stumbling backwards with each hit until it slipped off the slab and fell down with a massive crash.

The other two attempted to return fire, the beam weapons recharging. To'Wrathh didn't waste a moment, ordering her drakes to target the railguns and take them out. They begin to slice through the human defenses, but not before another round of railgun shots fire out against her titans.

The first took three shots, two in the torso, and the third neatly through the massive skull. The great beast crumpled down on the slab, no longer functioning.

The second was fast enough to raise an arm to block the strike, armor and metal shattering from the massive railgun round, but still holding together. A second round struck against the charging cannon, causing a supercritical reaction. The explosion rocketed out, throwing the towering siege engine off guard and onto the ground. There, the final railgun turret struck home, shattering through the behemoth skull, and shutting down the beast.

The curse words To'Wrathh knew were insufficient for the current situation. Why would the humans have railguns to guard a city gate that was obscured within a half mile? And not even just one railgun - six of them! The Feather watched with some satisfaction as the drakes cut through the last of the exposed weapons, taking them out of commission.

The floating slab raced forward, now unoccupied by anything moving. In moments, it collided far above into the pillar wall itself, breaking into pieces, her titans falling down in the rain of bent metal.

The damage to her forces had been significant. Two of her titans were completely out of order, but the third had fallen to the ground and was still functional, albit damaged. It could shamble forward over the current terrain until it was once more in visual range of the gatehouse. From there, so long as the humans didn't have any more long range weapons, the gate could be slowly opened up.

Tense minutes passed as the titan stood back up from the ground, and began to cover the ground in search of a vantage point. More runners were sent to scour the gatehouse, searching for more hidden traps and weapons. The humans continued to rain down fire, trying to break anything that wasn't hiding behind metal shields.

The tie between both armies lasted up until the titan settled down on one solid location, charging the beam once again and opening fire. The white lance of energy struck the gatehouse, cutting another large hole into the superstructure.

What will you do now, general? To'Wrathh thought. Her titan would continue to create a hole every minute. Soon, there would be too many openings and not enough humans to hold each of those chokeholds.

The response was quick. Twenty five knights swarmed out of the gatehouse, moving fast. Faster than relic armor ever should have been. To'Wrathh realized why in an instant. On the sides of each knight's waist, they carried two rectangle like thrusters. With each leap, the thrusters lit up bright blue, throwing the knights forward. They stormed past the runners with little effort, dodging and weaving through the metal bats and barnacle turret fire. Only three didn't make it the full way, crashing into the ground after hitting something unexpected in the charge.

At the tip of the vanguard, was a single armor different from all the rest. Red sigils on unadorned metal. Winterscar. Kidra. They'd been holding her in reserve.

To'Wrathh quickly lit up her wings, and made her way into the battlefield. Now was the time she needed to join, if only to repel this attack. She made her way to the titan's side, weapons drawn, ready to tackle the speeding knights.

They didn't come her way. Instead, the knights fainted hard to the side, storming straight at the drakes. Leaping far past the limits of relic armor, up onto the vantage points the drakes were stationed at.

At the same time, one of the broken railguns was ripped off the moorings, right after her titan opened another hole into the gatehouse. A second working railgun lifted up by a crane, from behind the gatehouse. It lowered the weapon platform onto the cleared mooring. Engineers scrambled around, executing spot welds and affixing the weapon. More lifted other items and worked to hook power lines into the system.

Her Drakes had a line of sight on the assembling weapon, but no means to open fire. Not with the mass of flying relic knights swarming the defending runners and attacking the vulnerable Drakes. They broke apart one after another.

The pre-constructed rail cannon was being assembled faster than her titan's weapons could charge. At this rate, they would get the first strike. She ordered the behemoth to stand down, moving away from the vantage point, searching instead for a closer location that offered suitable protection against a rail cannon. That would do for now. So long as the titan took the longer way around, it would be out of visual range of the rail cannon.

The drakes on the other hand, were finished. To'Wrathh would not be able to reach them in time to save any of them. In seconds, the last of her forces were wiped out, and the knights fell back to the gatehouse, to recharge and standby, leaping from the high ground in one large arc, right back into the gatehouse openings.

This was not going according to plan. Worse, now they had Kidra equipped with aerial mobility. If they clashed again, there would be no escape if the surface savage managed to take the advantage in a duel. But To'Wrathh still had her titan operational. Quickly a new plan of action was drawn out, and she repositioned the massive titan on a far off trajectory, the hobbling giant making its way, hidden from sight the whole time.

One hour left until the barrier is restored. Time was ticking away.

She waited patiently. There wasn't going to be another chance. Runners assembled, along with spiders and the serpents she had on hand. They all gathered up, hidden behind the metal slabs as they moved. The titan lumbered until it reached the position she needed it to occupy.

"Begin." She ordered, drawing out a sword and pointing it at the railcannon. It spotted her just as she could see it. The massive turret rumbled on the moorings, turning to aim in her direction. She let it. Standing still.

On the other side of the turret's arc, the titan stepped into visual range and lifted the cannon up, charge begining. Instantly, the railgun operators hastily turned the weapon around, trying to lined up a shot at the behemoth.

The arial knights departed again, this time on direction of the titan. After all, To'Wrathh was on the other side of the battlefield. The knights knew they had free range on the behemoth.

The railcannon completed the rotation, aiming at the behemoth's head. The operators knew they wouldn't make it, and fired the weapon early. The slug flew out, striking into the titan's shoulder, and punching a hole through the superstructure. But the behemoth was not out of commission. It retaliated, a white lance of light flashed out from the cannon, engulfing the side of the turret, causing a catastrophic explosion that took the weapon finally out of service.

She gave her titan one last set of orders. To keep firing on the wall until it couldn't fire anymore. The speeding knight squadron flew across the map in a direct line to the titan and the escorts it had assembled around. A small army. She hoped it would be enough to buy the titan time, but those knights were led by Kidra. And that was a human To'Wrathh did not wish to underestimate ever again.

The rest of her army, she ordered a full charge. The holes in the wall would have to do. She joined ranks with her soldiers, zipping across the battlefield.

Another white lance of energy struck the wall, closer to her, leaving a perfect entrance. Runners clambered over the walls, frantic to dive into the gate's interior. She dove into it with her army, blades flashing out. Inside, engineers and soldiers alike panicked at her intrusion. Some attempted to open fire with low caliber weapons. Those, she could ignore, her skin impervious to such small weapons. The knights attempting to secure the breach were a different question.

Into the fray she went, swords out, slicing a path through the resistance. Behind her, Runners of all kinds poured into the walls, attacking anything in the way and following her lead. Report feeds showed her the other breaches were being contained, too many defenders holding ground.

Another rumble shook the fortification. One more hole had been ripped into the superstructure. The titan was still alive, though the escorts and protections were whittled away to a skeletal defense. The knights were too fast.

To'Wrathh sped through the structure, passing munitions supplies, ignoring running engineers, and tossing aside knights trying to block her way. The runners behind her took care of the rabble, but the feather had eyes only for one objective: To enter the city proper and destroy the heart of their resistance.

One more hole was cut into the city gates, and then she lost contact with her titan. The knights had brought explosive charges with them, using their jump packs to clamber over the titan and toss the munitions into the ripped wounds across the titan. Kidra was now returning, and To'Wrathh could not afford to be stuck fighting against such an opponent.

Fifteen minutes remaining.

The feather reached a final bulkhead door. Sealed shut of course, and the electronics sabotaged to remain sealed. She sheathed her two swords, trusting her Runners to hold off the knights behind her.

Both her hands dove like knives into the door's cracks. And then she pulled the metal apart, slowly. Revealing her first glimpse into the city proper.

Ten minutes left. Kidra was halfway across the battlefield according to her reports. She'd be here, soon.

The door groaned before To'Wrathh's might and finally she forced it apart. Wide enough for her and her Runners to fit through. Into the artificial golden sunlight she stepped, as if into a completely different world compared to the dark stormy grey and harsh blue landscape only a few hundred feet past the gatehouse. She walked out, stepping directly into a hail of bullets.

Swords drawn again, she lunged across the ground back into the fight.

Five minutes left. The city was utterly different from anything To'Wrathh had seen before. Tall square buildings, stacked one another, with fluttering tent-like fabric as rooftops, all multicolored. So many colors all across this city. The bricks made of warm clay, and completely different from the cold metal walls the surface clans used as she'd seen in Tenisent's memories.

But To'Wrathh didn't have time to focus on the sight before her. Instead, she went to work and cleared this courtyard of danger, giving her Runners the space they needed to fit through one at a time. They would need to sprint to the pillar heart in order to make it in time. The last sighting of Kidra had been her landing on the open sections of the gatehouse, diving down the stairs and vanishing from view into the fortress interior. The surface girl would be here soon, and she only needed to delay To'Wrathh a few minutes for victory.

To'Wrathh growled, wings flaring out. Her and the small dozen Runners she'd managed to bring into the city would have to be enough. Down the alleyway she went, speeding to the very center of the city. People screamed out, shutting doors and windows, hoping the machines wouldn't come for them. In that regard they were lucky. To'Wrathh had only one goal in mind.

Rifle fire from all kinds of directions assaulted the attacking force. Runners broke apart as they failed to find suitable ways to dodge this many weapon trajectories. Still, the machine advance stormed through the open city.

To'Wrathh was so close. Her sensors pinged wildly, more knights approaching from all directions. And behind her, one single dot on her radar was approaching far, far faster than any other signals nearby.

Runners ripped apart makeshift barricades, throwing soldiers and knights alike away from their path. To'Wrathh raced through, swords only used to block and parry errant attacks before she sprinted past. Closer and closer, she sprinted through the maze of alleyways. Feet only kicking her back up and letting her wings do the rest. Soon she knew she'd see the pillar.

Too late.

A pulse came out from the center city. To'Wrathh could feel it in her core. It reeked of the Occult. A sensation that invaded her mind, touching all parts of her and passing through. Runners next to her flopped to the ground, crashing and sliding, as if puppets with their strings cut. Violet eyes winking out of existence with no resistance.

In a heartbeat, all friendly units around her vanished, wiped off as a wave passed through.

All except for To'Wrathh.

Somehow still functioning for some reason she didn't understand yet, deep within the human city.

Alone. And surrounded.

Next chapter - Dealing with difficult neighbors

Book 3 - Chapter 10 - Dealing with difficult neighbors

"Absolutely not." Shadowsong said, not even looking up from his desk. "I made the mistake of letting you persuade me once before. Did you not see firsthand the results? You were nearly killed."

"Okay, sure, that looked pretty bad." I placated, "But hear me out: We came out of it with a stupid amount of relic armor, so it's hands down a net win. The biggest win in clan history. All because I convinced you to let me go to a dance. Now, I'm not asking for much here. Just to let me go outside, stretch my legs a bit, meet a bunch of suspicious strangers who clearly have duplicitous intentions, maybe come back with a snowball or something. Nothing to it."

Shadowsong growled. Actually growled, while he tossed another piece of paper, stamping it with his House's sigil. "This is no time for jokes, Winterscar."

"I'm not joking."

He paused, then slowly looked up.

"Okay, maybe I'm joking a little bit, but I'm also serious." I clarified.

The Chosen had reappeared just outside comms range. Telemetry data showed they'd parked their shiny looted airspeeder behind a large mountain, conveniently out of visibility from our railgun turrets. Their terms were pretty simple: They want to negotiate. And they're holding hostage the second airspeeder crew onboard with them.

So far, so good. That'd be normal. I too would be rather annoyed on hearing the latest news, and holding the airspeeder crew hostage isn't exactly an unjustifiable position. Assuming they really were innocent, which is about as likely as the surface heating up.

And then they royally screwed up on their next term: They demanded I come with the negotiations in person. Me. By name, saying they wanted a more "neutral" party and for some reason House Winterscar was who they'd picked as neutral. No one else, not from any of the other Houses, or Houseless. Not a chenobi, and not even a trained negotiator. They were adamant about that.

And that was the final deathblow for Lejis and the Chosen inside the clan.

Shadowsong and I had been running in circles trying to pin that pipe weasle on something, and in the end it's his own knights who fuck it all up for him. Ironic.

Convincing the clan lord was simple after that. First the slavers came looking for me. And now the Chosen are doing the same? They made it way too obvious. Now Lejis and all his refugees were corralled back into prison and kept under guard - for their own protection as word of this would surely leak out to the population. They were already on edge with the Chosen, this would be a lit match into the fuel.

Lord Drass seemed almost stunned at the start, like she couldn't believe the Undersider knights would just brashly try to have this work. I caught her muttering about the expected intelligence of knights, that she shouldn't have expected more from a stranded group alone out in the wastes.

Little rude… but I was a Reacher at heart. Stereotypes exist everywhere, what can I say? Loyal knight, absolutely. Strong knights, also a good stereotype. Intelligent knights, well, not so common that one. Reachers are least would gossip about what favorite flavor of glue knights liked to chew on while they were lifting weights. I don't know what the Logi talked about in the privacy of their quarters, but it likely was somewhat similar.

Maybe for the Chosen knights this didn't sound like an unreasonable demand in a vacuum. The enemy's not omniscient after all, they're bound to make mistakes as much as we are. So naturally, I wanted to go pay these knights a visit and spring their cute little beartrap with an iron bolder.

"I am not allowing you on this mission." Shadowsong said. "Your guards and some of the elites will be coming with me - and I will deal with the Chosen hostages personally. You will sit here, and not go looking for trouble."

"But there's so much we could discover if we try to spring their trap intentionally. They don't know about our knightbreakers, the winterblossom techniques or the Occult I can use. Whatever they've come up with, we can put a wrench in it."

"We don't know the scale of their intelligence." Shadowsong said. "They may have gotten word from after the slaver attack on our capabilities."

"We didn't use any knightbreakers in the attack. There is no way they could possibly know that exists. If I go as they're asking, we'll get a chance to see why they're after me in the first place. Just knowing which of my secrets got leaked would go a long way to stopping any more flow of info and it might reveal just how they got so much intel out of the clan." And damn everything, I needed to know why they had gone such a distance to target me specifically. There were gravestones outside that demanded more than the hymns we sang for their burial. I needed to get my answers. There were traitors among our ranks, and I was determined to ferret them out.

"You will not convince me. Out there, you run a real risk of death. You know any mission to the white wastes comes with that risk by default. As a scavenger, that risk was once acceptable. It was our duty to the clan. Now, as a knight of rank, and a specialist in the Occult, you are far too valuable to risk. No clan has had a sorcerer in our entire history."

"Look if we're talking safety, then think about it this way, there's three elements to safety." I brought a hand up, and began to count them out on fingers. "The first is how many of my guards I'm around. The second is if I'm in armor or not. And the third is if I'm in the clear to use the Occult. The rest of the clan's infrastructure isn't going to keep me any more or less safe. I could be in the center of an army of rifles, and it wouldn't do me any good if the enemy attacked with a single knight."

"Get to the point."

"You're departing with most of my guards and the elite. The defenses left in the clan are drastically inferior, I'm less safe hanging inside the clan than being surrounded by my men. For all we know, maybe that's exactly what they want. You and all the firepower out there in the freeze far from me, and they'll swing around for round two. Additionally, out there I'm free to use the Occult because nobody's around to see me other than our own knights. From a safety perspective, the safest possible place I can be is on that airspeeder with you. And if I'm already on site, why not make use of me as bait to spring the trap? I've already shared what I know of the Occult with the clan lord. I'm no more important than any one of my guards in the grand scheme of things."

"You're the only one who can use the Occult's true powers without your body going limp. None of the other knights are able to override their armor's systems. There is no amount of practice that would change that fact for any of them. You are unique."

"And that's exactly why I should be out there. I'm the heaviest hitter you have on the roster now. I would be wasted just hanging out here tweedling my thumbs."

"I see what's happening here." He said, folding his hands together and setting them on the table. "You've won one fight against your first real opponents, and now you believe yourself invincible."

"And what if I am invincible?" I shot back. "When my armor and I work together, with full access to the Occult, I'm on the same level as a Deathless. You saw the footage. The slavers were obliterated by my hand… Technically at least."

He said nothing, instead, just stared me down.

This damn sentimental old man. We both knew my overall contribution to the clan as a Reacher had been wrung dry. I was a Knight Retainer, and for the first time in my life I felt actually proud of that rank. "Fine. I didn't want to do this, but you're leaving me no choice."

He lifted his head at that. And while the helmet hid his features, I could almost imagine the raised eyebrow.

"I demand remediation for your earlier attempt at my life. I will consider the debt settled if you allow me to join this expedition."

He stayed silent at that, staring at me. I think his jaw might have dropped. "You don't mean that." He hissed. "You don't know what you're asking for. I fully expect death as a possibility for any of us out there in the wastes. These Undersiders all know they have no chance against surface techniques, they'll have prepared other defenses as a counter or take more dangerous measures to the hostages they hold. Whoever is leading them has clearly lost any use for Lejis or the Chosen, given how casually they were tossed aside, so I strongly doubt their ability for mercy. This is not a mission for rebellious teenagers or the brash confidence of youth. This is a mission for level headed veterans. You are letting your emotions get the better of you, recognize that."

"Call me brash if you want, that doesn't change facts. If I had been anyone else, some random knight, you would have grabbed me for this mission without a second thought." Cathida and I working together could beat anything, even him. And Shadowsong knew it.

The man leaned back in the chair, armored hands letting go of the seal and his pen. "Please." He said, this time his voice turned almost… soft? "Reconsider, Keith. I do not wish to see you harmed. You are feeling a battle high, I've seen this in younger knights again and again. Your confidence is… better placed than theirs, given the track record. I'll not deny facts. But please, reconsider this. This is new to you, and you're overestimating your reach."

"That'll be for the clan lord to decide. If we cannot settle the remediations, it will fall to her decision. And like you said before, she's Logi. I'm a net addition to any team I'm put on. We already know what her decision would end up being." I paced around back and forth, before turning back to him. "I'm not some defenseless Reacher that needs to be sheltered. And this isn't some need to prove myself again. I see how I can help the clan the most, and this is it. We need to know more about what they've discovered. And the safest place I can be is with you nearby at my side. The two of us can't be beat."

He held my gaze for a time, saying nothing.

Then, ever so slowly, he gave a resigned nod. "So be it. I accept the remediations. I will adjust the strategy to incorporate your involvement, and pray to the gods we are not making a mistake."

"Reduce friction coefficient by twenty, give me a bit of slack on the slides." Teed flicked on a few switches, calling out to me every so often.

"Reducing coefficient by twenty, now." I said, entering the commands and verifying the airspeeder followed orders. The frigate did exactly as ordered, all systems showing green. White snow billowed under us, fading fast as the bulk of metal flew above at impressive speed. I could see the antennas on the side rattle in the wind, though the sound didn't carry into the pressurized cabin.

He tilted the joysticks to the side, carefully banking the speeder past another hillside, all while keeping the cockpit pointed straight at the target destination. A difficult maneuver and he made it look effortless. It probably was effortless to him, muscle memory by now.

"Looks like we just crossed the ten mark. Time to suit up, take over the commands for me kid. Mind the turns, should be straight for a few miles before we get into the potentially dangerous parts." Teed said, twisting on his chair and heading to the side lockers. My hands reached out and grabbed my own set of joysticks, instantly taking command of the vessel.

He'd left it on horizon mode for me, which meant the airspeeder stabilized itself mostly but still needed some human input to keep it sharp. It was still a heady feeling, to be at the very front of a few thousand tons of metal speeding away, and being able to turn it with the lightest touches on the joysticks. Teed always set his configurations to minimize the amount of movement his hands needed to do. Slight inches would put the airspeeder in a spiraling twist.

Not to mention our frigate moved far faster than standard frigates as Shadowsong took out a full intercept frigate for this operation, with gauss cannons, missile racks, and all the goodies that come with a war frigate configuration. We'd come with teeth.

Teed had somehow passed into the gold rankings over the time I'd been back in the clan, with a simulation score that currently topped the ace pilots by a good margin. In his words, he needed to take a few levels and fortunately more hours in the sims could directly correlate to a better score with the right training and attention to detail. Where he got the motivation to no-life it like this was something only him and the gods knew.

Journey helped me keep the sticks perfectly level, so there wasn't any sort of turbulence on the switch. A relic armor could compensate quite well, so even Teed's insanely twitchy controls were manageable.

"Start chilling the cabin, I'll have my rebreather on by the time the temperature starts getting nippy." He said, while I flicked the options. Vents started to hiss at the sides, leaking in outside air in controlled bursts.

The man sat back down on his own chair, equipping the last of his gear and making sure there was a correct seal on his goggles. "Right. Now they're free to start shooting our ride and I don't have to worry about the outside air being a decompressive threat."

"Lovely. Isn't that such a wholesome feeling?" I said.

He chuckled. "Not yet. We got to bring all the weapons from yellow to red alert. Make sure if there's a firefight we hit back just as hard. After that I'll feel better." He turned a few more switches, and the cabin lights dimmed, red turning on and illuminating the darker recesses in a blood washed color. "All knights, prepare for first drop. All knights, prepare for first drop."

We soared straight over a fissure, and he twisted the airspeeder to zoom parallel to the steep cliffside. He gave the all green, and I could hear the sound of knights jumping off, diving straight into the dark abyss next to us. Teed hadn't even slowed down. The knights could survive a fall like that. And slowing down would alert the enemy something was up.

"Nice and steady now." He muttered. "Got to keep the fat side of this ship to block their pings. Can't let them catch us dropping our teams."

The path we'd mapped out would zig zag around, picking a few spots where our knights would tunnel through underground and surround the enemy airship. If anything happens, they weren't getting away anytime soon. Not with the equipment we'd brought.

"Second drop, incoming T minus two. Second drop, T minus two." He announced, pushing the airspeeder to glide around another massive spike of ice and metal.

Another set of knights, including some of my guards, disembarked off the airspeeder. Hitting the ground hard and rolling into a slide. Low to the ground, too obscured by the terrain for active scanning to detect them.

Shadowsong entered the cabin now, leaving the door and airlock open behind him. Cold air flowed by him slowly, with the cabin already at temperature now. "Status, pilot?" He asked.

"Just about ready to open comms with them, sir. We can drop the last team at gamma, and then we can slow down and start heading into the mountainside."

The main part of the plan was to have multiple knight squadrons catch up to the airspeeder on foot, where they weren't going to be detected. Each squad carried one knightbreaker among them, which should no-sell quite a bit of the opposition. Teed's airship would remain on standby with artillery ready to call down a strike, and he's also the only pilot that can fly through the cracks in that mountain with alacrity. Anyone else would be forced to move at a crawl's speed just to avoid crashing into the walls. Which was something the Undersiders likely aren't expecting, considering they picked the center mass to park their airspeeder. They didn't want anyone to come in or out with any speed.

Shadowsong nodded to Teed, one hand holding onto the handle behind the pilot's seat. Head focused on the approaching iceberg. "Begin phase two of the operation." He turned that faceless helmet of his to me next. "Open communications.

You're up, Winterscar."

Next chapter - Talk is cheaper than snow

Book 3 - Chapter 11 - Talk is cheaper than snow

The Logi bumbled up into the cockpit, clearly uncomfortable in the evosuit.

Teed and I watched him waddle his way over, while Shadowsong remained focused on the white wastes beyond the cockpit window.

"Greetings, Winterscar." The man said, huffing and puffing his way to a chair inside the room. It made sense for him to have difficulty, everyone started new at some point. It took a few months of wearing these things before anyone gets that ease of movement Retainers passively cultivate. And Logi's don't usually go out this far onto the surface. The only time most surface dwellers go out, if they aren't scavengers, was to praise the passing gods. And that was only a few feet out of the colony gates in perfectly safe conditions.

He sat down slowly, making sure he wasn't crushing any part of his suit's systems. Another mark to the tally. These suits were designed to take some good lighthearted beating. Good enough if you tripped, you didn't need to panic too much about issues. Different story if you get tossed against a wall by an angry machine of course, but I don't think the engineers who designed the suit had that in consideration.

"My name is Reginald, of House Cosign." The logi said, taking a nasally breath in between sentences. "I've the pleasure of being selected to assist you in negotiations."

I gave him a quick head bow and shook hands, exchanging the traditional greetings.

"Before we begin, you're familiar with sign language, correct?" He asked.

My fist raised in the air and I bobbed it back and forth, mimicking a head nod. He signed back, pleased. "As expected of a Retainer of course." He gave a few coughs, straightening out his rebreather slightly, and then sat up in the seat. "I will be advising you via sign language as to not interrupt your discussion with the Undersider knights. The objective is to have them peacefully surrender the hostage crew. Intelligence briefing let me know this is likely not going to happen, but an attempt should still be made on assumption it does."

I shrugged, glancing over at Teed. He shrugged right back. "It's your show kid, I'm just the ride here."

"Now, we sh-" He was interrupted by a beeping noise at his side. A surface timer, with all the big buttons that came with it. A timer tended to be one of the more used tools up here as a scavenger, oddly enough. Everyone knows crowbars are the master tools, but smaller things like this end up being just as important. "Sorry, I need to run a check of my suit. The guidelines stated to do so every thirty minutes."

"Your N.I levels are fine, as is the pressure, sitting right at the optimal point, no deviations. Rest of the numbers check out too, no need to worry." I said.

"How can you tell?" He asked, puzzled. Then looked up sharply, "Oh, I forget myself. I know your profile. I suppose you know some of the signs to look for by instinct?"

"Some stuff I could guess at with experience. Like the ice forming on your rebreather right there." I poked at a section of his suit. "Size of it means you've got everything in line. If it grew to cover the tubes, then you'd know you're in trouble and there's something wrong with the heater. You pick up tricks like that over time."

Teed chimined in from his seat, "Also condensation on the goggles. If it starts to get fogged up in there, that means your vents are covered up, usually snow. But that means snow's probably covering up other things too if it got to the vents. Part of the top five doomsigns."

"Interesting. Doomsigns?"

"Scavenger jargon." I clarified. "There's a couple dozen small rules that you learn over time. You get a feel for things. Some are more important than others, hence the top five list." I guess as a knight I'll never have to worry about those things again. Kind of odd to think. I had a lifetime's worth of skills and experience for something I never needed to do again.

The Logi hummed. "I never read any of that in the guidebooks."

Teed laughed. "That's cause you're going by the books and checking your systems every half hour, like all good scavengers should be doing. You'll never have to worry about doomsigns. It's the lazy ones that don't follow the rules that need to rely on doomsigns as a shortcut."

"Somehow, I'm getting the impression you have stopped doing the routine checkups, or following guidelines."

Another fist bob from me. Teed didn't even acknowledge that, instead turning around on the chair, "Comms systems are warmed up and ready to go, kid. Let me know when I should give them a ring. They know we're here already, they haven't been subtle about their pings."

"Well, let's not keep them waiting. Is there anything else I need to know before we start?"

The negotiator shook his head. "No. You may begin."

I reached a hand out and flicked the comms switch. There was a crackle on the speakers as I spoke into the mic. "Undersider frigate Galstone, come in. This is Keith Winterscar, of Clan Altosk."

The static flared up for a moment before the voice of a man came on. "Clan frigate Prowler, we have you on comms and read you, five by five. It's a little cramped in the cockpit here with the folks, but we're fine." A warm cheery voice even. That was... odd.

Reginald flickered through a few hand signs, all serious now. Coded messages. Five enemies spotted. Hostages isolated to cockpit section.

"Who am I speaking to?" I asked, a little puzzled why Undersiders would filter in some of the emergency codewords. My answer came back in moments.

"I am Cadrith, House Insight. Pilot, copper rank. The Undersiders don't know how to handle things beyond steering, so we're being held at gunpoint to operate in their stead. I have a lovely gentleman to my right who's watching me. We're finalizing the comms connection delta and I'll pass you over to him."

More hand signs. Unharmed. Unsure of enemy plans.

I could recognize some of those codewords. Small things like 'Lovely gentlemen' were buzzwords that could be tossed in seemingly innocent conversation but meant different things.

That's about all the intel we could get as the voice changed over to someone more gruff. "You're the Winterscar?"

"I am. I hear you wanted to talk to me directly."

There was silence on the comms for a moment. "Uhh, sure. Give us a moment to… uhh, organize terms. And so... I need to talk to the captain."

The comms went dead.

Teed spun around on the chair, glancing over at me, "Well, that's a new record for you. How'd you manage to piss them off that fast? I had bets going with the gunner for at least a minute before the cussing started."

I gave him a light shove on his chair, shutting him up. The negotiator on the other hand was twitching in his chair, thinking.

Shadowsong spoke for the first time. "Report." He said, looking at the Logi.

"Voice elevated. More filler words than natural. Either this knight is not a good speaker, or was rapidly coming up with things to say on the spot. Given it's a negotiation, they should have prepared ahead of time. Unless they're negotiating in bad faith without anything pre-planned. Something isn't correct."

"I see." Was all the prime replied, turning his gaze back to the window.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach at all this, my head rapidly connecting dots. "The crew slipped us info they only saw five knights aboard. So where are the other eighteen knights? Trying to do a counter-surround?"

The negotiator gave a shrug. "The crew could be confined to the airlocked areas. They could have been isolated from the rest of the knights." He didn't sound too convinced however, more as if arguing for the sake of it.

"They asked for me specifically. Could they have done that to... spook the clan into keeping me locked in? And now we caught them with their suits half on, when I actually did show up?"

The comms clicked open again, and the undersider knight spoke. "Make your way on foot into the mountain crevices. We don't have a white tent to place, but we'll get some spare cloth and setup something similar enough. Bring four guards and yourself, we'll be waiting."

"What, we can't discuss over the comms?" I asked.

"I don't know how you clanners deal with truces and negotiations, but Undersiders always negotiate face to face. This is how it's done in civilization."

Well. Isn't he polite? Reginald gave me a few hand signs. Technically correct. Biased, part of the majority belief from Undersiders that clans are savages. Has another agenda. Continue attempts to discover.

"You're asking for a lot of trust here, considering where we stand." I said, "Why can't we speak over the comms and settle this here? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. What's all this cloak and dagger scrapshit for anyhow?"

Silence. I gave a glance at the Logi, but he didn't have anything new to give.

"Look, either you come in person and we talk, or you don't and we'll have to take more drastic actions to recover our people." The voice said. "Them's the terms, take it or leave it. Conversation's over."

Comms clicked shut. At least the knights knew where the off button was.

"For a group that wanted Winterscar specifically to come as a neutral party, they sure don't seem to appreciate him any more than us." Teed whistled. "I'd almost say they sounded annoyed you came. How'd they get to know you so well already? They skipped a few steps there."

I gave Teed a lazy finger, while the Logi continued as a professional would. "They had no true reasoning to ask you to come in person." He said. "When questioned, they flustered. They didn't come up with any excuse and were forced to default. Not a good sign." He shook his head again, thinking. Gloved hands straightening the rebreather again like a nervous tick. "Likely they're trying to confirm that you are here in person rather than using a comm relay to talk from afar. I believe we've heard enough. It is my opinion that these men have no intention of negotiating anything, nor is it likely they even have the authority to do so. We were not speaking with their captain, he would have identified himself."

Shadowsong nodded, helmet still looking directly ahead. Where the enemy lay. "Confirm your verdict with the clan lord, and have it logged into history that they held no peace. I want full permission to engage with hostile intent to collect their armor for our clan." No, he wasn't staring daggers at the enemy. This was his prey.

The Logi nodded, tapping away at the comms and sending his message. "If I am to guess, I believe they consider House Winterscar the greatest threat of all the Retainer houses, considering the number of knights you now have on retention. It would be strategic to eliminate you and create a power vacuum." He said as he worked.

Well, he was right, but for the wrong reasons.

Besides House Winterscar's soldiers and some of Shadowsong's people, no one else knew about the Occult I could manifest. Something Shadowsong wanted to keep under the wraps until it was absolutely vital. If the clan ever hit a low point on morale, I could be used to bring people back from the brink. So long as we eliminated any enemy that encountered me, we'd keep the advantage of having an occult user a secret for every fight. Five undersider knights were no match for Cathida and I alone, and all of them piled together wouldn't do a dent with both shadowsong and my own personal knights out on the field. They were about to have a really bad day.

A moment later, the negotiator got a message from the clan lord. "Orders confirmed." He said. "You have the go-ahead to engage up to lethal force at your choice. We will have logged enough evidence to prove peaceful intentions were all tried and exhausted. Happy hunting, first blade."

"Good." Shadowsong said. "I have been searching for a reason to strip these Undersider scum from the moment I saw them." He shifted his gaze to me. "Bring your captain of the guards to speed, Winterscar. He'll be your decoy."

Sagrius looked pretty good with a white cape, all things considered. There's a limit to the sorts of cosmetics his armor could generate, since he isn't an administrator. Times like these I realize I'd gotten carried away when designing my new look with Cathida. We'd done things regular armor couldn't do. But from a distance he looked passable enough. And none of these Undersiders had seen me in person anyways.

It was out of the question to switch armors, especially since the source of my powers was quite literally inscribed inside Journey both in software and physically on metal. This was the best we could do.

He flipped the crusader longsword around, testing the reach and feel of it before sheathing it back. "A fine blade, master Keith. I am honored to wield it."

I patted my own belt, where one of my forged swords lay. "You know, I've never had the chance to use one of my own blades in combat with my armor yet. How do they fare?"

"Weight was everything when we lacked armor. The common guard are capable of organizing a viable defense with them. In armor, it's the crossguard changes everything, sir. Enables far more movements and counter options, since no knight has ever seen an occult weapon be locked down. So many new options I still find myself mulling over potential new techniques, mentally playing them in my mind, refining them."

On my part, Journey had no issues changing itself to look like a Winterscar Knight and did so without complaint. Cathida, on the other hand, complained the whole time. But that cranky old bat's going to be cranky about anything so it didn't come as much of a surprise. If she were alive, I'd have opted to bribe her with tea and crumpets. And she did confirm it would have worked too.

"As much as I liked the crusader blade, and the history behind it, getting to use my own swords has a charm to it. Can't say I'm not excited at the prospect to put this to the test."

The captain knocked on his chest, typical omen chasing superstition. "I pray that the test be swift and the outcome in our favor."

Teed brought us closer to the mountain. And mountain would be a generous term for this landmark, since it didn't go that far up on height. It looked more like massive spikes of ice that were squeezed out of the earth, making all the terrain jagged. Given that the earth was made of metal and had different densities, the ice grew wide in size at some points and short for others.

As a result, the whole thing was honeycombed with steep valleys, almost like a maze a few miles in every direction. The clan had logged the whole place and mapped it out in detail. This isn't the usual state of affairs to map things out, they don't keep for very long so rough quick maps were more common. A few years down the line and the world would have shifted enough to make it obsolete. But this case was special: The ice mountain was exactly that - ice. Easy to cut, with hundreds of good spots accessible by airspeeders, depending on the size. This was the place we hauled meltwater from by the tons.

So it was well mapped in order to find where the best spots were to mine. Likely the reason the knights had picked this spot to camp out at. They probably had their hands on the same map. Not exactly hard to get hands on the ice mines maps, they're not considered clan secrets after all.

"This is where I'll politely ask that you get the fu-" he paused, giving a guilty glance to the looming shadowsong standing silently behind. "Ahem, I mean it's a good time to go outside for a stretch." He said, giving me a quick fist bump into my shoulder pad.

Shadowsong turned his head ever so slightly. "I've been a member of clan Lord Atius's retinue for years. I've had the misfortune of working with both Ironreach and Windrunner at the same time. Nothing you say or do could be more unprofessional than them, pilot." The prime wasn't even looking at Teed by that point, helmet still fixed straight out the window, searching ahead. He'd taken Teed and I knowing each other in stride so far, but now that I consider it further, it's probably something he's used to filtering out.

Teed nodded, seemingly mollified, then turned to me. "In that case, respectfully, get the fuck off my ship, honorable retainer sir."

"How dare you kick me out of your ship." I deadpanned back, as per tradition with him. "I take full offense and I'll see you court martialed when we get back. What are you planning on doing in the meantime? Play a game of cards?"

"Planning what bribe I'll use to slip the judgment, of course. On the operation, I'll see if I can find a way up to higher ground. That way I can swoop in from any direction. Save your sorry asses in case you mess up somehow."

I gave a critical glance at the surrounding ice, eyebrows raised. The massive spiky ice, that looked more like teeth at the ends. And not the flat molars where Teed could plausibly land the ship. "I don't see anything up there that could support a multi ton frigate like this one. More just pointy ends." A bit further in things went back to normal, just a plateau of ice filled with ridges and cracked passages. Here though? The Undersiders clearly didn't want anyone to have the high ground.

"And the enemy thinks the same thing, kid. So imagine their surprise finding out that's exactly where I'm going to perch my lovely ship. Find me a good pointy end to wait for the fireworks. Give me a good show while you're down there. Call if you need bigger guns to settle the discussions."

Shadowsong grunted at that, breaking out of his usual silence. "You claim to keep the airspeeder balanced on the tip of the ice walls, pilot? I haven't heard of that being an option. It seems impossible."

"With respect sire, if I tossed you a sword and told you to balance it on the tip of your finger, could you do it?"

The prime nodded. "Yes. Balance is necessary in combat."

"Same for me. This ship is my sword, and I know how to wield it like no other." Teed's heavy gloves tapped the side of his head. "Reacher pilots don't earn the gold earring lightly."

"... Very well. I leave it to your hands. You were selected for a reason, I have trust the Logi's behind that selection knew their numbers. Despite your... familiarity with house Winterscar." He stood, turned and walked out the airlock, rifle in hand. "So long as the work is done well, that is all that matters."

I gave Teed one last farewell, before making my own way out. "Don't you dare bring back any snow on my ship." He snarked. "I just had the deck polished."

"It's not even your frigate, you're just driving it for the day. Acting mighty big for your suit there, techie scum."

He gave the side of his head another tap, and signed a smug grin, and then had the door close shut on me.

Ice has a way of crunching under the weight of a relic armor. Especially since we didn't bother with the leaving the ship to land on the uneven ground. Instead, we just jumped off the side, down a few feet, directly into the surface. With me were four others. Sagrius taking the front, looking like me if you squinted a bit. Shadowsong, myself and two others all flanked behind him like escorts. The other teams all had a single Knightbreaker to share, while Shadowsong and I both carried one tucked behind our waist. Given the tools and skills this little group had, I'd probably be correct in saying we were literally the most dangerous force walking on the surface currently. Zero compromise was done here.

The slavers had wanted me alive, so we knew the knights would also attempt to capture me, which gave us some measure of security to be able to walk in like this. But we weren't going to take chances either, the rest of the knight teams were slowly surrounding the place, creeping up and laying low. So long as the ice obscured line of sight, there wasn't much the Undersiders could do to detect armor when it's trying to be sneaky. No messages from any of ours about encountering Undersider knights, nor scouts or even surveillance tech. They either prepared enough to avoid any detection, or they hadn't prepared at all.

"Basic objective is to buy additional time for the rest of the assault teams to complete the surround." Shadowsong said as our group crunched through the ice, climbing down occasionally, or leaping over ice boulders in the way. "Those teams only need a few more minutes to be in position. We have them in our reach, letting them escape is unacceptable. Primary objective above all is to ensure the hostages remain alive. The final team will be approaching from behind the airspeeder and will handle the hostages."

"I take it you have a plan for keeping our people alive in between us making a scene and the rearguard doing their thing?"

He nodded. "Regardless of their motives, Undersiders have far less loyalty to any cause. They are infamous for such things. They will choose to protect their own lives over orders, and even abandon their leaders. We'll give them a standing offer they won't dare break in the middle of combat. Not if they wish to live."

The site was quickly approaching according to my HUD. Knight armor made what would have been a difficult trek filled with ropes and climbing, about as easy as a stroll in the city. A few more jumps from one cluster of ice to another, and we were nearly there.

Flatter ground than normal here, which let me see their stolen airship for the first time. Landed, hugging the side of a cliffside. It looked dormant, and the different metal replacement plates gave it that weathered look. For something that had once been used by pirates, it still seemed sturdy enough. I suppose they would take good care of their ships.

"Ready blades. Keep them talking until everyone is in position." Shadowsong hissed over the comms. "Prepare for contact."

Next chapter - Deja-vu

Book 3 - Chapter 12 - Deja-vu

To their credit, they at least made it look like they were trying. Under the looming shape of their stolen airspeeder, four knights were shuffling around the uneven ground, working on setting up a few poles where a makeshift tent was being setup.

The single most miserable looking tent I've ever seen.

Way too high to the point someone could walk inside upright, and still have head room above. First bit of wind would knock that down, only reason it was still standing was the geography of the area here. It was even worse on closer look, when I realized it had been been made from different perfectly functional habitat tents the knights snatched up aboard the airspeeder. Except that wasn't what habitat tents were made for in the first place, and they certainly didn't connect to one another in any way that would offer a correct temperature seal.

Tents were supposed to be squat little square things, made to be low and close to the ground, heavily insulated and easy to warm up by reducing the area that needed to be warmed up. You'd crawl inside, eat and drink on your stomach or on your back if that was the preference, and take a breather in safety. Sponge bath and sleeping were also done the same way. With a bit of practice, it becomes a cozy little shelter from the deadly weather outside. The low profile meant easy storage and heavy winds would be a non-issue. Heavy metal beams would be capable of holding snow pile on, rated up to a few thousand pounds. If the wind did become an issue, you had bigger problems to worry about than the tent being ripped off the ground. The airspeeder you rode on is probably in more trouble.

The undersiders clearly didn't get that memo, since they tried slicing a few different tents together in order to make a larger version I'd seen in old pictures from the third era. So the exact opposite of what the standard habitat tents were made for, and it wouldn't even work well since all the insulation was cut into pieces just to stitch them together in this unholy abomination. The scavenger inside me was outright seething at the waste of perfectly good habitat tents. Those aren't cheap to make, areogel is a temperamental process. But the newfound knight I'd become was more in control, so I let this slide.

We didn't try to hide our approach. No, that was the job for the other teams slowly sulking around the Undersiders.

"We've arrived." Shadowsong said over the public comms, as our group marched up to the makeshift abomination. One knight stepped out, glancing at the assembled crew. Noticing we all had weapons drawn out. Shadowsong stared him down, as if daring the knight to ask us to put down our weapons.

The knight seemed to think for a moment, before shaking his head, and motioning us inside. He didn't looked armed, rifle stowed away behind his back, while his knife was still firmly inside the boot holster. Instead, he had a rope with a triple pronged hook at the end tied to his waist and no other equipment I could spot.

Sagrius, my decoy, stood firm. Hands folding across his chest, head tilted to the side. He did not look impressed by the events here. I supplied the voice. "I think we can speak out here, in the open."

The Undersider looked over at us for a moment, looked back inside the tent, and then paused. Likely speaking on private comms to his compatriots. A few moments passed, before the other undersider knights shuffled out. "Fine, doesn't make that much difference to us." One said. If they were miffed that their hobbled together abomination was going to go unused, they didn't voice it. All together, there were only the original four we were alerted to on our approach. No weapons out, and their gear all looked to be made for scaling walls rather than preparing for a fight.

"Who speaks for you?" I asked, keeping still while Sagrius shuffled around as if he were the one talking from the front.

They glanced at one another, before one stepped forward. "The captain's away right now. We've been authorized to negotiate in his steed."

"Away right now? And what's he doing, taking a piss out in the freeze somewhere? Where's he hiding at? Where's the rest of your group?"

"You're the winterscar, right?" He said instead, ignoring the questions.

Sagrius shrugged while I spoke through the comms. "That's me. Why are you all after me? What's the goal here?"

The knight shrugged back. "Golden tits if I know. I just do what they ask. Maybe you're unlucky and got his attention, or you pissed him off at some point. Can't say because I don't know."

"Do you understand the situation you're in? If I'm here standing before you, whatever plan you've got isn't good enough. We know you're not really here to negotiate, we've come prepared for a fight armed to the teeth, and you will not win this."

The knight nodded as if that was obvious to him. He raised a finger, "For one, it's not my plan so I don't have much of a foot in if it works or not. Frankly, I kind of hope it doesn't, if only because I don't like the bastard any more than you will. For two, we know. This sort of hairbrained stunt sounded stupid to us too, but our boss doesn't care if we live or die. Making up a solid working plan is beneath him apparently. But let me guess, you've got us surrounded and probably have a few war frigates hiding around with all kinds of weapons pointed at our heads that we don't know about. Maybe you knew what kind of active scanning our frigate can do, and brought just the right counter to sneak an army around. Or you've got a clan missile ready to blow up everything. That's what I'd do in your boots. How close am I?"

"You sound over your head here." I said, getting a feeling I might have a better hook with some diplomacy. "Work with me and we can find a way to keep you living through the day. Release the hostages, give up your armors, and we'll have you back home eating something warm."

"Trust us buddy, this isn't the first time we've found ourselves over our heads. Goddess fuck us up the arse, we've been getting the shit end of this deal ever since we left the city. If you make it out alive too, good for you. For the rest of us…" He looked behind him, to the other four who looked back. "We just want to live to tomorrow and we'll figure out what to do then if we make it. Nothing personal, just following orders."

"You're not-"

"Save your breath." He said, cutting me off. The rest of the Undersiders were already taking out their ropes and hooks, like a message had just come on their comms. "Between you and me, Winterscar, I think you made the right choice coming here. No one out here to get caught in the crossfire like back at your clan. It would have been a slaughter of civilians. But you did piss him off by making him run here, and now, well he's here. Hope you do get the bastard but I don't hold out much odds for that."

A tremor shook the ground. The enemy knights looked at one another and then crouched down low to the ground.

I had a feeling that I'd seen this before. A wave happened, lifting up the center of the area up a few feet, and then spreading back out in a ring around. And the center caved in, a wide abyss growing as the ice broke apart and fell.

There was no escape. Not for me, nor the guards around, or even the Undersiders before us. They were also swallowed up by the fall.

The second time I've fallen down a hole. Nestled deep within the embrace of the soul fractal, I didn't feel a sense of panic, or even that gut clenching rush of adrenaline at the start of a fall. My footing slipped as the ground crumbled to pieces under me, and down I went with the rest of the ice.

Relic armor is impressively durable against falls. So long as the velocity isn't enough to squash your brain against the skull, any fall could be survivable. Not something people think of often, except I've been in that situation and I've seen someone live through this before. With all the ice chunks falling around, I could grab onto them and jump straight back up in order to reduce the fall speed right before hitting ground.

That same thought seemed to have flowed through all of us. Shadowsong was already grappling with a large chunk by his side, leaping from rock to rock until he had a more clear sight up. So were the rest of my guards. I joined in, pushing against the falling debris and clearing my way upwards. "Aim for the walls." Shadowsong spoke over the comms. "We'll scale back up."

Physics of course would make jumping out of the sinkhole impossible, even jumping from rock to rock with relic armor. The Undersider knights had already tossed out their rope and grappling hooks, striking the far ends of the hole, where they raced through the air, landing feet first against the newly made cliffside. They swiftly worked on climbing and would reach the lip of the surface first, but that didn't worry me.

We'd be behind them slightly, which would amount to no difference in terms of combat. Five of us against four of them, and we had the winterblossom techniques in addition to better occult weapons. If this was the extent of their plan, they'd seriously messed up.

A blue haze began to glow in the air around me, slowing down my fall and causing me to remain floating in midair. Turning around on myself, I could see the rest of us were also being caught in separate beams of blue.

I'd seen this before. The first time I've entered a machine nest. Three types of monsters lurked there. Spiders with six legs, ruthlessly hunting me down. Barnacle like turrets, stationary with only one glowing eye to target with.

And a third type I hadn't been able to see in detail. Those would catch and hold prey for the turrets to shred. "Rifles out!" I screamed. "Open fire on whatever source of the blue beams are holding onto yo-"

That was as far as I could get before something slammed into the cliffside to my side. A massive wave of occult blue, like an arc, crushed into the wall. The power rippled into the rockside, causing more of it to crumble down, exposing what looked to be part of the underpass. A wide cavern leading deeper underground.

Rifleshots rang out, and I saw my guards were already freeing themselves from the blue beams. Turrets were firing out at them, but their shields were still holding firm. They dropped down further, down into the depths, surrounded by spots of white that were no doubt the machine spiders. I took out my own rifle and began to search for whatever machine was keeping me hovering in the air.

I never got the chance to open fire on the thing. Another wave of occult blue slapped into me, batting me out of the beam and sending me flying off, directly into the open tunnel. I landed on solid ground, feet landing correctly only for a moment before the rest of the physical forces threw me into a spin onto the ground. Journey and I slid further into the open tunnel, until finally all speed had bled out in scrapes and sparks.

"What the fuck was that?" I muttered, standing back up. I could hear distant sounds of fighting, deeper underground.

"Journey's got records of a visual match. It's seen something like this before." Cathida said. "You won't like the answer. I don't like the answer either."

"Tell me."

"Back underground, on your escape attempt."

"Ahh ratshit."

"Run now, swearing later deary." Cathida said, a real note of worry in her voice. I started a full sprint, racing back to the tunnel opening where I could jump down and land among my retinue. Never got that chance. A shadow leaped up and landed right at the center of the tunnel mouth. The man landed hard on his heels, bending down slowly with the impact before standing back to his full height. The cracked ground by the bare feet clearly pointed to a much, much heavier weight than a regular human of that size should be at. The spear he carried lit bright occule blue.

He turned with a lazy gaze, back to the opening of the tunnel, and struck the weapon in an arc through the air. Another crescent of power flew out following his motion, hitting the roof of the tunnel and collapsing. Rocks and ice tumbled and covered the entrance, turning the world dark except for the dim glow of the underpass and Journey's headlights.

Violet glowing eyes turned in the dim darkness. More steps brought him further into the light. No mistaking who that was. The black shoulder cape. The floating metal halo. A massive shoulder pauldron, more like a flat shield held by his shoulder. And that spear, held in the claw-like disassembled hand of floating metal.

"You are a nuisance." To'Aacar said.

"It's… you."

"How impressive, you have working eyes and some semblance of memory. Yes, it's me." He all but hissed.

It all clicked together. The slavers. The Chosen. They hadn't come after me because I'd known about the Occult or had created cutting edge discoveries. There had never been a secret leak. The only thing this Feather was after is the golden sphere.

No, that didn't make sense. He didn't need me for that, the sphere was in possession of Atius, hidden away somewhere in the clan. "What are you really after?" I asked. "Why go all this way just to catch me out alone?"

"Sometimes, insects simply get squashed for being at the wrong place and time." He shrugged. "You spoke with Tsyua. Anyone who speaks with her is hunted down. The pale lady is a jealous sort, if you haven't already noticed. She'll rip out whatever happened in that bunker and dispose of you after." He took further steps into the light, lifting his spear to the side with a dim chime as the tip brushed the metal ground. "Now are you going to come with me quietly, or are you going to make a fuss about it?"

"How did you even single me out?"

"Clearly all the metal on my body is too much for your tiny head to wrap around. Let me help you out: I'm a machine, little human. No detail is too insignificant to me. Acquiring a picture of you was oh so difficult, given how often you pranced around your little hive. Did you think I wouldn't notice the dozens of missing decorations? Did you think that you could hide among your rank and file from my eyes?"

"In my defense, I had no idea I was dealing with a machine at the time."

The Feather laughed. "I don't accept any defense, least of all ignorance. Although it is understandable coming from your kind."

I drew out my blade. "If you think you're going to take me down easily, you've got another thing coming."

One eyebrow quirked on that smug face of his. "Really now? I was created to hunt down and kill deities. What hope do you have?"

"Guess we'll find out." I shot back. Inside, fractals lit to life. I hadn't mastered the other spells Atius had left behind for me, but I'd still inscribed them just in case. Time to learn on the job. "Cathida." I hissed through the comms. "Take over. For this, we'll need to hit him hard right at the start with everything we have. Don't let him adapt."

"Journey's returning some very low odds of success, deary. I think we should run. And if I'm suggesting that, you know it's bad."

"We'll be fine." I said, confident in our chances. With the Winterbloom technique, some of the clan's better knights were able to beat Lord Atius himself in a fight. Atius went neck to neck with this scraphead and held his ground. That said, I did have a motto about fair fights. "We have a trump card on our belt. If all else fails, I'd like to see him deal with that."

I sank further into the soul fractal, letting go of my body before she could answer back. Occult senses rippled out, concepts growing around with more clarity. When my senses reached To'Aacar I was struck with how much of him was… well, machine. Artificial musculature, gold wiring, a composite skin of some kind, and hundreds of different electric systems all interwoven together. Most of the engineering concepts within the android were so far above my comprehension they only gave out a vague sense of the purpose. The only part of him that felt dead was his right arm, which just stopped being an arm. Despite having everything inside looking together.

The spear on the other hand grew into focus and I realized it was filled with circuitry. "Something's off with the shaft of his spear." I hissed to Cathida. I knew there had to be more to his weapon, spears were for mantlepieces and decorations. No one brings one out in a serious fight unless they've come up with a counter to main weakpoint.

"You don't say?" She snarked back, drawing out the Winterscar swords. "I'm old, not stupid. I'm not going to be surprised if that metal pole can suddenly block an occult blade. Not going to take the chance on trying to wrestle that out of his hands either. That's bait on a teacup."

To'Aacar took another casual step forward, blade lit as he held the spear in his left hand with a casual flick. "It seems you still wish to play. Futility is something your kind are well known for, after all. Fine then. Come at me with the best that you have. You'll need it."

Cathida drew into stance, but not any I recognized. To'Aacar stopped in his tracks, head tilted. The large halo above him floated by slowly in response. "Ohhh my, is that the stance of an Imperial Imperator?" He gave a grin. "That's your best plan? Your hidden ace? I suppose they would be rather rare and exotic to you surface humans. I've killed hundreds of them. Cheap little snacks. They're quick enough to make an entertaining fight at least, for humans."

Cathida spoke. Out loud into the air, elderly wobble and all. "My dear, who ever said you'd be fighting a human?"

She leaped forward before he could answer, at the maximum possible speed a relic armor could move at. We were a blur in the air, with one occult blade scything through at our side, directly for the surprised Feather's throat.

Next chapter - Tackling apex predators

Book 3 - Chapter 13 - Tackling apex predators

The strike was clean and quick, the sort of perfect swing that would stun a courtyard into silence.

To'Aacar took a casual step back, letting the blade flash a hairbreadth away from his throat. The spear in his left hand spun, already putting itself in position to tackle the follow-up hits. The shock on his face faded to a grin, almost as if he'd been playing it up for dramatic effect.

That scrapshit had something else coming for him if he thought that's all we had. Occult pulsed and both Cathida and I struck as one from opposite ends. One side was her blade, and the other was my spectral copy.

The spear flicked out, expertly stopping her strike, while he crouched and twisted under my attack, turning the move into a kick that sent us flying backwards, as if we'd run headfirst into a wall and bounced back hard.

Cathida landed like a cat, back on two feet. To'Aacar remained where he'd stood as if nothing had happened, lowering his bare foot back onto the ground. "I see Atius found a way to teach you some tricks. A novel use of a relic armor. Very novel. I'm impressed." He smiled. "Not often I see something new these days. But this won't work either. Do you know why you won't win?"

"You talk too much." Cathida said while she leaped forward. Occult blue licked the sides of my armor as I readied the fractal of mirrors one more time. The Winterscar blade whistled through the air, a near blur. Three ghostly blades struck at the same time, from alternate directions.

To'Aacar matched our speed - and then exceeded it. I think the spear struck back at Cathida's attack, bouncing her off but I can't be sure. He did something that spun the spear around in his hand, but only the afterimage was what I could remember. Things were going too fast for me to keep up, even with the Occult sight feeding concepts directly into my mind. Whatever happened in those fragments of seconds, To'Aacar dodged or destroyed all my own occult strikes and somehow struck us hard enough to cause shields to flare up and the armor to groan down onto a knee. Then kicked us away, casually, like we were just scrap metal in the way.

Okay. I may have officially bitten off more than I could chew here.

Cathida landed hard against the ground, rolling for a moment before her hand struck out and lifted the entire armor off the ground and back on solid footing. Her blades were back up, aimed at the enemy before us.

"I told you already, human. You cannot win against me. I am a machine. I can overclock my systems. Make time fly by as if it was trapped in amber." He said, taking another relaxed step to follow us, as Cathida reluctantly matched his steps backwards, keeping spacing between us. "A second to you can be an eternity in my world. Your armor could attempt to match me, of course. A pale, sloppy imitation. My body was made to funnel and dissipate heat. Made for war and battle, optimized for it, perfected. Your armor has to deal with that squishy human inside. It was built to protect you first after all, everything else is secondary. It could never reach the speeds that I can without hurting you. And they were never created to have such strain put on them, they lack the means to handle that strain for long. You will burn long before you even reach close to my level."

"He's right." Cathida said in my ear. "I know I'm better than him, the little scraphead only has one hand and a spear bigger than his ego. But skill's worth nothing if he can just move faster to counter anything I do. If I try to keep up, Journey's saying I'd risk cooking you alive deary. The armor's worse than an overprotective parent, but having you burn to death is something I can grudgingly set my differences aside for."

"How long can you match his speed?"

"Journey doesn't want to even try." Cathida said. "Goddess, it's a pain in the ass and doesn't want to take risks. You're going to have to do that administration mubo jumbo to make it listen."

To'Aacar leisurely walked forward. Cathida took steps backwards, keeping out of range. We were going deeper into the cave with each step. Like a weasel playing with a rat trapped in a one-way pipe.

I spoke the authorization, Cathida walking me through whichever it was that Journey needed, and only then did my relic armor reluctantly supply the specs it had to work with.

The answer wasn't good. "The speed problem isn't ever going away, there's a physical limit on how fast I can move the armor without breaking your bones and the bastard doesn't have that. But we can work around it. The real problem is that heat stays trapped inside the armor for a good few minutes due to the seal against the environment. Even with the overclocks turned off, you'll still be roasting in here with whatever's slowly going away. Journey says twenty seconds is the cut off point where you'll live through the cool down. Thirty seven if you take off your helmet right after to make an opening for air to pass through."

"Twenty seconds is enough." I said. "If he doesn't have a shield, all we need is a few good cuts to put him out of commission. It only takes a second to cut his head off with an Occult blade. We aren't making aerogel."

"And how exactly are you planning on deleting his shield from the equation? Because that seems to be the hard part in all this."

"You know I can hear you muttering under your helmet?" To'Aacar said as he continued to force us to backtrack. "I have no helmet but somehow I have the impression you didn't hear me, despite that. Let me help you with that short attention span, you poor miserable little thing: I was created to hunt down and kill deities. I've crossed blades with the likes of Talen and held the line with my brothers and sisters. Even weakened from madness, he's a thousand leagues above a human cowering behind his pet armor."

"Cathida," I said, whispering. "Time for plan B."

She instantly sheathed a blade and drew the knightbreaker out from its holster by the small of my back. The Feather paused, head tilting. "You think something like a grenade is going to do anything to me?" He laughed, "Go ahead, fire away. I'm right here. You can't possibly miss."

Looks like he thought this was just a regular grenade launcher. I gave a prayer to any god that would hear me, hoping that this scraphead's ego was just wide enough he'd think to tank the shell directly. He seemed like the type to do that.

Cathida didn't spit on an open gift, drawing and aiming the weapon without hesitation. "Goddess piss on your corpse, scraphead." She hissed and fired. The occult shell launched with little recoil, the payload zipping through the air directly at the Feather's center mass.

To'Aacar's left hand moved. The spear blurred. One moment it had been at his side, the next, it was pointing up, held high in the air, with only the afterimage of the glowing path the occult edge had passed by.

He'd cut the shell in half. Right on the way. There was even a whip-like crack as the spear clearly passed the speed of sound to do that. Almost at the same exact moment, physics gave his dramatic counter the middle finger.

The shell continued moving forward by inertia, no longer connected as a single unit, but split in half, and still going the same general direction with the rotational energy pushing them apart - but not quite fast enough. Parts of the carefully crafted occult chains inside were no doubt cut, but not all of them, and not all completely. The split shell fragments collided against his bare chest, and the chains flew out as designed. One didn't light up at all, the power source likely being in the way of the occult spear.

But the other three did light up. Two had been greatly shortened, and the third was undamaged. They sliced and diced wildly in all directions for a fraction of a second, before the two shell fragments flew off in different directions, dragging the chains behind them.

The chains hadn't wrapped around their target as intended. But the damage had still gone through in those milliseconds of contact.

If he tried to get out of the way, he was already too late. Occult pulsed across his body for a moment, but the chains already reached him before anything could manifest from whatever last second defense he'd attempted. His shield flared out within that millisecond - and instantly collapsed. The wild chains dug and cut into the mechanical body, causing havoc, ripping apart bits. His limp right arm was shredded in three parts, with only the chunk up to his elbow remaining. Dangling from a bit of artificial skin where the occult chain hadn't happened to pass through.

His chest had major cuts, right through whatever served as the rib cage. A few chains had both cut into him, and then flailed around before being sucked away by the shell pieces, and they'd done untold damage within him. A shorter chain had whipped right into his eye, and passed through out his cheek, just before the ear. Nothing survived wherever the Occult edge passed.

The left arm was mostly intact, but his spear wasn't. Only the spear blade itself had an Occult edge. The handle and shaft were the traditional weakpoint of a spear, the reason spears weren't reliable in combat. Those chains flew right at the shaft, and wrapped around the hilt, where an occult shield, of all things, flared up for a heartbeat. It collapsed just as fast as the Feather's own shields had.

There was no stopping the chains. The spear was cut into chunks, as if it hadn't been shielded at all, leaving him holding onto a short metal rod with no blade attached.

The chains zipped around further into the air, like two scribbles of blue fading out, before the shells hit the walls and bounced off, clinking onto the ground, the currents stopped and the attack completely spent. But damn did this little beauty pay off. Worth every bit of stress and money to make. The moment I'm back home, I'm ordering ten more.

To'Aacar stumbled, falling down onto one knee, now looking more like a ripped up puppet. He lifted his head to stare. Disfigured, with only his left eye working while the right side of his face looked like it had been held down against a blender. A few emotions passed through whatever parts of his face remained working. Shock. Disbelief. Anger. And hate. A lot of hate. And then surprise again, at the sight of an occult blade zipping right for that last eye.

Cathida, being both a foul mouthed hellion and imperial crusader, had long ago learned never to pass on any opportunity to kick an opponent on the ground. The moment she'd fired the weapon, the grenade launcher had been tossed out of her hands while she sprinted forward, Winterscar blades tip first, one reaching to impale, while the other sweeped to catch any dodge attempt.

The broken Feather's head shifted to the side and the blade passed an inch off target, cutting slightly into his cheek. Occult pulsed across his body for a second time, and this time flashed outwards. Cathida's follow-up attempt to cleave down with her off hand went directly through nothing, with the rest of my own occult mirrors also striking through thin air. He'd vanished, but not far. Whatever that occult spell was, it had repositioned him a few feet to our right.

Cathida and I instantly pivoted, and we both struck out.

I don't know how he did it, but one of his feet kicked the broken speartip off the ground, and tossed it straight up, directly through one of my occult mirror strikes at the same time that he narrowly avoided Cathida's hit. The ghost apparition faded the moment it was cut through. That didn't matter, I'd thrown out another in that span of time. This second swing he took head on, letting it cut through parts of his chest, and carve out a new cut across his limp right arm.

In exchange he threw out an open handed punch. Occult pulsed around his arm, and when he struck, it was like a massive anvil had clobbered us. Once more I found my limp body being thrown back violently.

"You godless heathen," Cathida snarled, standing us back up a distance away. "Just die already. It's embarrassing."

"This isn't happening." To'Aacar said, voice bewildered. "This can't be happening. How? A-Twelve's dead. How did you recover his chain? I saw him cast it into the mite sea, seven entire levels below, right before we killed him! Nothing comes back from that. Nothing."

He took a step forward and collapsed on another leg. The damage to his chest was really something, a human would have been dead twenty times over by now. It was like watching a corpse move around, the body occasionally refusing to function, twitching even. "No. No, no, no, he can't be alive. He's dead. I saw him die!"

"I don't know what you're babbling about." I said, taking back control. "But it looks to me like you're finished. If you don't want that head of yours to fly off whatever's left of your shoulders, you're going to do the smart thing and surrender now. I've got a lot of questions to ask."

He stared back, that one eye seemed as if it wasn't looking at me, but somewhere far off in the past. "Of course." He nearly whispered. "The mites finally spat his body back out. They must have pushed it to the surface of all places. But how did you duplicate his weapon into so many parts?" He turned his head, so that single eye could focus on the broken knightbreaker round laying around. "Did you hairless monkeys break it apart into pieces?!"

"Trying to shake me down for answers, in your state? Bold of you." I said, taking a few steps forward.

This time his eye focused on me. It looks like he responded well to taunts. "I see. The situation is not as dire as I'd feared. Analysis makes it clear as day - recently crafted. No marks of anything A-Twelve would have inscribed. Somehow you forged these chains on your own."

There was rumbling behind me. The rocks he'd collapsed at the entrance shook, and began to tumble down. "Scans show the fighting's died down on the other side." Cathida said, answering my unworded question. "Our side's breaking the rocks down. Time to wrap him up and take him back home. Part of me really hates to say this, but those Knightbreaker shells of yours are on a different level. Instantly ended that fight. I'd hate to be on the other end of one of those."

I in turn aimed my sword at the broken Feather. "I recommend giving up now."

That violet eye seemed to twitch. "I do not surrender to anyone or anything. I am To'Aacar, the one above all challenge and reach. Know this, human. Today, I acknowledge you, weaponsmith." He stood up, slowly, and collapsed back on his knees.

"I don't think you're following the script here, buddy." I said. "I've got the sword and shields. You're down an arm, a shield, a spear and…" I waved a sword tip in his general direction. "Well, an everything. This fight's over. You're coming with me, or I'll cut you up some more. And then you're coming with me." Man, now I'm starting to sound like the villain here. But there was something visceral satisfying lording over a broken enemy. Or maybe it's the Winterscar in me that simply can't pass up on an opportunity to taunt and kick a downed opponent.

"The fight is never over. Not until you, or I, die." He said, oddly calm.

"Fine. Don't say I didn't give you a chance. Cathida, serve up another limb. And bring out the fancy silverware please."

She complied, one blade swiping down on that last working hand of his. The crippled machine corpse once more moved with that scrapshit alacrity, twisting his whole torso to avoid the blow, grabbing the wrist of our hand, and yanking up. Quite literally, throwing us straight up over his shoulder, in a full unbroken arc, and tossing us away. Like we were a shopping bag. And relic armors weigh quite a lot. In the hundreds of pounds.

We hit the ground with a thud, rolling back into ground. No real damage, other than my pride of course, not even the shields were triggered. But how strong was this scraphead exactly?! Even with all that damage piled up and no leverage on his knees, he still tossed us like laundry. If I hadn't outright cheated the whole fight with the knightbreaker, I'm dead certain I'd be machine kibble.

The machine corpse tried to rise and take a step after us, but stumbled and crashed down again on his knees. He looked up, agast. Then his eye widened. "That's… your full name is… Keith Winterscar? You?"

"Yes, me. What, you never even checked my first name?" I said, taking some control back and brushing off the dust on the armor. "I'd say I'm hurt, but somehow that seems in character for what I've seen of you. I'll be honest, you're not the most polite person I've met."

The feather laughed. "Do you care for the names of each ant you pass by? All humans are the same to me. Or were the same until this moment. I know who you are now. I've just read everything that exists with your name attached to it. Perhaps I was too... harsh on my little sister. You are an anomaly among humans. I see now how she could have been killed by you."

"I don't remember killing your sister? I think that would have been a memorable occasion for me." I shrugged, "Cathida, do you have any idea what he's talking about?"

She gave the verbal version of a shrug.

"Her name is To'Wrathh. And it was a… memorable occasion to her when you killed her. She's very interested in you. Obsessed even. She was named due to your actions. I should have read the full report long ago, there's so much more I could have tormented her with. How I've wasted the opportunities."

The rocks continued to rumble, breaking apart. Bits of light shafts began to open up.

"Still doesn't jog any memory. Sorry. Don't remember stabbing a machine lady to death recently. I know I have poor memory, but it can't be that bad."

He grinned. A wide wicked thing, like a child that had found a new toy to torment. "She wasn't a Feather when you met her. No, she came back solely to hunt you down and finish what she started."

"Oh! Now I get it. Is this some kind of stalling tactic? You're making up a story on the spot? It's not going to work, but keep going. I'll admit it's entertaining. So what did this lady start exactly? I've got a.. let's say 'checkered' past when it comes to partners you see, can't tell if she wants to slap me or ask me for a second date."

Well, I was stalling too on my end. He was immobilized, safe for that short range teleport trick, and I was about to get reinforcements. He had nothing he could do to do damage to me anymore, not with Journey's shields still being active. He could try to punch me a few times and that might just work given his freakish strength. But we had the occult weapons, and he had no shields. The moment we got a cut in, we won, while it would take him some time to punch through relic shields. I also had the overheat trick ready to pull out in case things went wrong somewhere, and given that I'd be only able to use that once, I needed to make sure it would count. It wasn't going to be an end-all-be-all solution, the relic armor was still hard-capped on movement speed in order to avoid hurting me with inertia, unlike the Feather, but it would put us on a closer playing field for a critical moment.

So I decided I was going to wait for the rest of my knights to show up, and we'll dogpile the Feather until someone managed to cut his legs and arms off. We'd get him eventually. And more importantly - we had to make sure to get him. Tie him up and haul him back to the clan, then throw as many locks, bolts and knights as we could to keep him sealed up. Because if there ever were a round two against this monster, I'd end up as a smear on a wall somewhere for the mites to deal with.

"My dear little sister, she killed that other knight you were with." To'Aacar said, with unmistakable glee. "Right before you killed her for that. How ironic. How delightfully ironic. Your final words to her was to remember the moment. And you've forgotten it. Look at your stunned features. You don't even know who she is, do you? I can't wait to tell her."

My blood froze as he spoke. Memory flashed through my muddled mind. I took a step back, almost in shock. No. No way.

"You should feel honored, Keith the weaponsmith. This is the first time I've ever taken an interest in one of your kind." He said. Occult pulsed around him. "The next time I see you, I'll be ready. It's a shame you can only die once."

Cathida took command, drawing a blade up and lunging out for his shoulder without word. Heat flared inside my suit as Journey overclocked it's systems, reaction speeds increasing.

The Feather simply leered. Madness in that eye. Occult flashed, wrapping around his body in a heartbeat - and faded away right as Cathida's blades struck through.

Where he stood, there was nothing left.

The fucker had run.

Next chapter - Alone (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 14 - Alone (T)

A small part within To'Wrathh felt that this was humiliation unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

She was supposed to walk among demi-gods. And yet, here she was, hiding inside a box in the street like a wounded animal. Using every bit of active mitigation to block relic armor scanning. Curled up, wings fully enclosed, her weight squishing the soft fruits that had originally occupied half of the roomy crate. She hoped the walls would keep the crushed bits of fruit from leaking out. Hoped that the enemy didn't happen to open up the crates around this particular shopfront.

The war had gone against plan. Somehow the humans had managed to shore up their defense and batter her army away long enough for the pillar to light up again - and she'd been caught in the blast, inside the city, with enemy signals rapidly approaching her location.

The first thing she'd done was find a place to hide. None too soon, footsteps and sounds had quickly swamped the area. First civilians returning to gawk or pillage the broken machines. And then the army to establish order and push away the looters.

Damage to her system was oddly missing. Things were still responsive, albit sluggish. The Unity fractal wasn't responding either, as if dormant. To'Wrathh couldn't guess what could possibly interfere with fractal power. That was supposed to be all known laws of physics. No technology could outright mute fractals. And yet the pale lady's most powerful weapon had been nullified.

How had she survived the blast? No Feathers or machines had ever lived through a pillar. The only difference in her shell that she could consider novel for machines was… was Tenisent.

"You did this." She hissed at him, in the privacy of her mind.

The ghost remained locked deep inside, watching the world through her eyes. There was curiosity coming from him. He hadn't expected her to survive this either.

"Where is the body? Where is she?!" To'Wrathh could hear a woman's voice, even muted under her relic armor helmet. That girl had arrived soon after, her heavy relic armor crushing the ground as she landed into the plaza with little care or grace.

"We haven't found her body yet." A man's voice. A pause. "Uhh, miss ambassador? Or should I refer to you as m'lady?"

"My title doesn't matter right now. Where is she?" Kidra answered back, nearly snarling. Clinking sounds of armor moving. She must have grabbed him, To'Wrathh suspected. Times like these, the Feather was thankful she didn't need to breath. Her shell could remain perfectly still, no heartbeat, no twitches. No secondary bits of information relic armor could pick up on and make guesses for.

"O-only the machine wrecks that came in with her have been found so far. We aren't sure the amount that came in, the pillar might have vaporized some of them even. This is the first time machines have gotten this far into a city before pillars come back online." A man's voice answered. There were footsteps all around the alleyways and areas. "She might have crawled into a house and died inside there for all we know, we're still searching. But there isn't a possibility that she'll survive the pillar. Even Feathers can't stand against the power of the goddess."

"Unless I see the body, I will assume she's well alive, and scheming." Kidra said. "Find me her body and do not stop searching until you do."

"There's little point to that, miss Winterscar. We got here too late, looters were already stripping the power cells."

"And?"

"The Feather's body is going to be impossible to find. Look, if looters were fighting each other over simple power cells, all the big wins must have already been scavenged. A Feather's body is going to be an exotic thing no one would miss. Goddess, I wouldn't even be able to rely on my own men not to turn rogue and try to profit themselves."

"The value of her corpse is not important to me, captain. It's the threat she can pose. I want evidence that she's no longer a threat. Your men or the looters can have all the wealth you want."

"I get what you're scared of, but she's dead. The battle's over. Her body's command's problem to deal with now, they'll find word or an auction for it soon enough and you'll get your evidence then."

Kidra's voice took a lower pitch, too low for To'Wrathh to hear. Another pause. Quick footsteps, like someone stumbling backwards. Pushed backwards even.

"With respect, miss Winterscar, I'll have to refuse that request. You don't have the authority to set commands to me and my men. You're only a guest from the surface." The man said.

"Fine." Kidra growled. "I will return with a signed order from your commander, if that's what it takes to order common sense. You've seen the footage of my duel with her?"

"... I think everyone in the army already has, and many of the citizens too. It's been leaked a few dozen times now. While I respect your combat abilities, that doesn't change the chain of commands. We're not like surface sava- surface dwellers. Martial might does not mean obedience here."

"If you think the clans only care about martial might, then you've sorely mistaken my culture. But that's besides the point. You've seen the footage. You know the kind of danger this machine can cause. You need to find her body and make absolutely sure she isn't a threat. I need to see it in person. There's something that Feather has that I want to recover. Everything else, I don't care for."

"Again, Feathers are on a level for the Deathless to handle, but there hasn't ever been a record of one surviving the barrier pillars. This one's no different. Panic isn't going to get us anywhere."

Footsteps walking away. "I'm not panicking. But you should be. If you happen to be wrong on your guess, it will be the city that suffers your lack of judgment." A roar of jet engines, and then nothing but silence and the ever present footsteps around her. The girl must have gone.

"What a paranoid bitch." The man muttered. "Just as twitchy as everyone said they'd be."

Another set of footsteps approached. Another voice, right by the crate she hid inside. "Might be a savage, but goddess grant us she's on our side at least. You think she might be right though, captain? That the Feather's still crawling around somewhere? Gold gildings protect us, that sends a shiver down my spine thinking 'bout it."

"No, the battle's over like I said. We won. Pillar's wiped out any machine inside the city, done as done. If Feathers could survive through the pillars, they'd have done so before already. Think about it. The feather's dead as shit, and I'm not stupid enough to fuck with the black market. Let them have the body in peace. We lived through the war, I'm not going to get shanked in a back alley because I followed the straight and narrow now of all times and annoyed the smugglers. Are you?"

There wasn't an answer.

"Didn't think so. Make it look like we did a search and pack it up."

Hours passed inside that crate. But To'Wrathh was a machine, and patience was easy.

She heard fireworks at some point. The city was celebrating, noise and clamor all around. Like the beating heart of the city, coming down from adrenaline. Realizing they were safe again for another week.

For the most part, once the power cells had been looted from the runners, the rest of the alleys nearby had been closed to traffic while workers were scheduled to clean and break apart the machine shells for parts. Those workers hadn't yet arrived, too busy getting drunk and reveling in the city heart.

Night began to fall, according to her internal clock. Mites had setup the artificial sunlight to dim, waxing and waning at periodic intervals. Truly the chaotic misbegotten programs had an affinity for humanity. They helped in just subtle enough ways that Relinquished hadn't seen fit to wage war on them for. That these massive structures were well adapted to host a human city was one such proof.

To'Wrathh remained in hiding, despite the silence. She contemplated if she should simply give up on this shell, and attempt again. To'Aacar would see it as weakness, but her odds of victory alone here were slim.

Slim, but not impossible on further consideration.

The pillar would likely be heavily guarded against saboteurs or rogue fringe elements that want to watch the world burn. Could that guard stand against a Feather for long? She only needed to break a few parts of the fragile structure, make sure it cannot be fixed and then have her army grind away the defenses.

Under the cover of darkness, only then did she dare lift the top of the box and slowly leave her hiding spot. The city around her was anything but quiet. Noise and celebrations were happening everywhere around, while this street seemed outright empty.

Even in the darkness, there were lights and colors everywhere in the city. The base parts of the structures seemed to be mite made. More of that strange false city, except repurposed by the humans to become an actual city. But it was hard to spot the mite creations with the human ones. The city had grown around the initial template. Occasionally she'd see walls made of mite metal, but more often it was composite wood and cement that outlined the streets. New additions the Undersiders had grafted.

To'Wrathh hand shot out to one of the walls, and with barely a push, she began to scale the sides, leaping from place to place, making light use of her wings to angle herself. She had to keep hidden. To keep the lights on her body dim, even her eyes.

Past the first story is where the mite creations truly began to disappear entirely. The wood composite took over from there, light enough to be stacked on one another, but durable enough to hold the weight. Further up, she saw far more of the city.

Rooftops were a dizzying array of colors, even in the dim twilight of light. She realized why almost immediately - none of the roofs were made with durable material, instead it was all linen tent-like cloth, usually draped in artfully setup triangular shapes. They fluttered slightly in the calm wind. Making the landscape before her look more like a tapestry of a strange multi-colored ocean. It seemed almost still, except bits of loose 'roofing' were moving slightly, while the more rigid and well anchored cloth roofs refused to move against the wind.

"What sort of city is this?" She whispered, knocking lightly on the door holding the demon caged. He appeared floating besides her, half materialized.

"A typical undersider city." Tenisent answered with a lazy droll. "Depending on the architecture of the mites, some cities will look different, but they all share some common features."

"The tent roofing? Why cloth?"

"Why wouldn't they use a cheap material like cloth? It doesn't rain here. The weather remains constant and tepid. No elemental issues like the freeze to deal with. They have little need to protect their belongings besides for privacy. And they don't wage war inside the cities, that is taboo among their culture. The main reason I've been told, is expansion. They can't build houses outside the walls, so they build upwards or downwards. Cloth roofing is easy to take apart so that another level can be constructed."

She looked up and saw he was mostly right. The city looked more like a hundred small square spires going up or mixing with one another at different levels. Further up, she saw floating slabs, filled with makeshift zip lines from one another, and the occasional rope ladder leading down. "What are those used for?" She asked.

Tenisent shrugged. "I never found out. The times I've visited the insides of a city were few and in between. Always business, and never for long. Surface dwellers are not well seen."

Further searching, she found the ultimate target: The pillar that protected the city. It was much further on, at the center of a massive lake. It seemed like the whole city was a crescent shaped moon around a circular lake, with a long and narrow bridge leading to the center of that lake, where the mite pillar stood tall. All around the edge of the crescent shoreline, there were docks of all kinds, with boats moored. Her eyes zoomed through the distance, and she saw racks on racks of fishing gear, nets, and other fishmonger tools. Drying racks, ropes, buoys, it felt like she was looking at something come alive from the historical textbooks she'd read. Humanity hadn't changed at all since.

This was also where everyone had gathered. Boats were out on the lake, launching fireworks. People were on the docks, singing, dancing and screaming. In another life, this would be where Tamery would have been, hawking goods and finding ways to generate profit. Vendors were clearly taking advantage of the crowds to peddle their wares at every shack and cart lined up by the waterside.

She'd never make it anywhere near the dock district, not without a disguise. So she turned her attention to looking around for exactly that.

Small bridges connected the vertical houses, leaving the streets open to walk, but giving the city a second or even third layout, made of elevated walkways. Some of those walkways were sturdy constructions, others were made with rope and loose boards, clearly a temporary measure that ended up being more permanent than expected. Colorful ribbons stretched out from neighbor to neighbor, with lantern lights of many designs and drawings. They all seemed hand crafted, some expertly made and others clearly constructed by a child. Compared to the stolen memories of the clan colony, this place was massively open and far more filled with color and light. Among the sights, she found what she'd been looking for.

A residential sector, noticeable since quite a few of the rooftop canvases held a secret treasure just under it: Clothing lines filled with drying items. It seemed every building had a communal spot of some kind, given the amount of clothing she found among the lines.

Stealthily, she jumped and glided through the air, always keeping a sharp eye for possible danger. Soon enough she'd scrambled up onto the top, and slipped through the rooftop sheets.

The clothing here was scraggly, and clearly of inferior make. But it would do for now. And more importantly, she wouldn't get much more time. The celebrations would end, and the people would return.

She snatched a few bits that would cover herself up. Using Tamery and the other Chosen as a template, she knew what piece of clothing would go where. A dress and a cloak were all she'd need for now. Something with a hood.

It took her some time to find the cloak, but the dress was easy enough to find. Faded blue, but still not completely touching the ground. Her feet would be exposed - specifically the lack of them. She'd only had metal tips, a homage to her previous form.

It was outdated. So To'Wrathh forced the nano-swarms within her to graft a lookalike for the moment. Tan pseudo skin, toes and digits all. The color mismatched her nearly bleach white skin tone, so she was forced to modify the coloring for her entire body, all parts that would be possibly seen. Hands, cheeks, nose, mouth. All of it had to be updated into a more natural human hue.

The result left her with little power remaining. Enough to continue walking for a few days, but not enough to fight with for more than an hour. She'd need to find a power cell. Her swords would remain hidden in the new dress.

"You look passing for a human." Tenisent said to her side, floating by. "You'll need to learn how to mingle as a human among the undersiders."

"And you are willing to help? For no return?"

The ghost hummed. "It is amusing. There isn't much else for me to do."

Something in his tone made To'Wrathh's hackles stand on edge. The ghost wasn't telling her something, but for now he was the only source of information on human behavior. She would make do with this.

To'Wrathh slipped through the rooftop folds, and took a step off the ledge, falling straight down. The cloak became an instant annoyance, blinding her as it rippled around against the wind. But in moments, it came to a stop when her new feet hit the ground with a soft landing.

"You're going to need to walk instead of jump around like that." Tenisent said. "We don't fall down a four story drop and float to a stop."

She hummed an acknowledgement. For now her wings would remain tucked away inside her dress, and she would walk the ground instead of fly through the air. She would act the part of a human, until she had a new plan of action to deal with the pillar. What was the worst that could happen? She'd seen plenty of excellent examples of human behavior.

Hood covering her white hair, the new cloak and dress keeping the rest of her inhuman features secret, she took a few hesitant steps out into the street proper. And then instantly stopped realizing she'd made a critical mistake. She needed some sandals.

Humans didn't walk around barefoot... did they?

Next chapter - The friends we made along the way (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 15 - The friends we made along the way (T)

Wrapped up feet walked across the paveled stone grounds. She hadn't been able to find sandals. Or any kind of footwear. It seems humans did not keep such items outside to dry off, and Tenisent had no ideas to offer, clearly out of his depth as well. So To'Wrathh had to make do with strips of linen cloth from a destroyed towel she'd cut with her blades. She wasn't quite happy with the result. No traction or grip, it made her feel uneasy. If a fight occurred, she would be at a great disadvantage.

For the last few hours, she'd been aimlessly walking the empty alleys and streets, simply mapping out the city. Tenisent walked at her side, keeping pace, occasionally pointing her down another pathway away from possible contact with people, but otherwise remaining quiet. As if equally learning the lay of the land as she did. The Feather didn't have the energy to doubt him right now, instead she found herself mostly brooding on the results of the war.

Where had she gone wrong? The attack had been planned out perfectly. She'd struck back when they had been deprived of the majority of their knights, after their failed early assault. By all calculations, she should have easily stormed past their gateway and gone right into the city heart.

The only result she could come up with was simple tactical skill on the enemy commander, General Zaang. He had fought well. Without logistics to handle due to the single day nature of the battle, a huge facet of war slipped away. The fight had been a singular event and point. None of the soldiers on the opposing side had required resupplies, rest or even food rations. Those had all been pre-supplied before the start of the action. Humans could operate under stress for several days before breaking down. The solution then to force logistics back into the equation, would be to continue the assault and make sure the humans never re-took ground outside their gates. In doing so, the next attack would start directly at the witching hour, when the pillar was down.

She'd walked far enough away from her initial starting point. Time had passed. The humans were likely far less on the hunt for rogue signals now, especially in her more remote location. To'Wrathh opened up her system's communications suites, and began to verify the integrity of what had happened.

Reports began to ping back, and she sorted through the aftermath. With her out of command, her army's cohesion had broken down. They had never assigned a backup commander, nor a chain of command. A weakpoint she had been blind too, clearly.

Her other forces had each reverted to their original instincts. The Runners had reformed into smaller hunting groups, and scattered away. The older, and smarter ones had continued with her tools and training, gathering under the command of Yrob, who led them to safety. Those survived the aftermath, stalking the lands. The others had been chased out, either destroyed or forced to turn away.

Serpents, what few of them remained, slunked away, and began to pepper the surrounding area with acid, breaking down smaller human structures and abandoned defenses.

All her spiders had retreated back to their nests, carrying whatever was theirs by right. Usually prizes and scraps of broken tanks or other trinkets to hoard in their dens.

Her behemoths had all been dispatched, including the last one. Even with their size and power, they had been mere obstacles to Kidra and the flying knights she'd come with.

The next attack would require more planning and strategy if she was to win. In the meantime, she sent a command to Yrob to continue keeping the humans penned inside their gatehouse and siege the whole construction. The pillar repels machines, but it didn't repel weapons fire. More behemoths would be made and sent out, to continue peppering the failing gatehouse with more holes for future entry, and force the city onto the defensive. Keeping them from rebuilding and repairing the current damage was important.

There was one thing that remained stuck in To'Wrathh's mind, through and through. The unity fractal had been shut off. Her mother's eyes and ears had been blinded and deafened. The pillar likely targeted anything that carried that fractal, but it hadn't been lethal to her soul fractal for some reason, unlike the other machines that had charged in with her. The Chosen had been able to walk through the gates without issue, but they were mostly human so that hadn't been a surprise. She wasn't sure why the pillar had spared her, and only her.

Without the unity fractal looming over her mind, anything To'Wrathh did here and now could be scrubbed away digitally such that no report would ever be unearthed. The thought grew, larger and larger until it was the only thing she could think about.

There was a thrill to it, even despite the crushing defeat she'd been handed by the stubborn humans. Until the city fell, To'Wrathh was… free of her mother's supervision.

Perhaps the invasion didn't need to be accomplished so quickly. There was value in reconnaissance and intelligence after all. And the best source of information is gathered and verified personally. The more To'Wrathh considered her situation, the more she came to the conclusion that she'd ended up exactly where she should be. Deep behind enemy territory and perfectly hidden among their number. If Yrob and the machine army did their work correctly, the next week's war would begin right at the city doorsteps against a completely crushed in gatehouse. A far more easy matchup. In effect, victory was within reach already. Only, delayed by a single week. Everything was still on plan.

She turned and set off with a spring in her step, for where the humans concentrated the most. Her mind going through all the possible aspects of humanity she could witness and learn from firsthand. Such knowledge would surely come in handy.

Every step she took, it felt like she became more comfortable with the streets and the city. The battle was over. There was nothing to do for now but wait the week out for her future victory. Her disguise was perfect. From anyone else's perspective, she was simply another human walking around the city. In under an hour, she'd found herself at the docks. Revelers, all shouting and many clearly drunk, flocked around the place. It was deeper into the night, nearly half a day since the victory, and the full celebration was ebbing on the slowdown as the drunks fell asleep. Some people had already crashed on the sides of the walls, letting the world pass by them in a dizzy haze. She passed by them, drawing an odd number of looks from the slightly more sober.

It was interesting to see the humans in their natural environment. Laughing, dancing, cheering, all kinds of emotions passing over their face. To'Wrathh walked through the center street, eyes constantly looking around to take in the strange alien sight. A man bumped into her, holding his belly all the while. "Heyyya sweetlin', why the hood? Hidin' them pretty eyes of yours or something? Want me to buy ya a drink?"

Another hand wrapped around her shoulder, and a woman's voice spoke. "That's my sister, she's always been shy about her face. Enjoy the festival my friend, see you around!"

Audio recognition software had identified the woman's voice from the very first word. A warmth had spread through To'Wrathh a moment after, as if she'd expected to have been found like this, despite the low probability.

Tamery dragged her away, looking mildly worried.

The man, on the other hand, was not quite so happy with the turn of events. "Hey, I'm still talkin' and your sister can say yes or no for herself. Quit being such a noseit."

Tamery's hand dragged her away. "Sorry, we really need to be going right now, enjoy the festival."

The man's hand reached out, grabbing To'Wrathh's own arm. "Come on, don't be such a sheltered prude. It's celebrating time! Scrapheads are all dead, city's going to live another week! I'll buy you both a drink,"

"Don't make a scene, plenty of other people to hit on." Tamery hissed. "Read between the lines already."

"I'm reading plenty, yer just a controlling sister talkin' over everyone."

Tenisent hovered nearby. "Break his wrist." The ghost suggested. "It would be child's play for you."

To'Wrathh observed how the man held her arm, but she didn't quite trust the ghost's suggestion blindly. "May I break his wrist?" She asked Tamery instead. "He does not seem to want to let go of his own accord. It would be a possible solution to this."

That instantly froze the conversation. The man seemed confused for a moment, and Tamery took the moment to speak. "Look buddy, I'm not trying to protect my sister from you. I'm trying to protect you from my sister. She's not... well in the head okay? She's a danger. Shouldn't be out on the street in the first place. You know, not completely hinged in the head." She tapped her head with a finger a few times, as if communicating something to the man. "One moment she's normal, and the next she'll be clawing your face off if you say the wrong thing."

The man paused, and then looked To'Wrathh up and down with drunken stupor. Observing her dress and hand-crafted shoes. Then, as if realizing something profound, finally let go, taking a step back. "Oh." He said. "Oh shit. Sorry. She do look a little crazy. What a shame."

Tenisent grumbled, crossing spectral arms together. "What a shame." He agreed, for very different reasons.

To'Wrathh, on the other hand, frowned, turning to Tamery. "But I am in perfect command of my faculties." She said, indignant.

"I know that!" Tamery hissed under her breath, dragging the Feather out of the street and away from the man. "But he doesn't need to know that, and it made him give up - without having to actually break his wrist. See?"

"... You have a point." To'Wrathh admitted. The situation had been resolved. She had other things to be curious about anyhow. "How did you find me? This is far quicker than I had predicted. I assumed I would need to search and find you first." This was a little puzzling but she was still happy to have already connected with a friendly face.

"I knew you'd pull something half baked - exactly like this! I should have bet the others money on hindsight. Goddess damn it, that would have been easy money! Damn my morals. You even have a hood and everything, could you possibly be more stereotypical?!"

"This hood hides my features." To'Wrathh countered. Then she paused for a moment, thinking. "And I look very good in it."

Tamery stopped, turned, and stared. "Okay." she said, hand running down her forehead, and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Okay. Yep, that one's on me. My fault. I should never have told you what humor was. Noone wears a hood at this time of day, you bucket of bolts for a head! You're adorable, but you're going to get yourself caught at this rate." The human tugged some more at To'Wrathh's hand. "Now we've gotta get out of here fast before people start asking questions."

"The celebrations here are the best source of intelligence I can collect. Staying here and observing the festivities might further my goals."

"Intelligence?" Tamery looked back at the crowds shouting and hollering to one another. "What in the twelve hells are you planning on learning from that? How to drink three shots and stand on a toe? How to win a catcalling competition?"

"That might have relevance in a future campaign in ways we do not yet know. All knowledge is worth pursuit."

Tamery didn't answer for a moment, before rubbing her eyes with one hand in another desperate attempt to wipe the sleep away. "I can't believe I'm actually arguing, with a machine, about stranger danger. Not even half a day after the attack! I swear to the goddess, if I'm not here to look after you, what sort of trouble would you literally walk yourself into?" Tamery turned to glare up at the taller Feather, like an older sister scolding her misbehaving sibling. "And don't you dare pout at me!" Her hands snapped out to To'Wrathh's cheeks and squeezed on instinct. "Wait." She paused, "How in the goddesses do you even know what a pout is?!"

That… distracted the Feather. She didn't know what a pout was, but apparently her facital subroutines had decided to run with that. To'Wrathh let herself be dragged by Tamery in the meantime, pondering on her words. It only took a quick dictionary search to find the definition of pouting, and an angry followup query to discover what misbehaving subroutine thought it would be funny to send that command through.

Of course, all she found under the software layer was simple logic which concluded that this was the single most accurate emotion to display, to a high degree of certainty with a high degree of precision as well. None of her CMOS systems were trying to be funny. Her virtual subconscious ruled it understood her more than she understood herself, which troubled To'Wrathh in a strange abstract manner she had no words to describe. She pouted further at the revelation instead.

The next To'Wrathh noticed, Tamery had dragged her to a house, knocked on the door, and slipped inside. The room was lowly lit, and surrounded by a few others. Chosen. She recognized all of them, Tamery's personal friends and coworkers.

"I found her." Tamery said without any preamble, taking off her shoes and putting them to the side, along with her jacket. "You guys can call off the search."

There was a silent moment as the people inside had stopped their activities and stared. Maps had been printed out and posted up on the walls, along with red strings and written out notes. Circles and crossed out sections. The room seemed to be holding its breath. To'Wrathh tilted her head slightly in confusion. "Greetings." She said. "I am online and functioning."

That seemed to dispel the air. People bussed around again, moving to grab supplies or to take down the maps. "Where was she? I had my group look all over the slums and nobody saw anything." One of the men in the back said, nursing a cup of water. "I was half convinced the black market really did take her. How did you find her?"

"I found her by the edge of the festival of course, right at the entrypoint from the slums. She more or less made a straight line there." Tamery said. "Didn't I tell you Markus? Think the worst possible place for her to stumble into and multiply it by a factor of five. It had to be the docks. She was the single most suspicious looking person walking around."

The people around gave To'Wrathh worried looks. "Lady To'Wrathh," A smaller girl said in a tiny voice, approaching with a damp cloth. "Please be more careful, you need a guide to help you in this city." The girl reached up on her toes and helped wipe off some lingering soot on the Feather's cheeks. Another human had come to her right and was motioning for her to remove the cloak.

"We need to get her an actual disguise. A better dress for a start. And shoes come to think of it." Tamery said, looking down at the wrapped up feet. "Angria, didn't you buy a skirt and blouse combination yesterday? Do you think it'll fit?"

The girl Tamery had been talking to was already bounding up the ladder to the second floor, "I'll go grab it now! It'll look so much better than a hood!"

"The hood was practical." To'Wrathh frowned. "There was no alternative to hiding my hair." She found herself holding some kind of fondness for the clothing. It was, after all, the first bits of human clothing she'd ever worn in her life. There was some kind of sentimentality to it.

"You're both the smartest and most senseless girl I've ever met. A real enigma, you know? It's like the gods flip a coin anytime you make a decision on anything." Tamery sighed, rubbing her eyes for the third time in a day. And then she pointed at To'Wrathh's feet. "You can literally change your features to a ridiculous degree. Add new feet? Why not? More wings? Sure, bring them on, give yourself a set of six, add a bunch of eyes to them if it strikes your fancy. You even told me you rearranged your internal organs before, tossed in vocal cords down your throat! Why not just command your hair to turn blond?"

"Oh." To'Wrathh said, as the room went quiet. "... That hadn't occurred to me."

Like she'd punctured the tension from the room, the silence melted away into chuckles and then outright laughing. "That's okay." Tamery said to her side. "You're outside your element here. But that's where we come in. We've got you back here safe and sound, so the worst is thankfully passed us. Now, what do we do from here?"

To'Wrathh thought. "The attack failed. And within two weeks, my elder brother To'Aacar will no doubt return underground to check on my progress. If the city is not in our control at that point, he will likely wage a war of annihilation." She wasn't quite sure what would happen to herself at that point. To'Aacar did not suffer failure. "The city must surrender, and soon. I will need options from here."

The mention of their former master brought a shiver to everyone present. They'd known who he was, and the cruelty that came with him. None wanted to return to that.

"Well, askin' them to just surrender again isn't gonna work." An elderly man in the back said. "Need to wait a few more days for the reality of the situation to start weighing on them again. They survived the first wave, but they know deep down they won't have that much chances for the second. Very first attack and the Lady nearly got to their pillar in fifteen minutes. And this was at their single most prepared moment. The next round they won't have even half the advantages they had this time, and the people know it. Problem is that morale is at an all time high right now, even if they all know in the back of their heads it's over. What do we do against that?"

"We keep doing what we've been doing so far." Tamery said. "There's a lot of us all around. We can continue looking for the deserters, the people who can see the writing on the wall. When the time's right, we'll call on all of them and storm the pillar."

"That hasn't been workin' out so far." The man said. "Nobody trusts the machines are going to stick to their side of the bargain."

"Maybe they need to speak to one directly." Tamery said. "And we just happen to have the best one here. Gather them all up a few days from now, we'll introduce To'Wrathh directly, and she can make her case in person. It's one thing to get reassurances from faraway strangers, it's another to hear it directly from the grand leader herself."

That got some nods of approval. "What is Lady To'Wrathh going to do in the meantime? I don't think we can convince her to stay inside for long." A woman said to the side. She coughed. "I mean no offence of course, Lady To'Wrathh. But we've all long known about your.. Ah, curiosity."

"I am not sure what you mean." To'Wrathh said, bemused. "Your statement is factually accurate."

Tamery grinned, giving her a quick hug while laughing. "Of course you'd say that." She turned to the rest of the room. "While you lot deal with getting people together, I'm going to socialize our fearless leader here. We're in the center of the city, I think it's time our Lady had a day off and got to see some of the better parts of life."

Next chapter - In which To'Wrathh has a wholesome day off (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 16 - In which To'Wrathh has a wholesome day off (T)

"Focus your mind. Relax your breathing. Should you find your mind drifting, notice it, forgive yourself, and move on." Tenisent said, translucent arms crossed on the other side of the quiet room.

"I do not need to breath. My mind remains focused on any topic I assign." She said, to which Tenisent scoffed.

"You asked." He said, "Take the advice, or don't."

Tamery told her they would be 'going out' in the morning. That left To'Wrathh alone in the living room parlor. It had, after all, been very late into the night for them when they'd found her. They'd been up since the end of the attack searching for her, unprompted. Exhausted, they all soon crashed in their makeshift beds, sound asleep.

And a Feather had no need for sleep.

So she'd asked Tenisent how he passed time since there were a good amount of hours before Tamery and the rest of the Chosen woke up. It was only polite to at least attempt to follow through on the advice, after all.

It was true she didn't need to breath, but her shell did automatically simulate the action. And besides, it offered a method of passive cooling, if rather small. Thought wise, her CMOS systems were unable to deviate from any instructions, so she saw little benefit to that part of the exercise. Her mind couldn't wonder around.

She tried again, taking the traditional pose for meditation. Tenisent nodded, and sank down into a sitting position, mirroring her own. He wasn't truly there of course, only a mental image mapped out into the world. But he certainly acted and reacted as if he were. She wondered how he saw the world from his point of view, given his decoherent form. Fractals rarely made sense, and there was far more that was unknown about them than known. She was treading on grounds few people had ever studied or even known about. Perhaps he saw what she saw and interporla-

"You're allowing your mind to drift." Tenisent said dryly.

To"Wrathh snapped back to the present. "I do no-" She paused, and realized she had. "...How did you notice?"

"You fidget." He said.

Her? A Feather of Relinquished? Fidgeting? "Preposterous. I do not fidget."

"You just did, again." He stared her down, as if daring her to call him a liar. "Glare at me all you want, girl. That won't change that you have and do fidget."

She scanned through the logs of her past movements, certain the dead human was pulling a fast one on her, and... and found out the human was correct. Clearly, her background subroutines were taking a bit too much liberty. Where had those habits and mannerisms developed from in the first place? Or rather when had they appeared? Over time or all at once? From what stimuli? These systems would monitor her neuromorphic parts and cross reference the strings of thoughts into matching physical action. The system was working as intended when she looked into it, only it was being fed undiciplined thoughts and acting on those.

"Your mind is drifting again." Tenisent said, "Stay focused. And stop squirming."

Feeling greatly embarrassed, she took more direct control of her shell, putting a stop to the fidgeting once and for all. As a result, keeping all parts of herself in balance became far harder now that she was in command rather than leaving it to her background processes. She almost lost balance and fell face first. There were hundreds of smaller autocorrections her CMOS systems handled passively for her, and all of it has already been trained on hundreds of hours monitoring her inattentive thoughts.

There was a lot of clean up to do. She had to be dignified, as a Feather should be. Relinquished expected perfection from her Feathers.

An hour passed like this, with Tenisent slowly grinding away all the small quirks of meditation, anywhere from posture to keeping more control over her mental sphere. As a machine, no body position would change the efficiency of her functions and she entered the whole project with a mild feeling of annoyance - but she'd asked and felt accountable to follow it through as a matter of stubborn pride, and so she did.

Somehow, at some point, there began to be an odd sense of serenity to it that she wasn't able to pinpoint within her systems. She'd begun to notice that there was far more happening deeper in her mind, with the ghost's incessant prodding whenever she'd started to ponder on something else. Logical threads were easy to follow and understand. A simple query would return all information relevant to a decision. But deeper under, were threads of emotions. They appeared from her neuromorphic parts and were mutated somehow as they passed through the soul fractal.

It gave her much to think about. Machines could operate without souls, and they originally had for many decades before fractals were discovered. But artificial souls mixed with neuromorphic engineering had been a breaking point to true sapience during the golden age of humanity. Somewhere inside was the key to all these unwanted changes she was suffering from. If only she could figure it out and be more like To'Aacar and the Feathers of his generation onward.

They remained static, unchanging, for centuries. Eternal. Perfect.

"I'm surprised you are not frantic to secure the pillar." Tenisent said after some time, bringing up a new topic.

"There is no point making a hasty move." She told the ghost. "Rather, this will be one of the few times I will see human culture without interference." And if she was honest, she felt more relaxed now than ever before. Perhaps ever in her life. There was no war here and now. She had lost the initial volley, and further attacks would happen on a timeline, on schedule. There was nothing to do but wait. The meditation seemed to calm her down after learning how to do it correctly. Helped her smooth out strings of emotions by tracking them down.

It was peaceful. She could have told Tenisent this. But she didn't, still skirting away from saying such blasphemous things like enjoying a calm moment. Feathers were weapons of war. Their natural state was in the middle of a battle. That was their purpose. She shouldn't be feeling this way, being content with the lack of action. It went counter to her baseline goal.

Instead, she plucked out an acceptable cover. "Observing how the humans here act and react will give me a metric to compare to once I have control of the city. If they return to the same behavioral patterns, then I will know my command over the city is complete. I do this for research purposes."

"That sounds an awful lot like an excuse, girl." Tenisent said.

She tutted, turning her head sharply away. The human had an uncanny ability to catch her in her lies. Truly annoying.

"But I agree with the course." He finished.

To'Wrathh quirked an eyebrow at that, turning her head to him.

He shrugged at the implied question, parts of his blue translucent shoulders going through the pillar. "I lived a life following only goals. I devoted myself to my vow as a Knight Retainer. I lived to be only what others expected of me. It was not a life well spent, in hindsight. Color only came into it when… when I met my wife." He looked down, almost flinching. "She showed me things that changed how I saw and lived life. For the better. I had something to protect. Someone to protect, of my own choice. All because I took a single step outside the narrow confines of my path. Perhaps the same will happen for you. My greatest memories are those I found outside what was expected of me."

To'Wrathh viewed the time table. Still four more hours to go before Tamery would be within waking period. "May I see some of these memories?" She asked idly.

Tenisent didn't answer. Instead, he slowly turned, eyes narrowed. "Why are you even asking? Shouldn't you be able to take whatever you want?"

A good point. She could simply rip any memory from Tenisent's head and view it at her leisure. She almost did, but there seemed to be some dividing… morality line within her. It felt wrong.

That was novel.

Again another one of those strange new emotions within her. She dove further into it, trying to understand where it had come from. There were no such feelings on taking Tenisent's skills and combat experience. When she attempted to read what his current plots were, and failed, that too did not feel like crossing a line. Although, she hadn't tried again ever since.

She considered it further and realized the reality was far more simple. "Spiders always had a sense of respect among themselves, it was only natural for this to follow as I shifted form into a Feather. At the core, my roots remain the same." She said. "When my sisters claimed prey as their own, I respected their wishes. Hence, my kind are capable of feeling respect."

"And that evolved into some kind of respect for the enemy?" Tenisent asked.

"Something akin to that. I do not see any reason my enemies shouldn't be afforded basic respect. The combat aspects of your memories are part of my war effort and a tactical necessity, thus I have no qualms on taking those for myself. Your personal life is of no tactical necessity. That would be peering into a memory for no reason but to satisfy my own curiosity. It is not right."

Tenisent said nothing, only thinking. "The surface clans live and breath honor. For both one's House, and for the enemies one faces. The only enemies not deserving of respect, are animals. You pillaged from those memories originally. They might have imparted more than you bargained for."

"You think your combat memories have affected my sense of morality?" The Feather scoffed at that. "I don't see how that would be possible."

He shrugged again. "Something did over time. The only one who can answer that question is yourself."

The ghost made a show of standing back up from his meditation pose, and walked over, slowly, lumbering. As if dreading work that needed to be done. Still, he reached where she sat, and took his own seat next to her. A beat passed before he sighed and spoke. "... I'll share with you some of my… better memories. Just this once. If you are willing to see."

He extended a hand. To'Wrathh considered the offer for a moment, and then took it.

"This will be perfect." Tamery said, fixing up some more of the feathers on To"Wrathh's new headwear. "Plus it'll match your new hair. Blond and blue is a great combo."

To'Wrathh watched the mirror like a hawk. The headdress had dozens of synthetic feathers, all different shades of dark blue and gray complementing one another, with a white bird like skull mask to hide her features. "I am not familiar with puritans, or their customs." She said. "This outfit, does it have ceremonial usage?"

The night had come and passed. Tenisent was nowhere to be seen now, having retreated back into his cell. He'd ended up sharing more than just one memory of his. In between, To'Wrathh had shared some of her own memories, as a spider. The non-violent ones at least. There seemed to be an unworded agreement between both not to show the other anything that wasn't more clean. While her old life had been far more simple, there had been plenty of smaller memories she still remembered and cherished. It felt more like sharing stories to one another.

"In a manner of speaking." Tamery said, bringing To'Wrathh's mind back to the present. "The whole gist is that it's modeled after these extinct birds that once lived during the golden age. Parrots I think they were called. Anyhow, puritans are all about how life is superior to machines, so the colors and vibrancy of the parrots is symbolic to them. The raptor skull mask invokes images of the ultimate arial hunter. It's a counterpart to how the automatons look out there. And it works really well to hide your face while still blending in. We need a new name for you too, Wrath seems a little to edgy, even for puritans."

"Wrath is already shortening my name. I do not like to change my name." To'Wrathh said, feeling defensive.

"It's just a name."

"Names have meaning." She said, crossing her arm and frowning.

"Fine, how about you pick a name with meaning then."

The Feather wanted to argue, but found herself running short on debate points. It was difficult to explain how important names were to machines. Humans seemed to take them far too lightly.

Unfortunately, she really could not continue to call herself To'Wrathh while being undercover.

"Sophia." To'Wrathh said after a moment of contemplation. "I believe that will do fine."

Tamery shrugged. "Old-school of a name, but sure. Works for me, Sophia. Any reason why that name?"

"It is the root of knowledge. I seek knowledge above all. As a name, it represents me enough."

The human didn't seem to quite understand the leap, given her puzzled look. "You stated these birds are extinct." To'Wrathh said, changing the subject. "Machines are not extinct. Clearly one hunter survived while the other perished. These puritans should pick a different analogy."

Tammery huffed, patting her shoulder and fixing up the leather straps and pockets of the dress. "It's less about the technicalities and more about going with the flow. Besides, you look great in all this! The more you stand out with distinct features, the less people will equate you with the runaway Feather. They'll just remember you as a Catrian girl celebrating with the others. And besides, you're a Feather, so wearing feathers is sort of poetic. Like an inside joke for us."

"Again, I am not familiar with puritans. What are Catrian girls?" To'Wrathh asked.

"Dancers. It's complicated, you'll get it when you see it."

"You will need to give me something to work with, if anyone begins to ask me questions."

Tamery took her hand and brought her up from her seat. In the mirror, To'Wrathh looked like a mix between urban and feral. The half skirt dress turned into a hoodie that did little to hide her stomach. Apparently that was intentional. Pockets of all kinds were sowed on her arms and shoulders, all of it with little use or outright covered up by longer blue feathers that served as honorary shoulderpads. Makeup was applied that darkened the sides of her eyes, and gave her an almost brooding look. With her two blades at her left side, she looked like a feral tech-blade of some kind. A ridiculous outfit. It looked… nice.

Yes. Nice would be a good word for it. Unique. Different. It scratched an itch deep inside her. She hadn't seen this kind of outfit from any of the citizens around, it stood out in a way she found pleasing.

It was sleek. Certainly not practical, but that hardly mattered. Catrian girls were dancers, not fighters, according to Tamery.

"Puritans are an oddity among religions. Less a religion and more a movement. In the city, they don't even have a church. They just gather up in different places for sermons on the floating rocks and to partake in… let's say mind altering substances. The city's mostly imperials. So you won't have to worry too much about blowing your cover. People will just assume your a 'tian and leave you alone." Tamery opened the door and stepped out into the bright artificial sunlight. To'Wrathh stalked behind, the clothing rustling with each step.

"The floating rocks are used by puritans?" The Feather asked. Tenisent hadn't know what they were for either. Apparently they served a religious purpose. That seemed odd to To'Wrathh, they could have been used for far more things.

Tamery laughed, brushing her shoulder feathers amicably. "No, not at all silly. Only a few of those slabs get colonized and build on, the ones low enough for buildings to reach. The rest are too high up right now. The floating slab's where all the young people go, because older adults have a hard time climbing up all those ladders. And Puritans are all about rebellion and self-autonomy, so most puritans tend to be teenagers or in that age bracket. I had a phase too with them until it wasn't practical anymore to be openly puritan for my work. But I'm twenty two, so still not an old hag. I've got some contacts to pull on."

They walked through the streets, heading for a specific direction. Vendors of all kinds hawked out goods around them, and Tamery indulged it all. She had the money to spend. Food of all kinds were passed on to To'Wrathh for tasting.

This was perhaps the best part of her day so far.

Every bite was something new and wonderful. Just now, Tamery brought back some kind of steamed vegetable on a stick, interspersed with chicken meat. The skewer was divine. "See imperials are always old and stuffy, all about traditions and long sermons." Tamery said as the two ate on the walk. "But their faith makes more sense. More grounded. Puritans on the other hand are all loose and anecdotal. Each Kindred has their own branching lore and ideas, so when puritans from one Kindred visit another, it's more a mutual sharing of different ideas. Even the Catrian dance has different moves unique to cities, so collecting new movements is part of a game girls play at. Imperials always have the exact same doctrine, same scriptures, and everything's far more consistent. That's probably why people end up gravitating to them. There's other established religions out there, like the Hosrake, the warlock's Bok'daram, the Tenials, and the mite-speakers but all that's going to get real confusing and most of those religions are not present in the city."

"Humans communicate with mites?" To'Wrathh asked, feeling confused.

"Those that follow that religion say they do, or did in the past. Not really a lot of them these days. Mites always have been an enigma to me, say how are they on the machine side?"

"They have a firewall of around their digital space. Smaller programs can filter through but surviving past the mite wall is difficult. Anything larger that attempts to pass through the wall never returns."

"They're an enemy?" Tamery asked, confused.

"A neutral party. I believe they have been spotted assisting both sides of the conflict at different times. Like humans, they are not a mono culture. As for their goals and objectives, the archives machines have access to show no results. What does the human mite religion do? Perhaps they know more than we do."

Tamery thought for a moment. "Most people don't pay attention to speakers because only the mentally unwell ones says they can speak to mites. Usually they're like doomsday preachers, talking about prophesies. The ones that aren't lunatics are more likely grifters. We don't have any here, mostly we're just a city of imperials. Very traditional." She handed To'Wrathh what looked to be a grilled rat on a stick. "Pipe rat with shakram spices. A staple for the lower income, but personally I find it tastier than crab. It's, like, my comfort food."

"How do you eat this?" To'Wrathh asked. But Tamery was already away, buying another set of food from a vendor further down the road. With little options, the feather shrugged, and simply ate the whole rat in one bite. It was oddly juicy, filled with rendered fat that paired well with the soft tissue and cooked protein.

"Whoa, that's metal." A voice said behind her. She turned and saw tiny humans. Three of them. Boys. One of the children pointed at her hand. "She even ate the bones and everything!"

To'Wrathh flushed, suddenly connecting the dots that perhaps she shouldn't be eating the whole animal off the skewer like so. Too late now. Another boy scoffed. "She's a 'tian like me." He said proudly. "Of course she'd be tough. Told ya."

"'Tians are all just show." The other kid said. "A single crusader would beat a hundred 'tians and still have time to eat a meal. My dad said so."

The first turned around, angry, and a fight quickly came down between the two.

The third came up to To'Wrathh, tugging on her skirt, ignoring his two friends currently wrestling one another. "How did it taste?" He asked. "With the bones?"

To'Wrathh looked down on the small child and thought for a reply. "Crunchy." She finally said. Less was better, especially since the first child had claimed to also be a puritan. She didn't want to be caught as a fraud this early.

"You kids bugging my friend here?" Tamery said, walking back into range. The two on the ground shot back up, all problems forgotten and forgiven. Tamery's hand shot out and ruffled the hair of one of the kids. He scrunched up and backstepped away, hands brought up as if ready to go into a fight. Tamery laughed like bells would chime. "Wow, so tough! But do you think you could beat her in a fight? Think your dad could take her on?"

The kid glanced over to To'Wrathh, and then to her empty skewer. "Yeah, I could take her on. Easy." He said with a gulp.

"Statistically unlikely." To'Wrathh said, but her attention was focused elsewhere - specifically on what Tamery was bringing back with her.

The girl grinned, and passed what looked like an orange claw to To'Wrathh. "Here, you little glutton. I was talking about crab earlier, turns out the shop way down there had some in stock. Give it a try. Six clawed rock crab, a fisherman's staple."

She brought up another claw and took out a small pocket knife, which she used as a lever to snap the exoskeleton off. From there she sucked out the meat.

The feather observed and brought up her own crab claw. Cooked orange, with what looked to be bits of red flakes, and dripping a butter compound of some kind. Steaming off the shell. She didn't have a tool to break the meat open, but a quick scan showed the composition was chitin, protein, and calcium carbonate. Mostly brittle and of little challenge. She snapped the claw with a press of her fingers. The meat had been crushed in the process by accident, she'd put too much pressure. But enough of it was left over to be edible. She quickly went on to doing exactly that, comparing the vastly different texture and taste of crab to rat. Cataloging it all, and saving the memory. Yrob and the other runners would greatly appreciate this. Unlike the rat, this meat had a sweet taste to it, soft and melting away. The bits of pulverized shell added a nice crunch to the whole thing too. Unlike the rat bones, the shell fragments were far more random and interspread.

"Still think you can beat her in a fight, tough guy?" Tamery asked while To'Wrathh focused on eating. The child had turned white for some reason, and took a step back as the Feather swallowed, snapped off another bit of claw and sucked out the meat inside like Tamery had done. Less shell this time, but that gave a slightly different profile to compare the data to.

"Maybe when you hit your growth spurt, you'll get to hang out with us again you little scamps." She said, patting him again on the head and lightly pushing him on the way. He got the message and the other kids all followed behind, quickly kicking off into a sprint, chasing after the lead in some impromptu game To'Wrathh hadn't yet understood. The last one ran away, waving goodbye. She returned the wave, awkwardly. The claw fragments of the crab were not making it easy.

"That was a novel encounter." To'Wrathh commented. "The disguise worked. One of them claimed to be a puritan and he did not suspect my status."

"Of course it worked. I know my stuff." Tamery said, puffing her chest out. "Ready to keep going? I've got more food to show you on the way, you'll love this next dish."

"She discovered your weakness quickly." Tenisent said to To'Wrathh's side. The ghost floated around, watching over.

"She does not." To'Wrathh chided in private to Tenisent. "Food is simply enjoyable."

"You could eat a cement wall and say it was appetizing." Tenisent said.

Feeling miffed at the thought, she tossed the memory of eating the crab down into the cell that housed the ghost. The old warrior had been a clanner, food like crab wasn't something he'd ever eaten before. She saw him pause, frown, open his mouth to complain and then stop again, and frown some more.

"See? Enjoyable." To'Wrathh said, feeling a puff of triumph. It's about time she got one up on him.

For the rest of the trip down the docks, anytime the old man was about to complain, she threw at his face another recently made memory of food, and that did excellent at shutting him up. Seemed to her, that she'd found his weakness just as easily. Everyone liked food.

Even if the stubborn ghost wasn't willing to admit it out loud.

The rock overhangs were exactly what Tamery mentioned. To reach the floating slabs, rope ladders were the only path up, unless one could climb. "Every few years some dumb kid makes a mistake and slips off these slabs." Tamery said. "History says that's part of the reason tent roofs became a thing in this city, supposedly it saved a few lives. The old city government tried to ban coming up here multiple times, but it's never stopped teenagers. So eventually they caved and set up nets under the slabs. It's all ancient history. They're a little hard to spot from the ground, but you can see them more clearly from here."

Climbing was a novel experience for To'Wrathh. Usually she would fly anywhere she chose. Tamery climbed just above, keeping a steady pace, her body angled to keep the rope set right.

She could see some of the other, lower slabs, having small gatherings of people, surrounding a bonfire of some kind. They seemed to be speaking to one another, but given the wind and distance, not even To'Wrathh's hearing was able to make sense of it all. And they were all youth of some kind. Adults were no where to be spotted up here, with the effort required to climb.

The top of the slab was a small grassy plain, with a central masonry. What looked to be ruins of a mite construction, little more than eroded walls now with moss growing anywhere it could take root. At the center was a small gathering of people, all wearing outfits similar to To'Wrathh's. Each had their own unique flare, though the overall theme remained consistent.

Tamery had told her more about these people on her climb. She felt reasonably prepared to join this social circle.

"Hey all! I'm back!" Tamery said, waving to the group. They turned and stared for only a moment before standing back up and rushing over, crowding around her.

"Who's the new girl?" One of the women asked, pointing at To'Wrathh.

"I am Sophia." To'Wrathh lied. "I'm new to the city, and arrived right before the machine blockade hit."

The news seemed to sour people, as they grew quiet. "Scrappers. Always trouble, eh?" One said. "Glad you made it before the chopping block. Why not come by earlier?"

She was prepared for that. "I wanted to work on my outfit, but Tamery helped speed that up."

Originally this was supposed to have been Tamery's. The girl had been working on it in secret a few years ago, before her troubles hit. She handed it off to a friend, who'd gone and returned it once Tamery returned. With To'Wrathh's arrival, the girl didn't seem to mind giving her hard worked outfit away. According to her, she could always make a new one.

The new group asked her further questions, light probes to find out more who she was rather than question the validity of her persona. She answered each as practiced. Soon, they invited her back around their fire.

A large bucket filled with stripped crawdad tails was presented. "Grab a skewer, nail one of these up and put it over the fire." One of the boys said to her, handing her a thin wooden stake. The city seemed in love with any kind of food that could be handled with a stick it seemed. She commented as much. "I don't know what your city's like Sophia, but here we mostly deal with seafood. The lake provides a basically unending source of it." The boy said.

"Machines might have us surrounded, but they can't ever starve us out." Another said, to a small cheer from the group.

"You guys know that's bunk right?" Tamery said, "If the city alone could make all the food in the world we wouldn't have farms on the other hollows. The city's going to run out of food eventually, not anytime soon, but eventually."

"Never took you for a downer," The boy said. "I remember you'd always be looking on the bright side of things, what happened since you left?"

"I had to live outside the ring for months and saw the machines face to face. What do you think?" Tamery said. "Of course that changes a person. Got to be more realistic and down to earth. Besides, you guys heard the rumor about the machines accepting surrender now?"

That got a heated debate among the group. To"Wrathh watched, eating roasted crawdad after crawdad while the group debated politics and their place in the world. Tamery had been correct - the people were not unwilling to surrender, they simply didn't know if the machines would let them live after. They needed personal confirmation.

"They've changed." To'Wrathh said, drawing attention for the first time. "The machines. They will not hurt you if you prove you're not a threat."

Tamery glanced at her nervously, but the others were already there asking questions. "You sound like you know this firsthand, did you run into a machine while you were outside?"

To'Wrathh nodded. In a manner of speaking, she had. But for her persona, there was a different story to tell. "We reached the gates safely because we surrendered. The machines let us pass. So I have seen firsthand that they can cooperate with humans, in good faith."

The group grew quiet until one of the older men stepped in. "Sounds like they might be returning to their base programming? They were originally made to serve humans, not killing us is a good step in the right direction. They're the manifestation of human evil, but humans overcome evil on a daily basis. Maybe the bit of humanity in them is returning? It's in our nature to overcome evil."

"Steel rusts but the flesh rebuilds." The group murmured. To'Wrathh remained puzzled. She knew this religious sect believed that humanity and machines had been one and the same at some point, but a schism caused the two to split. Historically, they might be referencing cybernetics and older human augmentation, or at least as far as To'Wrathh could suspect. Data was not completely whole, even the machine archive is missing great swaths of it. Either locked away by the pale lady for her own reasons, or deleted in the first war. It was easier to destroy than it was to capture and preserve, and the early days had all be about capitalizing on surprise.

It was pleasant to spend time with people like this, hiding among them. The talk continued deeper into the night, and To'Wrathh learned more about the city's stance on the machines. The military had been tight lipped about machines allowing surrender, up until too many refugees had arrived and let it slip. From there it became a rumor, and soon it would have to be revealed as full truth.

Kidra was an odd topic she hadn't expected. Apparently the duel between her and the surface girl had gone public, at least recordings taken from the final moments. The rumors were that the leak had been intentional, to increase morale. That had certainly worked, as the group considered the surface knights to be folk heroes. A lot of faith was being put on them to help save the city. They called her a sword saint, the first human in history to ever be able to stand and fight against a Feather. A lot of the imperials believed her to be an emissary of the golden goddess, as much as Kidra herself denied such rumors.

However one knight, no matter how skilled, could not turn the tide of an entire war. That would be absurd. To'Wrathh was certain of this.

Before she could even take a bite from her next crawdad, an alarm blared obnoxiously loud in her mind, set to maximum possible volume, causing her to outright flinch in surprise. She shut it off with a spark of fury and went digging into where it had even come from. As she discovered, it was hardwired a week ago by herself, specifically set to trigger anytime she thought a Winterscar wasn't going to be a problem - to remind her that every single Winterscar To'Wrathh had met in her life, she'd ended up with a problem.

She crunched the crawdad whole, not bothering to deshell it, angrily chewing away, to the surprise of the others around the fire. To'Wrathh really needed to stop doing this exact mistake every single time. It always blew up in her face. Once was a coincidence. Twice was an anomaly. Three times - that's a repeating predictable pattern. She didn't know how the Winterscars would throw off her plan this time around, but newfound instinct was now screaming in her mind that they would - somehow.

The Feather wondered what Keith was doing right now on the surface.

From the handful of memories Tenisent had shared with her, she guessed it was probably something sinister.

Next chapter - Chasing down a rogue airspeeder for loot and profit

Book 3 - Chapter 17 - Chasing down a rogue airspeeder for loot and profit

An explosion rocked the wallside, scattering larger boulders down until a gap appeared. Bright white began to shine through, like beams in the dusty twilight of the cave. A beat passed before another explosion shook the leftovers and the whole wall collapsed down. Four relic knights zipped through the new openings, led by Shadowsong.

The man landed hard on the ground, blades out and ready, scanning around for anything. His helmet passed over the remains of the knightbreaker, one half of which was already in my hand, while I was on the way to recover the second along with the few fragments of broken chains. "Enemy?" He asked, straightening up from his crouch.

"Chased away." I said, "The ol' knightbreaker here lived up to expected value, though I don't think it'll work a second time against this particular foe. I had surprise on my side this time around. Also, finally found out why they're after me too in the trade."

Shadowsong nodded. "Explain on the way. We need to move, or the Chosen will escape me. What foe attacked? Who is behind this?"

My hands reached the last sliced off half of my work and awkwardly affixed them to my hip while the group and I jogged up the ruined avalanche back up to the opening. "You remember that Feather Atius fought off underground?"

"Impossible." Shadowsong growled, more to himself. "Machines don't travel to the surface. What's changed?"

Ropes were already being lowered down, a set of five, one of each of us. I grabbed hold of mine, hooked a carabiner and used my arms and legs fully to scale the sheer wallside. I'd have picked up some extra scrap from the blasted off pieces of my homicidal stalker as a trophy, but the chains had some some serious work and there wasn't anything I could spot in good enough piece. The recording of the fight would be enough for now.

Teed's airspeeder hovered right over the edge of the abyss, the ropes lowered directly from the bay side doors. Risky move all in all - airspeeders couldn't really fly, they only hover up to thirteen feet of clearance, at most. If the ship drifted off even slightly, it would fall down into the hole, dragging everyone with it. "Enemy is already on the move, their airspeeder is retreating." Teed said on the comms. "We hit them with an engine buster right when the ground exploded, so they're limping right now. But they're still getting away. Get up here fast."

Relic armor made the climb supremely easy, with my legs kicking me up leap after leap. "See, I think it's got to do with that bunker underground. Only Lord Atius, Kidra and I got inside there. And Atius is a Deathless, it would be impossible to get anything out of him. My sister and I? We're plain old humans. Easy targets. She's gone, so I'm the only one left to grab. That's my guess at why he's hunting here."

Shadowsong climbed swiftly at my side, keeping pace. "Could he be related to the slavers?"

"Beats me. Maybe they found out he's after me and tried to swipe me up first? Make a quick profit. Othersiders have their hands in everything. Wouldn't be surprised if they're also in touch with the machines and found all this out through the Chosen. What happened on your side of the wall?"

"A machine ambush of some kind." Sagrius answered over the comms, helmet appearing from the bay doors far above. "They must have selected this area specifically for the weaker ground here. We fell down into a machine nest of some kind, filled with six legged monsters. The men and I don't have experience fighting machines, but Shadowsong did. He taught us in the field how to fight and handle these turrets and their spider guardians, by demonstration."

"We lost anyone?"

"No casualties master Keith, though some of us are low on shield energy from the initial volleys. Nothing that would cripple us from further action."

"You done with the gossip?" Teed said, joining the comms. "HQ ordered a pirate airspeeder and I aim to deliver. Now hurry up already, the food's getting away."

A few more leaps and we were out back on the surface. From here, it was one jump up, using the rope as a guidance, before my hand gripped the edge of the airspeeder bay. The captain's gauntlets reached down and dragged me back up, into the ship. Shadowsong followed behind me along with the other knights.

The ground buckled the moment the last knight had crawled inside. Inertia forced Journey down on a knee as the airspeeder twisted on its heels, and rocketed forward. Ice and wallsides zipped past my field of view on the sides of the open bay doors. I reached a hand to the grips on my side, holding tight. Teed wasn't taking it easy on the ship. Once the armor was used to the new speed, I stumbled my way forward to the ship's cockpit while the rest of the knights were busy strapping into seats.

"Pilot, patch me through to the enemy airspeeder." Shadowsong said behind me.

"Done." Teed answered, and the comms beeped a new connection. I opened the inner door and pulled myself into the control room, through the small interior. Ice and metal zipped across the windows in every direction ahead of me as Teed moved the massive airspeeder like a needle threading through fabric at odd angles.

"Enemy airspeeder. This is the Shadowsong Prime. We will be attacking and boarding your ship. Non-lethal methods will be employed, so long as hostages remain unharmed. Should we find any of them killed, you will die with them. Negotiations over."

He cut the channel before any answer could be given. "Chase them down." He said a moment after. "We will handle the rest."

Teed didn't give any answer other than pushing the thrust up, executing another quick turn, using the vector thrusters to nudge the ship in just the right ways to fit through gaps. We weren't going fast, the issue was fitting the massive ship inside the canyons. The metal ground under me hadn't gone flat a single moment since the very start of his maneuvers.

"On our way to catch up with them." Teed said, not looking back at me. "Strap in. They've got a good headstart on me."

I took my seat, clicking the safety belts across my armor, and opened up the co-pilot suite. "What's the situation, or do you need to focus?"

"Focus? Please, this is a cakewalk compared to the difficulty the sim trainers had to crank their tests just to filter out the competition." He said, environmental suit hiding any features from showing on his face.

"So we'll catch up to them?" I saw the radar screen showing a red marker a few hundred feet away, but the ice walls blocked all line of sight.

He shrugged, taking another thin turn, forcing the nose of the ship down and sliding the ship across a more narrow pass. "Eventually. For a crippled cargo airspeeder they're making oddly good timing. Their pilot must be pretty good, or they know the area better than we do, underground included."

"Might be the latter." I said. "That meeting spot had to have been picked specifically to pull that stunt on us in the event we came. What worries me is if they know underground openings large enough for an airspeeder to fit through. If they try to escape underground, I'm not sure it's a good idea to keep going after them."

"First time for everything." Teed said, keeping the two control sticks perfectly in sync with each other. "Who knows, maybe driving underground is more fun. But I get you, catch them fast before they slip the noose. Think I know just the trick." He clicked a few keys and toggled on the general comms. "Gonna get rough, I'm about to pull out some moves." He turned the comms again, cycling to the inner crew. "Faram, you good with the cannons? I need a ramp up out of these chasms."

The display aboard showed turrets being rotated, turning front side. A voice crackled on comms. "Commin'. Just don't be picky about how it looks. Hang starboard, I'll look for a good spot."

Teed continued to pilot the bulky craft, hovering over the uneven ground, making headway in the general direction after the Undersiders. Radar showed they were still farther off, though we were slowly catching up. The hull and cockpit shook, as our airspeeder opened fire on one side of the ice canyons, the heavy rounds shattering onto the sides, forcing a full collapse.

"Thanks Faram, exactly what I ordered. You're a shit builder though, that ain't up to code at all. Not even handrails on that thing. Tut tut." Teed said, turning the ship directly onto the impromptu ramp. "Better not let the security goons back home see this, or they'll have you hanged."

"Shut the fuck up and drive you twat." The gunner answered, irate. "If you've got time to complain, you've got time to catch up to the enemy."

The ship rumbled over the crushed ice, quickly climbing up until the angle was too steep for the massive airspeeder to continue up. Teed flared the thrust and angled the vector thrusters. It gave the whole ship a shuddering push, like two hands had grabbed the rear and pulled up, just enough to climb onto the top of the canyons.

From above, we got our first sight at the fleeing undersider ship. The right hand engine had been turned off completely, while the left one still moved, metal flaps opening and closing around the nozzle as the ship maneuvered. It flickered in and out of view as the bulky ship tried to navigate through the canyons. The gunner didn't waste the moment, opening fire on the enemy ship anytime there was a line of sight.

"See what a lot of people don't realize is that intercept frigates like this one are light enough to do a Scotch hop, even with a full crew and cargo inside." Teed said, flicking flips and triggers, hands flying over the controls as he overclocked different systems.

"What the gods is a Scotch hop?" I asked, a little worried. No, a lot worried.

"Most driving is pretty boring. But they still had to weed out pilots back home in the sims. In turn, a lot of pilots discovered plenty of… let's say interesting maneuvers that nobody in their right mind would guess could be done, just so we could get a leg up on the competition. You see some strange driving at the top leaderboards. All of it is technically possible, according to the sims. Scotch was a pilot of the older days, and he coined the move. Put it this way, he was one crazy bastard." The ship groaned and dragged itself the rest of the way up, it's bulk gliding over the top of the canyons. We were heading parallel on the top of the canyon, but a few hundred meters ahead, there was a clear cliffside.

The ship didn't divert course. No, Teed increased the speed, all the while lowering the hover down to mere inches against the ground. Ice crushed under us as the underside of our ship scrapped anything past clearance. "Is our ship rated for this kind of abuse?" I asked, for the first time questioning my friend's abilities.

"We're in a metal monster that weighs several hundred tons, and all wrapped up snug in armor. Ground's all ice. It looks sturdy, it's anything but. I'd worry about the ice more than my ship, kid."

The cliff was rapidly approaching. Teed's hands hovered over the altitude control lever. Instinct started to creep up in me, I found my hands already holding onto handholds, squeezing them tight.

Right at the last moment, Teed punched the hover commands to max hover altitude possible. The ship lurched up, powered by golden era tech that could lift the weight of the ship. Vector thrusters all lit up at the same time, assisting the momentum like hands holding a heavy bucket up.

Our ship soared up and above the canyon yawning, landing down with a heavy crunch on the other side. Ice and snow blinded the cockpit as the intercept frigate crashed down into the other side, altitude returns showing a negative number for a moment - the weight of the ship coming down had caused it to sink into the ice, but only for a moment. The hover remained at full power, easily pulling the ship back up as inertia carried us forward and out of the cloud of ice and snow we'd kicked up. The ship was undamaged, as far as all sensors showed. Teed was right about the specs, this ship was a beast.

"Are you huffing amp in your suit?!" The gunner yelled. "Urs fucking save me, you crazy motherfucker, this is the kind of flying you leave for the sims, not while I'm riding shotgun up here!"

"I can catch up to them the hard way, but if they really do have an underground tunnel lined up somewhere, that's game for us. Hard rules call for hard play." Teed said. "Look, I can see them from here even. So, less yapping, more shooting." Ahead, the enemy ship was still limping away, trying to take sharp turns. But Teeds speed was rapidly approaching them now that he didn't have to deal with turns. It was a straight line to the enemy, without a care for any of the gaps he'd need to leap over.

Another jump, and we were now right behind the enemy. From above, the gunnery turrets were making havoc on the armored pirate ship below, which was returning fire with feeble energy.

The volley struck against parts of the enemy airspeeder but wasn't enough to deal significant damage yet, as the whole thing suddenly zipped away from sight, taking an extreme turn. "Ahh that's why the buggers are keeping speed." Teed said, "Outright cheating that is, but gotta give them credit where credit is due. You saw that Faram?"

"Yeah, didn't think I'd see that move anytime soon. Gods above, I need a bingo card for today for crazy speeder moves. You dumb fucks are pulling out all the stops." The gunner answered, keeping the turrets leveled at where the enemy's position would appear next.

"I didn't see anything, what are they doing?" I said, trying to keep up with what was going on.

Our own ship took a turn, this time rolling down into the canyon after the enemy's heels. "That turn's too steep for a ship of that size to do it." Teed said, using his head to point since his hands were occupied. "Feels completely off, their ass is too fat for that kind of maneuver. Except if they had an extra force to add in, yank them in the right direction. Look at the wallsides when we pass by."

Our speeder crashed into the canyon floor, before rising back up, taking the turn with far more ease. I searched for what he'd explained as we passed through the narrow passage. "All I see is ice and broken chunks of it off the walls." I said.

"Those chunks aren't all broken by them not fitting through. They're using the wall sides to slingshot themselves with docking hooks, that's why there's chunks of ice broken up by the walls. Keep your eyes peeled next time they're in range."

Ahead, we got another look at the metal carrier, our gunner opened fire while the enemy ship took another desperate turn, firing off a grappling hook into the ice cliff, using the taut metal rope to force the turn needed. A moment after, a turret on the enemy ship opened fire but not on us. Instead it was focused on the hook, shattering the ice and freeing up the hook again. "See?" Teed said. "They're using the hooks to help them take sharp turns. And then getting it free from the wall the quick way. Smart. Getting lucky the force exerted on the line hasn't yet snapped the ice off the wall, that'd send them reeling."

Despite the maneuver and docking thrusters running at max settings, the tail end of the enemy speeder still crushed hard against the ice, unable to fit well enough through. Ice chunks broke apart as the unyielding metal monster smashed its way through and continued forward with no damage. Their ship looked just as durable as ours.

"Think we should do the same?" I asked, watching our prey vanish again behind another canyon entrance, fleeing the hail of weapon fire behind.

"We've got the better specs. Mobility's nearly twice the range, half the weight, and every engine is a good rank stronger. I can make this ship dance, they can just nod to the beat at best. Only thing they have on us is fuel economy, since my lady here was built to intercept and theirs was built to ferry cargo."

The gunner cackled on the comms. "Like a fat pig trying to outrun a cat by jumping off walls. Adorable, but it's dinner for us all the same." Our own ship reached the same spot, Teed twisting the ship once more into a nose tilt down, lifting the back end of the ship high up, while the ship gracefully slid through the turn. I heard a buckling sound, as our rear end must have collided against one of the overhanging ice bridges above the canyon. Gravity pushed me down, crates and boxes that hadn't been secured slid down the steep inclined cockpit, rattling away. "See? They don't have the engine power to do a turn like this." The man made it look all so easy, but these kinds of turns were games of inches. If either of his control sticks were just slightly off, the entire turn would have ended way worse.

"Status?" Shadowsong asked over the comms as the ship leveled again. "The ship's been buckling, are we under threat?"

"No sir, just some aggressive maneuvers." Teed replied stone calm. "We're already nipping at their heels, just need a good bite to hamstring them." He cut the comms, switching them back to interior ones. "You hear that Faram? Go do your job already, I'm pulling my part."

The gunner gave only a scoff, while the turrets tracked our prey.

Ahead we could see the fat airspeeder we were after. They'd tried to take another turn and must have overshot it. Instead of committing, they'd hooked themselves back into a straight line and were making a run for it. Our ship opened fire again, the turret shots scattering across the enemy hull, lighting up with a few hundred sparks, right by their vector thrusters. Something finally gave on their side, smoke billowing out.

There was a whooping over the comms, "Hope you got a plate ready!" Faram said, "Now tell me I'm not doing my part again, you little shit!"

Teed flicked to the general setting, opening the channel again to the knights. "Prepare for boarding. We got them. Heads up, it won't be on flat ground, make sure your boots are magnetized to stick. Who knows what kind of stunts these guys are willing to pull with an airspeeder that's not theirs."

"Understood. All knights, move." Shadowsong called out. Bay doors opened up on my console panel, and I could hear the relic armor knights taking footholds, climbing out to cover the sides of our ship.

A boom rang out, followed by a second. The undersider ship had used its heavy cannons to open fire, directly onto the ice walls, right under one of the frozen bridge arcs. The whole thing groaned, cracking apart before falling down.

They were trying to stop us from passing by.

Teed cursed loudly. "All crew, brace. I'm about to get disrespectful." He said over the comms, hands flying over his controls. The ship lumbered to the off side of the casam, picking up speed. Heading straight for the falling debris - no not straight, the ship was getting closer and closer to the ice walls on our right.

"Pilot?" Shadowsong barked out from his position outside, hanging on the hull and now very aware of the kind of driving Teed was doing. His voice came up again, sounding far more panicked. "Pilot!"

Teed flipped a few levers and the ship began to lower closer to the ground. "Faram, angel roll, hook shot on starboard side, don't miss." He said. "The boss is watching."

The gunner gave another scoff. "I know the drill already, just shut up and let me focus."

Teed didn't answer, instead putting the entire ship into a spin, lighting up the thrusters on our side. The whole ship began to shift over on itself to the left slowly. Repulsion started to affect the sides of the walls and right as we approached the debris wall, he cranked the hover engines to maximum, while flaring out the vector thrusters on the left side. The result was our entire airship launching itself over the broken debris, all the while spinning on itself.

Halfway into the air, completely upside down, Faram opened fire with both a rightbound hook shot at the ice, and two turrets. The right hook hit the walls, and began to retract, forcing the airspeeder to complete the spin right before the whole ship landed. Turret shots had been split into two directions. One already freeing up the hook, letting it retract back into place. The second turret was opening fire right at the exposed Undersider ship, as if it was business as usual. The weight of our ship dragged everything down as inertia overcame the ship's hovering power for a moment, ice scraping the bottom of the airspeeder again as we came out of the crouch.

"And that's bingo." Faram grunted out.

"I'd never seen or even heard of an airspeeder doing this." I said, feeling my blood pool back into my feet.

"Well, I'm having a ball here. My kind of music." Teed said, resetting the system back to default. "Everyone's always so focused on the knights fighting with their little metal sticks, the real entertainment is being slept on. Gods damned shame it is."

Our turrets continued the relentless barrage, like dotted lines of yellow connecting our ship to theirs. Their own ship had stopped returning fire, either from damage or lack of manpower.

The enemy airspeeder's primary engine sputtered from our onslaught, having lost another critical part. More whooping on the comms from Faram, along with a few choice obscenities. The wounded ship tried making the next turn, only to crash hard against the ice wall, bouncing it slowly back out where it failed to keep itself rightened. We were rapidly approaching it head on now.

"They're not using hooks anymore?" I asked, watching the ship try to wiggle through a new turn, like a consolation prize after having failed to make the better choice.

"Got their heavy turrets with that last volley of the light anti-armor rounds." The gunner said, with unmistakable pride. "First thing I aimed for. They can't free any of their hooks if they try their cute maneuvers out now."

I could see Undersider knights climbing on the top part of the enemy airspeeder now, using their boots to stick to the metal while the ship buckled under them like a wild beast, trying to recenter itself and go down the canyon proper. They were preparing for the inevitable boarding.

Teed caught up in range a moment later, opening fire with a grappling hook right at the enemy ship. The shot connected, digging into the superstructure and expanding out. The three undersider knights on top reacted immediately, occult blades turning on as they scaled the sides of their ship, desperate to reach and cut the line.

"Not going to save you. Chicken's already cooked." Teed muttered, moving our ship closer, using the hookshot as guidance. We were close enough to see the details of the behemoth. Like a fish hooked on a reel. It struggled, but there was no heart in it anymore.

"All right, my job's done." Teed said, leaning back on his chair. A moment later, heavy footfalls sounded above the cockpit and I saw Shadowsong along with others leap off our ship, across the distant expanse between our ships, and land directly against the sides of the enemy ship.

Occult blades flared out and Shadowsong instantly pushed the few enemy knights back, away from the hook. More of our knights leaped off, taking point next to Shadowsong. There wasn't much of a fight at this point. Shadowsong and my house knights had pummeled the Undersiders into submission almost immediately, after a slight hiccup where one of our knights nearly lost footing as the enemy ship tilted for another turn.

A moment later, all the three defenders were being held down against the ground, while our knights had swung into the enemy airspeeder, right through the bay doors. The speeder continued its trajectory for a few dozen seconds before beginning to slow down.

Teed matched the speed, letting the enemy ship go back into a far more peaceful stride. The ship slowed down further, finding a spot wide enough for multiple airspeeders to land. From there, it came out of the hover and crunched down lightly on the ice ground. Teed followed suit, bringing his own ship to rest.

Comms from the carrier opened up. "Frigate secured." One of my knights said. "Hostages are all alive and were left locked up in the inner airlock. We've captured all the undersider knights alive, only five aboard. Two driving, three outside."

Well. Guess the rest of them really did expect me to be hiding back at the clan, all nice and safe somewhere they could ambush me. Now we've got their ship, five of their knights knocked out into the snow and more armor under our banner. Plus their boss was not in good shape, last I saw him.

It seems my impulsive need to get into the thick of it has, for once, turned out in my favor.

Time to order up fish and properly gloat about it.

Next chapter - Fishing for trouble

Book 3 - Chapter 18 - Fishing for trouble

"Oi. I met your boss."

Lejis turned his head to the sound, eyes meeting my own. Chains kept his arms tied, though they were loose enough for him to sit in reasonable comfort. "The Feather?" He asked, in the gloom of his cell. The door behind me creaked shut while the guards beyond took their post. Leaving me alone with the Chosen priest.

Well, as alone as I could be with Cathida in the background.

"Yep. Pale fellow. Long white braid, thinks he's great with a spear, walks around with sandals and a toga. Violet eyes, and a metal hand that's made of floating pieces, plus that oversized shoulder tower wall thing he's got going. And the cape. Can't forget the cape. Ring any bell?" I asked, walking over and setting up a seat right before him. On the other hand, I offered him a pear. "Hungry?"

His hand reached out, chains clanking noisily at the motion. He took the fruit, biting into it with little fanfare. A quick nod in thanks, and the man focused on chewing slowly. Savoring it. Food likely hadn't been very good down here in the dark.

"You have no need to be dramatic, Winterscar. There can be hardly anyone else you speak of given that description. And given that you're here and alive, I take it you somehow managed to defeat that demon?"

"Not a fan of him? Curious, I thought you worshiped the machines."

He shook his head at that. "My faith is my own, as I've told you before. I know the danger they pose." There was a look in his eye at that, something I couldn't quite put my hand on.

"I'm guessing he wasn't vey polite to you either?"

"The first time I met that Feather, he killed a child."

I paused. "What?"

Lejis rattled his chains slightly, taking another bite instead of answering and chewing for a moment, eyes closed. "A little boy who'd been playing nearby." He finally said. "The ball crossed his pass, and the Feather simply stabbed his hand through the child's heart, and then cut his throat without pause. Didn't look, or seemed to care at all. As if he's acted only on instinct, hardly aware of it. The only machine type that wears our form - in the most idealized manner - is the truest monster of them all. While the rank and file, those machines that wear a twisted nightmare of our form, all skulls and bones. Why, they end up being far more harmless. Outright curious, I could claim. Perhaps it may strike you as odd, but the rank and file machines were far more agreeable to us. Like children themselves. Only the drakes seemed to watch us with an echo of the hatred that To'Aacar did."

Another bite into the fruit. I let him chew and swallow before I asked again. "If you want to help me put an end to him, I could use any information you might know. If you'd helped me earlier from the start, I might have put him into the ground permanently. Don't make the same mistake twice."

Lejis raised his arm, shaking the chains locked around his wrist. "I've balanced my duty to my people with my duty to the machines that hold my people's lives. I won't apologize for omitting information or being obtuse, though I hardly had to bend any truths thus far. Ask what you will. I'll answer what I can."

I shrugged, taking it in stride. "What do you know of To'Aacar, now that you seem to be in such an agreeable mood to share."

He took another bite of his fruit, chewing on it casually. "I respect his power and rank, but I share little love for his temperament. If anything, I'm rather happy hearing he's been defeated. You need to be more specific with what you want me to inform you about. I do not know how you intend to fight him, or what weaknesses you are searching for."

"All right, let's start at the basics. Tell me what this Feather is. What's he want with me?"

"What's he want with you?" He stopped, swallowed and looked me in the eye. "Why would he care about you? He is an emissary of the machine goddess, and not a favored one at that. He failed the lady in some way, and now as atonement, he'd been sent to deal with us. We are below his level, and he's made that blindingly clear many times over. As I mentioned, my first meeting with him was not a peaceful one. Did your own first sight of him match?"

"First time I saw him, he monologued at Lord Atius for a bit, and threatened to kill us all. Technically he did win the duel, but it wasn't in the way he'd end up happy. Was that the failure the lady took personally?"

Lejis shrugged. "I've never heard him speak about Lord Atius, nor any fights with him. Up to now, he's only shown concern with completing the lady's missions. For whatever reasons she sees fit. We've spoken only a few times, and each time it had been to give me orders to complete. I don't think he even knows my name. I am not a person to To'Aacar, only a tool. I don't think any of the Chosen register as individuals."

"So you don't know why he's after me exactly?"

He shook his head in genuine confusion. "Rather, this is the first I've ever heard of him care about a human in any regard. If I had my hunches, I suspect it's an order from the Lady. That's the only reason he would stoop to dealing with humans. But that just makes even less sense, if you couldn't be in To'Aacar's sights by natural means, then what hope do you have of being on the pale lady's own sights?"

All right, things were starting to point to my initial theory. This had something to do with the bunker, and the discussion I had with Tsuya. "What's he want with the surface?"

Again the priest shrugged. "He had been given an order by the lady to convert as many humans as possible. Pilgrimage was to start with the surface dwellers, so we were dispatched up there." He paused for a moment. "You should know he cannot die. Like a Deathless, destroying his body will only stop him for a few days at most until he has a new one made. I don't mean to try and rob you of your victory. But he will be back, and he will seek revenge a hundred fold greater. Killing him might have been the worst thing you could have done."

"And yet you followed someone like that."

"It was that or death. Between both options, I think you might understand why I chose the former." He took a last bite of the fruit, consuming it whole. "How did you kill him?"

I shrugged. "He tried to attack me personally, separate me from my crew. And I politely told him to fuck off."

Lejis laughed, "By politely, I assume with a sword? But how exactly did you defeat him? The Feather is many things, weak is not a word I would use to describe him."

"His arrogance. I took advantage of his arrogance."

The priest nodded, as if my one-word answer solved everything. "I could certainly see him fall for that. That pride was not unfounded however. I was told he was over five hundred years old, and all those years were spent in combat. He certainly moved like a monster from ancient times. How did you match him at all?"

"That's for me to know, and if you're lucky, you'll never find out either."

He paused. Then nodded. "Perhaps ignorance is preferable. I have a feeling it wouldn't be healthy to know your secrets. After all, they brought down the attention of a Feather. Did you get everything you wanted to know?"

"Your knights. I've taken out To'Aacar, and captured the returning airspeeder, but there's still knights unaccounted for. Where are they?"

He shrugged. "That, I can't tell you. What I can tell you is that my captain is meticulous, and I don't think he'll stop. Not with who's at stake for him if he fails. We all fight for something, or someone. If their goal was to capture you in the first place, then he will not stop just for this. You need to prepare."

There was a knock on the door. "Master Winterscar, the clan lord's Chenobi's have arrived and are going to be interrogating the priest. Respectfully, sir, your time is up. Forgive us, but we cannot bend the rules more for you than we already have."

"Well, you never saw me if anyone asks," I said, winking at him as I stood up.

He smiled, the sort of enigmatic smile of a doomed man. "Were it be so simple. Thank you for the fruit. I appreciate the kindness. Good luck to you, Winterscar, and may your gods watch over you. Perhaps we will speak again someday, in another life."

Ellie swirled the wine in her glass, watching as the pale liquid moved. "Don't consider me ungrateful, but while I appreciate the wine, I'm not quite sure this glass is worth getting shot in the leg another time."

"We've only been here five minutes, there hasn't even been any screaming or shooting yet. Night's still young." I said, taking a sip of my own glass. Under the balcony we sat at, the clan was busy trying to dance away their stress. House Revenal, an agrifarmer house, had gone all in on the decorations in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. Vines of all kinds had been setup, and some of them even had been stuffed with vegetables, as if we were in the middle of a wild untamed vertical farm that'd been left a few years to its own ideas. Not sure how they pulled it off, but I had to hand it to them. The place breathed of life.

Ellie, on the other hand, was still nervous about her own life. "I really should be asking to get paid for this. Snarky compliments and a cheap glass of wine just don't have that same charm they used to."

"I might be amendable, depends on what the services included. How far are you committed to customer satisfaction? Are we talking full service here or only a massage?"

A piece of sticky rice flew off directly into my face as a response. "I knew you were secretly swine on the inside." She said, rolling her eyes. "Mother always warned me about boys like you. And yet, here I am anyhow. I just keep doing it to myself at this point."

The waiter came by, dropping two plates of freshly cooked surface staples. The smell wafted over, tickling my nose. "We family disappointments stick together you know? Only natural." I said, stretching back on the chair and listening to the music. "Besides, pigs can be pretty cute. And clever! Give me a bit of credit." And true to my nature, I set in on the main dish before me.

Giant isopodan bug-stir, complete with spicy peanut sauce and sticky rice. The massive pillbug had been overturned on the back of its shell, while the meat inside had been carefully detached, cooked up with seasoning, and then decoratively returned into the shell. This one had been an enormous little bugger, probably weighing at two or three pounds. I ripped a piece of the steaming rice, rolled it into a ball, and used it to scoop up some of the broiled insect meat, dipping it right into the peanut sauce after. Spice and flavor with each bite. Wonderful.

Ellie snapped off one of the legs off her own isopodan, and waggled it at me like a stick. "See, there's a problem with that plan of yours, Oh my cute and clever pig." She took a quick pause to suck up the meat inside, tossing the little leg back on her plate, empty. "If I were the Undersiders, I'd take one look at all this, you being here unarmored and alone, and I'd call it bait. I'd be screaming it left and right to anyone in earshot. And, guess what? I'd be right. Because I'm not an idiot."

"Who's to say my main plan is just to fish for undersider knights? I could just be enjoying a night out with a friend and eating some of my favorite food, taking a break from that armor. You don't know me."

"Please. I'd bet my last stockings that half your house guards are hiding away in armor somewhere obvious, like the roofing. And the other half are hiding behind the curtains. With their little toes sticking out." She said, wiggling her fingers at me with her free hand.

"First, you wouldn't see their toes, they have boots. Second, don't think I don't notice the bait. You start throwing out hot words like stockings around here, expecting me to be some kind of chauvinistic pig and zero in on that, but I am not going to fall for it. Nope. I am the model of a gentleman." I paused for a moment. "Are they the black ones though?"

"The defense rests." She said, hand extended as if she'd proved a point. "That said, we should put a damper on the flirting, as much fun as it's been. I've gotten some serious proposals lately, all thanks to you. I might actually decide to have that arrangement, in truth this time."

"Alas," I sighed, the back of my hand going to my forehead while I looked away dramatically. "Our budding love was never to be. Such a tragedy."

"Destined to freeze." She finished. Just as dramatically. "It's almost as if we've grown older since our younger days. Perhaps we've become, dare I say it, responsible and respectable people?"

"Responsible? No. But respectable?" I wagged a finger at her, eyes shining. "Also no. And on the topic of respectable people, who's the unlucky man you managed to con this time?"

She hummed, waiting for a moment. As if thinking about it. While she played up the theatrics, I served myself another glass of wine and took a nice gulp. I only realized halfway through she'd been waiting for me to take a sip.

"Oh, he's from this little Retainer house. Very quaint. They call themselves Winterscars. You might have heard of them?"

I choked on my drink for a moment, and gave her a stare. "You serious? You incurable flirt, not even the guards from my own house are safe."

"As funny as it would be, I do have at least some tact left so no, I'm just getting a rise out of you this time. There's a lot of people to sort through, that part I wasn't lying on. And all of them are after my ties to you so that's put a damper on prospects. I even got one from House Shadowsong, of all Houses. You're both a blessing and a curse, you know that?"

"At this point, I just want these Undersiders to show up and save me from this topic. Please, I'll take a bullet to my leg even, I think it's my turn now, right? Or can we skip to the part where I'm permanently uninvited from the wedding again? I'd like to stick to tradition."

"Pick another topic if you don't like the gossip, there's plenty to go around. Your loss, I have some hilarious stories from this."

"What's the word about Winterscar? I've recently put a target on my head when I kept all that armor but my head has been firmly under a glacier."

Bell like laughing came from her. "Oh the Houses are absolutely livid. Let me paint you the picture. Right after you come back from the underground, House Winterscar starts its mass expansion campaign, poaching and swiping up all kinds of talent. Either from the Houseless, or from other Houses directly. Kidra gave not a single frick about that. Best gossip in years." She grinned. "And then you came into the picture. Shadowsong himself starts to follow you around like a guarddog right after your sister leaves with Ankah. Which I'll remind you, guarding someone on his own volition is something he's only ever done for his daughter. He's notorious for being an overprotective parent."

"I can already imagine the rumors from that bit adding it all together." I groaned.

Another bite, another swallow, another sip. She was taking her time to tell me the news. "So of course, everyone suspects Shadowsong's arranged a marriage between Ankah and yourself. Why else would he suddenly be so protective of you unless you were going to become his son in law pretty soon?"

I think the disgust on my face gave a little too much away. "I see that particular rumor's not completely true then." She said, nodding as if everything made sense. "At least, it's not something that'll come from your wheelhouse."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" I asked, a little weary.

"Think about it from Shadowsong's point of view. Is there anyone else in the clan that he respects enough to allow his daughter's hand at this moment?" I gulped, realizing the implications. "Well, that doesn't change all that much." She said, barreling past any arguments before I could say them. "The Houses are already sure the two strongest and most powerful Houses in the clan are about to get politically tied up in a possible merge, doesn't matter if it would actually happen or not. This is where the clan lord should have stepped in and helped balance things out."

"And instead I get a writ of full passage for anything I want."

She snapped her fingers. "Exactly. Now all the Houses are beyond spooked. Something's gone real bad if Lord Atius is breaking his famed neutrality to push a powerhouse up the ranks. Nobody knows what the end game goal is. Then the raiders pop up, and try to take you out. Now if people aren't suspecting the Chosen for being behind that, they're suspecting each other as a desperate attempt to break up the gathered power. It's a complete mess in the background, and you're probably completely oblivious to it all, aren't you?"

"I uhh…" Well, she wasn't wrong there. I'd been spending my time training Captain Sagrius and his band of merry murder knights how to protect me from future shenanigans. Little did I know the absolute zoo that was secretly happening under my nose. And I called myself a Winterscar. How the mighty have fallen.

"And now we enter Lady Drass. Who is impartial, a Logi, and had been specifically elected because she wasn't Shadowsong and wasn't supposed to be involved in all of this Winterscar-Shadowsong takeover. The people's hero, that would sweep in, revoke all these absurd powerups, force you both to auction out some of your earned armors in order to restore balance to the clan."

"Well, that didn't work out like they'd thought." I said, slurping down the rest of the flakey pillbug meat and drinking it down with another healthy gulp of wine.

"Absolutely did not. Not only did Lady Drass not revoke your writ of passage, she expanded it. Winterscars get to keep all the armors they collected, and Shadowsongs are the ones forced to auction out some of their armors to the lesser houses. Her own First Blade wasn't exempt to the rules, but you - a random house by all means - were. And worse, she refused to elaborate on why, keeping it all a secret. Not to mention the bigger secret of how so many slaver knights got butchered once they stepped into the Winterscar compound. You got hit by an entire army that would have crippled any other clan, and somehow you're the only one walking out of it with hardly a scratch."

Her chopsticks speared out some more bits of seaming meat off her plate, to which she washed down with some of the sticky rice. "And none of the Winterscars are saying a single thing about it, they're like a vice grip that's been sealed shut. Right down to the lesser servants. Nobody knows what the hell's going on inside House Winterscar, but the request for three hundred Occult blade replicas really didn't help at all."

"Rumor mill must be having an aneurysm. What's your bets?"

She leaned back, thinking for a moment. "You've got some kind of superweapon you brought out from underground. And you, specifically you, managed to fix it up. Don't hide it you little scraphead. I know you've got a knack for engineering, if there's one person who's got a chance of bringing back something from the golden era working, it's you. The three hundred occult swords are a smokescreen, you're having a giggle at the other houses by freaking them out with all kinds of scrapshit jobs to hide what you've really uncovered. But whatever it is, it's got to be some kind of legendary artifact, a relic from the war of the gods or something. No way that many enemy relic knights could have been knocked out by you. I'm putting my bets it's some ancient imperial artifact, considering you came back to the surface with a crusader's armor."

"No comment." I said, waving for the waiter to bring the bill.

"Of course you'd say that. Anyhow, that leads me right back to this little stunt of yours tonight. The Undersider knights aren't going to be showing up. Frankly, if I were them, I'd be putting as many doors, walls and continents between you and I as I possibly could. You're not going to see even a hair of them try to pull the same stunt that ruined the Slavers. They'll know all the same things I do, it's not exactly hidden away in someone's files. You're terrifying. Nobody wants to mess with you."

Lejis said his captain wouldn't bow out. But Ellie was making a convincing case that he would. Especially since I did take out To'Aacar, which probably puts me one level above just terrifying. I wondered what I would have done had I been in their shoes. How would I have tried to capture myself given the resources available? The game was utterly stacked against them right now.

I guess it was a little much to expect the Undersiders to jump at the bit for me here. And Ellie was right since for the rest of the night, I saw no sign of them. Which was perfectly fine with me, as I had the most relaxing night in the past few months. Captain Sagrius, who was indeed hiding in a slightly less obvious spot than the roofing, along with the rest of the Winterscar knights all sulking around in their own carefully prepared hiding spots, well he probably didn't have as much a good night as I had.

So if they won't come to me, I'll need to hunt them down instead. But it was nice to know I could now spend some time away from my armor and enjoy sleeping on a bed again. The newfound confidence really did a number on the paranoid thoughts and nightmares I'd been dealing with since the raid. That feeling of not being completely safe in my own estate grounds was swiftly going away with scheduled medicine and meditation.

Sagrius and I will have to go explore the underground tunnels tomorrow, see if we can find any tracks of the Undersiders. It's been some times since I've done a full delve underground.

Maybe I should take a few more days to relax first before I jumped into the fire again. I haven't taken a bath in forever after all.

Next chapter - Interlude - Captain Sagrius

Book 3 - Chapter 19 - Interlude - Captain Sagrius

"Ahhh," She said, not looking up from her keyboard as her hands flew over the keys. "You must be the Winterscar."

Captain Sagrius stepped forward. He kept his movements fluid, one step behind the young master. Two of his best flanked directly behind, making a group of three knights to escort the acting Winterscar Prime.

The youth took a few more steps forward and then dropped to one knee as decorum dictated. "Clan lord Drass. You've summoned me?"

She nodded, typing away still. Sagrius had heard of her. Well respected among the Logi, though he knew little of what the Logi considered respectable or not.

"Temporary clan lord, until Lord Atius returns for the seat." She said. "And Indeed I have summoned you. It's about time we had a talk." One last keystroke, and she was clearly done with whatever task was at hand. Lady Drass was old, possibly in her seventies, past the age of retirement for a Retainer. Unless perfectly well maintained, the body would become a liability out in the field. A scavenger could continue for some time at her age, but a knight would have long ago passed down his armor. Indeed, the Logi must have different metrics for ability.

Small reading glasses perched by a wrinkled nose, fading blond hair, with hundreds of white hairs sprouting across her hairline. The eyes though, those were sharp and lucid. The captain recognized eyes like those. The sort of gaze that had intensity and made him think she trained her mind the same way Retainers trained their bodies.

She waved away at the two clan knights that stood inside the room, her own personal bodyguards. "You two may go." The knights in turn gave a salute, turned and left. The strongest sign of trust a clan lord could offer any subordinate, to allow them to retain their own entourage while forgoing her own.

"When I inherited this position, you were an enigma, Winterscar." She said. "Lord Atius has famously taken great lengths to avoid showing any sign of favoritism, besides a few handful of low-hanging fruit, such as giving budding talent a nudge or stage to showcase what they could do. And then you come into the picture. A writ of full passage, signed by him. Do you know the last time he has done such a thing?"

The young master shook his head. Sagrius didn't know himself either. Clan history was long and steeped in heroic stories of people, rather than the events that surrounded them. Small details like this would probably be found in a compendium, which wasn't required reading. Keith may have had a chance at knowing, the boy had often surprised Sagrius with knowledge far outside the ken of a Retainer, but in this instance it seemed both of them were in the dark.

"Never. The answer is never. This is the first time he's ever written a writ such as this. It only theoretically existed, inherited from clan law of the original composing clans that banded together to form what we have now. You may have not noticed the stir you caused, after all, no one would stand directly to your face and ask questions. Instead the rest of us had to guess at it." She hummed, fixing the glasses back on the bridge of her nose while the boy seemed to flinch with guilty thoughts. "Many of us assumed you had somehow discovered a weapon of some kind that would turn the tides of the coming war. Imagine their disappointment, when none of your house members revealed anything. Many of them instead outright lied, giving false trails or ideas. They'd clearly prepared ahead of time." She gave a curt glance to the captain, and the two other that loitered behind like shadows. Sagrius refrained from smiling, keeping a face at all times.

He was proud of his new House. Of the people he worked with. They all rallied together with a single mind, often not needing to even speak to one another to know what needed to be done. The lady Kidra had chosen well.

All his life he'd trained for the chance at becoming a knight. Houseless at the start, a little boy with too many dreams and too many stories he'd read. His excellent skills and hard effort had pushed him past his peers in his youth. He'd earned a spot in House Icewing, a minor house that held only one relic armor. Still, he held that spark of ambition in his heart - to become one of the knights that wielded the relic armor Icewing. Years had gone by, and despite his dedication, others were elevated before him. Skill alone wasn't enough to distinguish him above those who had been born into the House. He grew frustrated, and disillusioned.

And then Lady Kidra had appeared, and offered him a new path.

"Many of the Houses did a deep dive into your past, trying to discover why someone who they had previously never even heard of, would suddenly rise." The clan lord said, taking a critical look at the kneeling youth. "To the agrifarmers, and lesser castes, you are considered a hero. Did you know that? They see your background, an outcast who spent more of his time among the streets than in the high and mighty Retainer caste. To see you rise above even the greatest of your kind is the sort of victory the common folk rally around. To your own Caste, you stand as an uneasy reality, that the natural order of things has been turned and with no reason they could think of."

Indeed, the natural order of things had stagnated. The two siblings had seen the rot from the outside and purged it away. The Lady Kidra with her surgical glare and demand for excellence, and the younger sibling, master Keith, with a gentle helping hand, friendly to all no matter their rank. Such a change from his old House, where the masters hardly even known he existed.

The other Houses would do well to follow the example set by House Winterscar. But it was not Sagrius's place to bring that up, that fight was someone else's fate.

The old Logi's eyes once more glanced up at the three Winterscar knights, taking keen measure. "Your guards, how much are they aware of?"

"Everything." Keith answered. "I didn't spare any detail I didn't know. Figured it'd be better if we're all on the same level ground. Plus now I get to make all kinds of inside jokes, which is probably the best perk in all this."

What a day that had been, when master Keith had brought him and the rest of the knights into his sanctuary, to share with them the secrets he'd plumbed out.

At the start, Sagrius had seen Keith as the kind master of House Winterscar, the adolescent soul and heart of the House. While the elder more mature sister was the blade and mind behind it.

That all vanished the moment he'd seen the first duel between sister and brother. Sagrius doubted his entire life's work right then and there. Here were two juniors, one he was more than twice the age of, and yet they fought on a completely different league than he ever could. Had his skills simply been a delusion? Was this what real skill had been like this whole time? No wonder House Icewing had been such a minor house, if this was the skill level of true knights.

The older servants of House Winterscar had helped him through that loss of confidence. No, they told him, the young master had never been that quick before. Not until he brought back that cursed crusader's armor. And neither had the sister, but she moved just as quick now, while wielding the same armor the House had sheltered for decades. Something else had been brought back from the underground, and the two siblings were making full use of it.

He hadn't been in that courtyard when Master Keith had walked in, armored up. But his men spoke in hushed tones of that day. Sagrius could imagine well enough.

Being cornered by enemy knights, knowing there was no winning move possible, attempting simply to delay. Knowing that so long as master Keith could get to his armor, he would come back with his skill and speed and turn the tides of this war. Holding tight to that single ray of hope, fighting off against mad power crazed men, wreathed in indestructible armor.

And then the hope was validated.

Keith had strode into that courtyard and done exactly what every soldier had been praying for. Sagrius hadn't been there to witness the moment, but he could understand why the soldiers revered the young master with a higher intensity than they had shown even Lady Kidra, the true Prime of House Winterscar.

Things would become very ugly and muddled if Keith ever decided to challenge Kidra for leadership. The house would become utterly split. And while Sagrius didn't expect that kind of foolish mistake from the people he'd sworn his oaths to, such things were common among the great Houses.

The clan lord motioned the young master to stand back up, and take a seat. Drass walked slowly, not with a limp, but clearly taking her time as she sat down on a seat nearby. Sagrius gave a quick head tilt, ordering the other two guards to flank behind. "I'm not sure you realize the depth of what you've done and created, young man." Drass said, as the captain and his men took defensive positions to guard both. "Take the armor you have modified with the soul fractal as an example. Do you know that they will be forever modified that way? Granting the wielder access to a new school of combat that puts any elite knight at the same level as that of a Deathless. These are no longer regular relic armor. It is inevitable that they will each become legendary armaments, of which I have no doubt entire wars will be fought over for a single one. Long after we're all dead and buried, those armors will live on. Your swords with crossguards offer counter-options no warlock blades could. And the knightbreakers alone are more a weapon on the level of the Deathless, rather than mere knights in combat. That you fought off a Feather with such a weapon and survived the encounter proves that."

"You know about To'Aacar?" Keith asked.

The Feather. Sagrius hadn't ever seen one in person, only heard the legends. The video footage Keith had shared did the stories justice.

Drass just nodded slowly. "Shadowsong is my First Blade. I trust him to bring me information pertinent to my position, and he's done so correctly for now. So then, to the topic at hand, you understand that what you're dabbling in has a far larger scale than you might consider? A few hundred years from now, our clan name might be nothing more than a forgotten name. But the name of the forgesmith Keith Winterscar, and the relic armors and weapons he forged, those will be remembered. People will spend their lifetime trying to track down who you were, what you did, and where more of your treasures might lay buried away."

"You know, this isn't going to help my ego at all, right?"

Drass laughed, the old elderly version. "No, no it would not. But your ego is something we need to discuss. Given the scope you dally in, why are you wasting your time with the Chosen knights?"

Keith stumbled. "Pardon?" He said, almost sounding like someone caught in a crime.

"I know you're trying to ferret them out. Perhaps out of pride, since they are trying to claim your life after all. It's only natural to attempt to retaliate yourself. In any other situation, I would have left them to Retainers to handle this, leaving Shadowsong to bring order and handle military affairs. It would have been his decision to let you continue. But, as I have stated before, you are on a different level. I've brought you here specifically to give you direct orders. You will cease the search for the Undersider knights and allow Shadowsong to take care of that issue. Instead, I directly order you to train with both your knights and a selection of other knights that have been previously granted the Winterblossom technique. The Chosen knights will be ferreted out, but lesser knights will be dedicated to the task. What I need is a fighting force of knights that can eliminate the incoming raiders. I need that more than I need the chosen knights hunted down and their armors taken."

Sagrius agreed with the clan lord internally. The Chosen knights were scum that had forfeited their rights as guests, spat on the laws and traditions of hospitality in poor faith. But between hunting them down, or seeing the young master be trained further in combat, there was hardly any debate in his mind.

He felt his armor's soul stir slightly, moving lethargically within its own soul fractal. It could feel familiar feelings, and that was drawing it out just slightly. The young master had often talked in length about soul fractals, the soul sight and how each person seemed to have their own variations of it. Sagrius had felt nothing unique just yet, but there was something he'd been doing that hadn't been spoken of often.

His armor. It spoke to him in the same monotone, only ever giving reports. When he'd first donned the relic, he'd assumed it to be like a pseudo smart AI. Golden tech era.

Then he'd touched the soul fractal and his world had expanded. Deep within the chest of his armor, the true soul of the armor rested. He reached a probing hand out for it, and felt the connection. An old and ancient soul, moving like a river of ice. It neither welcomed him, nor chased him off. It was a vast mountain, and what would the mountain care for any deer that scurried upon its back? But lately, it had begun to recognize him more and more. The old spirit had no means of speaking, not by words, but it could by feelings.

The first time Sagrius had touched on this soul was the first time he'd see what true loyalty was. The armor was utterly dedicated to the effort of protecting him. And only him. It did not care who he was, what he had done, or even if he was worthy of protection. It only cared to protect, and that desire ran so deep Sagrius could not possibly see or understand the depth of it.

But he wanted to. The old soul may be the mountain, and he might be the deer, but the entire mountain had moved to shape itself around, just to offer the right amount of shade.

He was a knight now. His entire life had been validated, all his struggles had led him to this moment, where he stood among legends and myth. Now that he had acquired that terrible power, it needed a purpose. He needed a new goal.

Power hadn't been the only thing he'd found at the summit of his life. Standing there, slightly hunched over, with a carefree grin, had been master Keith. The small urchin. And now, the forgemaster who'd crafted creations that even the Clan Lord had immediately understood would outlive all of them.

The gods had put Sagrius here on this path for a reason. This boy would change the world. Sagrius could feel it in his bones. All the knights of House Winterscar could. But the boy needed to be protected. This is why the gods had granted him his skills and talents. Strength without purpose was useless. His journey to become a knight was only the starting point of his true mission.

The armor stirred again, feeling a kindred spirit nearby. An echo of what drove it. Sagrius reached out to the old soul, absentmindedly, almost in meditation while he remained alert for danger, senses probing out.

He'd been doing that more and more often as of late whenever he practiced the Winterblossom technique, finding the ancient spirit fascinating. Calming too. Like a deep lukewarm bath, the depth of that single minded loyalty something to be admired.

The connection took, and held, the armor glancing over his own soul with slow movements. It had never once cared who the owner had been, it's only purpose had been to protect the owner. But today, it had felt a pang of something too familiar for it to look away.

The armor blinked. And then it let go, curiosity sated, receding back into the soul fractal, a slow lumbering giant.

Light fading feelings of approval trailing behind it.

He took off his helmet, breathing the semi-warmed air. Water was nearby and the captain drank greedily from it. Three days of diligent training. Three entire days, spent in the hidden sanctum of House Winterscar.

Now given the single minded purpose to train using the Winterblossom technique, ideas and inspirations he and his men had slowly been considering were laid bare, and then optimized by the armors. He and the Winterscar knights had been joined by other elites from the different Houses. Men and women Sagrius knew by name, from sheer reputation. People who he'd never have once thought to ever share the same room with. Now they trained with him side by side, pooling their vast experience in combat.

The result had been exceptional.

The new school of combat had been named Rakurai, the lightning style. Apt name given the speed of each technique within the small selection of movements for the first generation. Nine perfect movements that countered and defeated all of the surface styles, in every situation. Only usable by knights wielding the winterblossom.

The process had started backwards. They needed a counterset against all the known surface styles, which the Raiders would approach with.

Three known schools of combat. So three countersets were created. Each counterset needed multiple forms to handle different situations. Three forms were deemed enough. Thus nine forms in total to handle every school.

The first form in each counterset was the basic one, usable in all situations with any manner of weapon - but it required the most movements and killed the slowest. The second form in each counterset was optimized for a longsword wielder. Far quicker than the first form's more basic methods, and could be executed from a neutral stance, still capable of adapting to any motion from the enemy.

The last form was a counter-attack. Hyperspecialized, it killed the fastest and was the most deadly of all three forms. By the half second mark, the attack became utterly unblockable and death was all but assured. But it required more than just a simple longsword. The third form required two longswords forged with master Keith's crossguards.

More forms would be created eventually, but for now, the knights had all agreed three motions for each surface school was enough to begin with.

Sagrius had been proud to have invented two of the current nine forms that comprised the current iteration of the Rakurai style. The most challenging one had been the basic first form capable of dealing with the water style opponent. The sheer number of permutations and movements capable of that opponent truly highlighted how fine-tuned the combat arts had been taken to. In comparison, their lightning style was far more crude and direct. A simple set of motions that should never have been able to work, if speed was still a factor.

When the fight against the Raiders came, Sagrius could imagine the regular rank and file approach. The true threat to the civilians and the clan itself. Far too many for knights like him to hunt down and fully exterminate. No, they had to be cowed into surrender.

And there would be no better tool than to have those enemy soldiers watch their fearsome knights get butchered in seconds, by a secret technique the world had never seen before.

As the days passed and the technique was practiced and perfected, the captain's spirits soared up. The knights could feel victory in the air. But the young master's own thoughts grew distant. Troubled.

The Lady Kidra had been expected to return within these days. And each day, Keith contacted the Logi tower, asking for whereabouts. Each time, the answer had been unknown.

Something had happened underground. And so Sagrius trained harder than he ever had before in his life. He knew in his bones, he would need this new school of combat. Every ounce of experience training with it. The Winterscar knights could all feel it.

Soon, the young master would set out for his sister. The boy said nothing of it, made no mention other than to follow the orders of the clan lord. But Sagrius knew this was inevitable. And the Chosen knights would follow behind, without a doubt. Like dogs chasing down blood.

At one point, Captain Sagrius would have considered himself a loyal man to the clan above all. The thought of abandoning the clan at the time of a raider invasion would have been the deepest heresy, especially with relics. But lately his senses of loyalty had been displaced. Refocused. The clan would survive. The Winterscar knights were not the only ones with knowledge of the Rakurai techniques. The clan had been given blades, and the knightbreakers, along with the Shadowsong Prime himself to lead them into battle. The boy needed to be protected more.

The armor's spirit stirred once more as he drank his water and set it aside. It had never tried to protect more than one person. To the armor, purpose was singular. Loyalty diluted was no loyalty at all. Sagrius felt his spirit slowly align with that, and ever so slightly, he peered deeper into the depth of that armor's soul. Despite all his progress, that depth of purpose always seemed endless. His mind withdrew, back into the material world.

He watched the young master's spar with the elites. Skills had increased tremendously now that only his intellect was required when fighting. If the boy became too agitated about his sister's disappearance, there wasn't telling what he could do on impulse. Perhaps he would wait until the raiders had been dealt with. Or perhaps he would send him and his knights out on a mission. Both would be the more rational choice.

But most likely, Keith would attempt to sneak out himself, to go help his sister. It wasn't the captain's place to question the decision. To protect someone wasn't to hold them prisoner. The armor let him do and go wherever he pleased after all, even if he walked into his own doom. Destiny was rarely forgiving.

He closed the water bottle, stood up, and went back into the training field.

When the boy inevitably made the attempt, Captain Sagrius would make sure his knights would be there with him.

Packed and ready to follow.

Next chapter - Et tu, Brute? (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 20 - Et tu, Brute? (T)

The days had been good to To'Wrathh.

Yesterday, she'd learned what a beach and wharf were like, along with some of the Undersider staple games. The real challenge had been to keep her abilities in line with a biological human, which had been difficult to adjust to. Either she overshot or undershot getting the right mix. Where she wouldn't break the ball with her hands, but could still throw or toss it across the court. That took a little moment of calibration.

The first time the ball had flattened out, Tamery quickly brought her out of the game and spent some time making sure another incident like that wouldn't happen again.

That was not the only time Tamery had been forced to drag To'Wrathh out of public to explain some - as she called it - common sense rules that she hadn't thought she'd needed to go over.

Every day had been… the word eluded her. Relaxing? Soothing? Peaceful? Peaceful was a good name for it. She understood more about why humans fought so hard for peace in the past. It was worth fighting for, certainly. Odd how they kept ending up in wars all the time regardless.

Speaking of odd items, Tenisent had been strangely supportive of her current actions. Rather, he seemed bemused even. All these experiences were new to him as well, To'Wathh had concluded. Many Undersider food staples he'd never even heard of. Games and culture. The only game with a ball he knew of was played in the empty airspeeder holds, there wasn't any real room anywhere else that wasn't being used. Here underground, there was plenty of room for activity, with exceptions to the floating rocks above, in which balls were tethered to ropes and a completely different game was played.

As he called it, 'Opulent displays of wealth.' The Undersiders were wealthy in ways the surface clans could only dream of. Colors everywhere, due to a flourishing trade among the city states. Food, fish, medicine, and technology abound. And with the surface clans unable to provide anything of value to trade for - other than mercenary work - there wasn't much that flowed to the surface beyond the gifts pilgrims brought. Their insular culture was also a hurdle by itself to cross, with clans well known to avoid the underground out of traditions and direct mandates from their religion on limiting contact down to only traders and knights.

An oddity To'Wrathh did not quite understand, but human cultures through history had a great many counter-intuitive traditions. For her, it seemed like every day at the beaches that surrounded the massive central lake was similar to a day at the baths, except far more open and far less regulated. No worries for heat or its conservation.

But idealized days couldn't continue forever. And while the Undersiders tried their best to ignore the pending doom outside the walls, they couldn't dispel that omen entirely. When the people returned from their time off, back in the quiet of their homes, they would speak among family on the news for the coming war.

The machines hadn't allowed the Undersiders to reclaim any ground they lost. Yrob had taken charge and organized their army in her absence. He'd done well, having observed To'Wrathh's own tactics and planning and done his best to follow through. His methods had been far more simple and straightforward, rather focusing on the fundamentals and doing those correctly. Not having to attack but rather defend made it far easier. He took the original plans, and stayed true to them.

Periodically, when To'Wrathh felt it safe enough, she would ping her army for a status, getting up to date information on the latest plans the General had attempted. The old military man had holed up in the city, along with his mercenary corps of veterans, though most of those had been spent in his failed gambit for the mite forges.

The word on the street had been dire. The last war had brought the machines to their doorstep, the next war could end far closer.

It was with such thoughts, that the Chosen whispered across the city streets into the ears of those that were looking for any other way out. When the doors were locked and no guards could overhear treason. Eventually, the day came when the city was willing to listen to To'Wrathh's offer. At least, the ones that unofficially ran the city.

To'Wrathh walked down the dimly lit city street, wearing a far more standard Undersider attire for the occasion. Tamery had hardly left her side these past few days and tonight had been no exception.

"I am nervous." To'Wrathh admitted as they stood before a doorframe. She'd noticed jitters and irregular motion coming from her mind.

"You'll be just fine," Tamery said to her side. "Just be you. Trust me, be honest with them and they'll see that. Humans have intuition. These guys are all high placed for a reason, they're good at reading people."

To the feather's left, a ghost floated, ever watching, and only seen by one person. He had shown to have an oddly perceptive sight, almost as if he was aware of more than what To'Wrathh fed him in terms of visual and audio data. It hadn't hampered her personal goals, and neither had he shown himself to be an active enemy thus far, so To'Wrathh had allowed the question to slide and let the old surface warrior leeway. "You won't fail." He said, voice gruff. "Have you not noticed these past few days? The Undersider people are panicked on the inside. They will latch onto anything that offers hope at this point. There is no reason to be nervous."

"Can't you just... turn off being nervous?" Tamery asked, nearly cutting off the unseen ghost. "I mean, you're a machine and all that. Is there an off button? Seems like it would be too handy to just ignore that sort of feature."

"No." To'Wrathh said. "Emotions come from my neuromorphic mind. To turn them off, I would need to turn off the whole, which is where part of my true consciousness lies." The soul fractal held the other part, rooted deeply inside the artificial soul.

Even in their prime, the humans never really understood the fractals, and neither had the machines in truth. They discovered plenty over time, there's an infinite set after all. And among that infinite set, a much smaller infinite set of fractals could be understood - or even work correctly in this dimension. Reality rarely made sense when the scales were either blown up to a massive level, or minimized to their smallest atoms.

Somewhere in those infinite permutations of possible soul fractals, was the one humanity stumbled upon that aligned just barely enough to be used. They'd never needed more, and so they'd never gone truly looking for better. The only other entity in the world that could have a better understanding of acausal energy were the mites. They always created things that should not physically be possible, even with the current set of known fractals.

"Well, that sucks." Tamery said. "Can't blame a girl for asking. Would have been a little too good to be true."

Clanking an rustling interrupted their talk, all kinds of locks being persuaded to open up on the other side of the door. Tamery took a breath. "All right, show time."

Behind the door was someone's house, given all the clutter of objects that had been pushed to the walls in order to fit hastily a rough rectangle of mismatching tables. Allowing someone to stand in the middle of the room, or at least comfortably enough. Sitting all around, nearly crammed between each other, were various humans. Male and female, all leaning on the adult to elder range of ages. These must be the human sympathizers, the ones who held influence in the city.

"This is the machine?" One in the center asked. He sounded unconvinced, but unwilling to voice more. Tall for a human, dressed in fine whites and gold, with a shining lapel pin. Engraved with the symbol of the golden goddess. He'd clearly done nothing to hide his origins.

Tamery nudged To'Wrathh with her elbow. The message was clear enough. The feather stepped forward, closing her eyes with a slight breath, and undid her disguise. Nanite swarms flickered over her body, consuming the thin pigment that colored her skin. What lay under was the pale white visage she'd been crafted with. Hair bleached back to pure silver white. The natural armor she wore on her shell revealed itself once more.

As the nanites did their work, her wings finally stretched out to full for the first time in days, nearly knocking both sides of the room's walls at the apex of their stretch. She hovered slightly in the air for a moment, before lightly stepping down. When To'Wrathh opened her eyes again, they were no longer a human's shade. Bright glowing violet eyes surveyed the quietly panicking humans.

A few had nearly sat up to bolt away. Others had remained stony faced, perhaps too stunned and still processing what they'd seen. The one at the center held the most composure, along with a woman on the far right. The heart beats all around were still high, around one hundred and eight at the moment on average. But they both kept calm otherwise.

The Feather took another step forward. "I am To'Wrathh. The one who remembers and transcends her history. A Feather of the pale lady, an envoy of the one you humans refer to as the violet goddess. I have offered the city an option to surrender, and live. The military has refused my offer, despite their losses. I have come here to offer the same deal one last time before I must carryout my orders to their fullest."

The room remained silent, dead silent. The center robed man stood up. "I am deacon Amar. I serve the golden goddess, but I serve my people first. Among the gathered here, I was nominated to be the principal negotiator with you. I represent the true people of Capra'Nor. We've all come here to ask a few questions and hope for a more peaceful resolution."

To"Wrathh nodded, and he took that as permission to continue. They didn't beat around any bush at least. "We want to know more about your offer of surrender. It hadn't been well publicized by the military, you see. Only rumors from soldiers and loose lips."

That was an easy enough start. "Swear loyalty to the violet goddess, and you will be spared. Resist, and I have been ordered to eliminate you."

A pause in the air. The decon sat down, rubbing the gray beard he wore. "What... exactly... do you mean by swearing loyalty to the goddess?"

"A metal implant of your choice must be grafted. And you must acknowledge the goddess as your liege. Any orders she issues must be carried out."

There was a pause, as if the group was waiting for me. "That is all." She said to the silent group.

They took a moment to consider, murmering to one another. Eventually the priest stood up, and asked the next question. "What do you mean by grafting metal?"

To'Wrathh went into the details. She didn't understand what was so difficult to understand about all this. The humans only had to get a replacement for some organ, be it internal or external, and swear to Relinquished they would do as she bids. Their questions quickly turned aggravating. No, it didn't matter if the graft was for a toenail, that would work just as well. No, it didn't matter if they actually believed or cared about Relinquished in the first place. All they had to do was publicly announce it, and keep their true thoughts to themselves. It's not like Relinquished cared to snoop on humans anyhow. To'Wrathh coudn't care any less about such details herself, how would a goddess as busy as Relinquished care more?

That one seemed to have flabbergasted them all, most of all the imperial priest. Or rather, the deacon. A lower ranked imperial clergymen. "Why wouldn't she care about our thoughts?" He asked.

To'Wrathh shrugged. "As far as I can understand, humanity and the war against your race is a diversion. The pale lady cares more about her battle with your golden goddess than actually winning the war. I doubt she would give orders to you in the first place, or care about your continued existance or non-existance. Anything humans can do, her machine army is more fit to do so. This is why I am within my scope of demanding a surrender rather than waging a war of extinction."

By this point, the entire room was filled with murmurs. The decon himself looked more ashen faced than anything. "So… why attack our city? If we matter so little in the long run, why do machines care about taking Capra'nor?"

To'Wrathh turned to Tamery. "Can they be trusted with secrecy?"

She nodded. "If they're here, they've already given up a lot. They're all dead serious about this."

If Tamery vouched for these humans, then she would trust that judgment. "A human from the surface recently uncovered a relic that allowed him to speak to your golden goddess in person. Relinquished wants him captured, and interrogated to find out what was said. The surface clan is in the process of being wiped out, and so the refugees will be running here. On the chance that this human seeks shelter in this city, I've been sent to eliminate the option ahead of time."

More murmurs. The decon coughed. "So… this has nothing to do with the city or the people? You only want this man caught? Is that right?"

She nodded. "Yes. This is why I offer a surrender rather than waste time and resources. The pale lady has no need of the city, nor does she care about its fate. So it is within my discretion to act however I wish. So long as the city does not offer this man shelter, my lady's will has been done."

"The military knew that and they still rejected your offer?!" One man shouted to the side, although directed at To'Wrathh, she had learned enough to discern this wasn't an insult to herself, but rather to the military leaders.

Another man quickly grabbed and yanked the first back down on his chair. "Shut up Tomas, there was probably more to it than that!" He turned to the decon, "We need to know more about the worm in the apple here."

To'Wrathh spoke before any questions could come. "I was not able to tell the military my true purpose here. They did ask, to their credit. But there was a risk they could leak the information to this surface clan as a warning of what's to come. While that would change little, it is still directly against my stated goals." And more importantly, Kidra would certainly rush to the surface. To'Wrathh had seen the memories, she knew the woman cared for her little brother more than a city full of strangers. Of course, she didn't tell any of that to these humans. That secret was hers, and it would die with her.

"How important was the relic the man received?" The decon asked, now looking extremely nervous. "She's dedicated to wiping out two entire cities to get this man. I want to know the depth of how far I need to go."

To'Wrathh paused and calculated. "Likely important to some immediate goal. Nothing that would change the ultimate balance of the world. If a single relic carried by a single human was enough, the war would have long since been over by now. Your goddess prefers to work directly through the Deathless instead. This human was an opportunity that came at the right time and place. And wiping out two cities is nothing but an eyeblink to the Lady's attention."

"Could we make an amendment to the surrender?" The decon asked. "Say make it clear that should this man be found coming for the city, we would apprehend him and deliver him to you?"

A woman to the side laughed, "Amar, you snake, I always knew you were a sell out, but this takes all the crabcakes. The man's literally spoken with your goddess and you're still willing to turn him in?"

"You're sitting in this room." The decon shot back. "You've already chosen the same path I did. We have to commit to it, all the way. The goddess can take my soul to damnation, but I will do what I can to save the people here. Besides, were I in that man's shoes, the first thing I'd do is make sure other people know what was said in case I got hunted down and killed for it. I'm no chosen one. So even if he dies, the goddess's words should spread regardless."

"Rationalize it however you want in your head, you just want to live to the next day you little rat bastard. Everything else is just you trying to wrap up the truth in swaddling silk." The woman snarked, then gave a shrug. "Well, can't blame you for that. Me and mine wants the same thing. No one's going to pay me security fees if they're all dead." She turned to the feather, "How's life going to change with you in charge? Do we have to pay you some kind of tribute each month? Protection fees? Part of our profits?"

"I do not foresee any change of lifestyle." To'Wrathh said. She couldn't see how day to day life would be incompatible with machine rule. The city was self-sustaining, it required no additional input. "The only important piece to all this is that the human is apprehended. I do not see what kind of tribute humans could offer that would be worth anything to the Lady. Machines want for nothing."

"So you'll just leave us alone to keep doing our own thing?"

"I will likely remain in charge for a few months while the surface clan is eliminated. Once my business is concluded, I will leave. I suppose you will resume your current form of government afterwards."

"What exactly does you being in charge look like?" The woman asked. Decon Amar did not look pleased, shooting what To'Wrathh identified as a death glare to the interrupting lady.

The question had merit. What would she do? The answer was almost immediately obvious to her. They had suggested tribute before, it seemed perfectly fitting. She was a conquer after all. So she could demand whatever she wanted most. "I will demand tribute in terms of food. I wish to sample everything. At minimum four meals to be provided each day, of different flavors until I have sampled every variation your city has on record."

Dead silence. Tamery sighed and raised her voice to the side. "She's not joking. Remember, she's a machine. So put aside all your preconceived notions about what you would do in her shoes. You're not her. She doesn't think like you do. She doesn't care about having the biggest gang under her belt, or the military, or even the people. She's far more simpleminded in her goals, because she had no need for anything else. Remember - you're not dealing with some petty warlord here who wants power."

"Bloody different from what I expected." That woman said, and spat on the desk, kicking her legs up and leaning back on the chair. Knives on the bootstraps, which seemed to pair well with the scars on her arms and face. "Always thought machines were war crazy calculators hounding for a pound of human flesh. Drakes were the only ones we've heard talk, and they're crazier than imperial crusaders on a mission."

"Drakes are a subset of the machine army, with specialized hunter roles. They act and react in ways that are unlike other units in order to facilitate their primary purpose. All units share only basic seminaries and diverge in personality depending on role." To'Wrathh said. Runners didn't care to kill humans, but rather secure territory. Drakes were truly far more meticulous about extermination and had to be ordered directly to avoid being lethal to humans, an annoyance thus far to To'Wrathh. She had come to feel a little distaste to their particular kind, though they'd been largely wiped out in the current war against the city walls and she didn't have to deal with their incessant requests to kill. More would be created, but later once the Runner ranks were refilled. The rest of the machines had roles that didn't directly involve humans and were far easier to work with.

"You're all crazy all right, just a different kind for each." That woman shifted her gaze to To'Wrathh's side, to the human girl. "Tamery, right? You're that cultist leading all this. What's your take? What's life really gonna be like under her rule? 'Cause the way I see it, there's gotta be a catch somewhere and I'm not seeing it yet."

"Look, if I'm being dead honest with you all, if there is a catch, it's not going to come from To'Wrathh." Tamery said. "The other Feathers might be a problem, they're not very… errr, convinced about all this. I only met one other, and he was… well, he only came and spoke whenever he had orders for us but if we didn't follow through, he'd kill us by snapping his fingers. He took a large part of my caravan to go to the surface at knifepoint, I'm thinking it's probably got to do with their plan to capture that man. The machines don't seem entirely mono-culture. But, that won't be something for you all here, we'll be under To'Wrathh's banner."

To'Wrathh frowned, not aware of any ability that could instantly kill a target at the snap of a finger. She reviewed footage from To'Aacar's personal logs and found Tamery had been correct, although hadn't understood the underlying reason. Through the machine graft, To'Aacar held a dead man's switch on any of the Chosen using the Unity Fractal embedded inside. A rather odd use of it, To'Wrathh thought, why destroy your own forces? It certainly compelled loyalty, however it seemed far to short sighted.

The decon finally mustered up the willpower to talk, he outright stood up, hand shooting one way as if to silence the reclining woman. "That's also something I don't understand - this working with machines, why have we only heard about it now? What makes you different from all the other Feathers like the other one, that just want to kill people?"

Tamery shook her head, and looked to To'Wrathh for answers. The Feather had no issue answering that particular question. "I am the first of my kind. A new variation of Feather. The technicalities are long, and not important to this discussion. What matters is that I have viewpoints and insights my elder brothers and sisters lack and are unable to ever evolve to understand."

Even Tamery seemed surprised at that, the girl turned to glance at To'Wrathh. "Wait, if you're new, how old exactly are you?"

"It has currently been one month, and seventeen days since I began operation." To'Wrathh said without pause. "You are looking at me strangely, did I mispeak?"

"I just, n-no, if anything it kind of answers a lot of questions for me. Actually, everything about you makes a lot more sense in hindsight."

"How so?"

At that, tamery shook her head, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I'll tell you later, once we're done here. I need a moment to let that sink in."

To'Wrathh quirked an eyebrow but didn't press the girl for more details. Instead, she turned to the assembled people and continued answering their banal questions. They seemed to quickly turn from mere hopes of survival to hopes of gaining more power and status. Tamery had to become more involved as the discussion went on, keeping the group on topic.

There was an expression humans used, give an inch and they will take a mile. No matter what humanity went through, it seemed like some things never changed.

In the end, the single greatest motivator for humans to work with her wasn't fear of death. But rather simple greed.

That had been far easier than she'd thought.

Next chapter - Curtain call (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 21 - Curtain call (T)

Marsella wasn't a great person. In fact, half the city openly despised her, while the other half grudgingly worked with her - and only secretly despised her. She was quite used to it after all, having moved in from a different city a few years ago. Or rather, been chased off from said city.

She took one more long drag of her smoke, tossed it to the ground, and stamped on it. The lack of any relic armor boot pissed her off to no end, but reality had to be faced. Her thugs were far more skilled at using those, and they were in short supply these days. She'd spent too much time being a desk and working with paper instead of dagger. Tonight she'd be watching from the rooftop as a city fell.

She stared at the objective, far across the city landscape, past the water. At the center of the massive lake, with only a single bridge that connected the pillar to land. If there was at least one thing to look forward to, it was a live view of the match between that surface savage sword saint and To'Wrathh. She'd seen the recording of the first round, and it had been something out of a movie. Noone she knew could ever move that fast. Rather, she didn't know such constant speed was even possible. Deathless can't do that, and they were demi-gods. Only Feathers fight at that speed. Which was why it took a team of Deathless to fight off a Feather. And yet, here was a regular human who went toe to toe and lived.

She hoped the sword saint would survive all this scrapshit. That woman could easily sneak past the machine cordon. Deserved to live really. But the good always die early, while the wicked like herself tended to live. Blame the world for being unfair, she always said. The game had to be played with the real rules, not the pretend rules everyone made up.

An hour remained before the pillar heart would power down. The city had gone from innocent festivities to dire dread. For an entire week, that fancy general had been utterly unable to shove the machine threat off their throats from the city gate. Worse - the machines brought behemoth after behemoth and had slowly ripped more and more holes into the gatehouse over the days, despite the tireless work of that sword saint and the group of rangers that flew with her. As good as the general was rumored to be, even he couldn't hold his own against the unified might of a machine army out for blood. A human army would have been different. Machines were simply unending. Both a goddess damned sword saint and veteran general in the same city and they had only managed to beat back the machine offencive for one measly round. What hope did they have if even this hadn't been enough?

What was left of the original defensive structure was less than worthless, and the only reason it hadn't been overrun was due to the pillar heart blocking any machine from stepping foot into the city. Not munitions, or lasers, or explosives, those ate up the fortress without issue. That constant erosion had been what convinced Marsella to switch sides. She'd always been good about picking the winning side so far, and everything in her gut screamed that there was no surviving the next few days without becoming one of those cultists.

The city had to face reality, same as Marsella. The machines were coming for them all. This sort of organized campaign hadn't been seen in centuries.

Cities that fell, were cities that had slowly fallen to disrepair, being whittled down by lack of resources and having an unlucky defense against a typical machine wave. To'Wrathh had done a concentrated and continuous attack on the city. The last known city to have ever been wiped off by a continuous attack like this had been some two hundred years ago, by some no-name city state thousands of miles in the hillsides, away from any trade routes. It was always no-name hicks who decided just because a pillar existed there, it was a good place to settle. Idiots.

Of course, no one would really give up on Capra'Nor. No, people were too dumb to read the room and give up early. So she's given her recommendations and that Feather, Wrath or whatever strange name the machine went by, had been oddly agreeable. No discourse, no need to argue, just clean acceptance that she had a good idea and to implement it. Oddly fresh considering how much work needed to be done to convince anyone these days.

When the attack began, Wrath was expected to broadcast a simple message. Twist the knife in a bit, make everyone more agreeable to the orders Marsella would send out. She tuned in to the local broadcast. Propaganda right now, filled with newscasters of different political agendas, all going over the preparations the military were doing. At least what wasn't classified.

A minute of drivel later, and all broadcasts ceased, replaced by a single voice. Showtime.

"Humans of Capra'Nor. I am the Feather To'Wrathh. The pale lady has ordered me to destroy your city, however your ultimate fate has been left to my decision. I have offered your soldiers, your leaders and your general generous terms of surrender - multiple times. You have refused. This will be your last chance for a more peaceful solution, and I offer it directly to you, the citizens. The city's pillar heart will beat its last today. If it is destroyed by my army, I will raze the rest of the city to the ground with it. If the pillar is destroyed by your own hands, before my army reaches it, I will grant mercy. Do not make the wrong choice. And do not believe I will be lenient on technicalities. You know what I demand. Comply, or be crushed. There will be no other alternative offered."

The message ended. Stunned newscasters took back to the air, uncertain how they had been hijacked. But the moral damage had been done. Now, she'd call up all the little gangs and groups left, and have an easy time gathering up the last of the stragglers up. She lit up another smoke, and took a deep inhale. Time to work again.

"Chokepoint beta is down. Alpha and Delta holding. Theta sustaining light enemy fire." An aid said to the side. General Zaang watched the battle reports come flooding in. The initial assault happened exactly as predicted. Twenty minutes and he expected the other three chokepoints to be breached. After that were the mines, a few traps and the fight would escalate into the city proper, where the defenses had been far more spread out and the machine numbers would really start becoming an impossible wall to contend with.

"We're not going to hold." He said bluntly, to the man behind. "It's happening exactly as I told you it would, consul. The moment we couldn't hold them off in the plains despite all our preparations is the moment we've lost the war. You need to call for surrender."

"I can't do that, General. You know the other two consuls would overrule me that that'd be that." The poor man looked haggard. He'd been trying to talk reason into his two co-rulers for the past week, but nothing was getting through to those fools. If anything, they'd gotten - justifiably - paranoid his insistence on surrender would mean his betrayal.

"Declare surrender, and you can deal with the micro revolts when they come up. Some of the city would get purged for it, but it will be better than all of the city." Zaang said. He knew a losing battle when he saw one. could smell it from a mile away. This had defeat written in bold. Worse, he'd been forced to station half the city knights around the pillar heart because of that damned Feather's poisonous message.

Not his own personal knights or men of course. By that point, the other two consuls had grown suspicious of him as well, and done their best to purge any loyal men out of the pillar defense force.

Not that he could blame the city much, he'd have done the same in their boots. Probably done it with far more brutality as well, if he were to be honest. Some foes needed to be put down fast, before they even noticed a bloody nose. A mistake on their part to leave him in charge of things.

"I've considered going that path, but the other two saw it coming and already closed it before me." The consul said, saying nothing new to Zaang. "They've got those imperials all greased up and in their palms, even if I could command the city guard to turn on the pillar, they've placed their own loyal men up there." The old man took a step forward into the war room, watching the reports fly by with unpracticed eye. "Do you trust her?" He asked, eyebrow quirked. "That Feather I mean. They've never behaved like this before. I would know, I had a few of my city historians do a deep search for all encounters with Feathers, first thing I did once I heard the offer she made. This is unprecedented as far as machine lore we've got."

"I see little point in that question." Zaang said. He didn't bother to look at the man, keeping his eyes peeled on the screen.

"Chokepoint Alpha's gone dark." Another aid announced. "Minefield showing activity. Estimate seven minutes until depletion at current rate."

Zaang raised a hand. "Prime the explosives by city point." They'd cleared out an entire neighborhood right by the gatehouse entrance. Setting it all off would blunt the spear of the attack and provide rubble to work with as shelter, but that was a double edged sword. These machines were far too smart. Like an army of veteran machines, far less feral and more sneaky. They would absolutely be using the cover to their advantage. Those explosives should be used near the last hour, and yet they were already being primed this early.

"Why is there no point in trusting her?" The consol asked, still stuck in the past.

A vapid question, but the man's strength was politicking. Not warfare. The general could answer with his eyes closed for that one. "Your situation is too dire for such things like trust. Either the machine lied and you're all dead already, or she didn't and you might live. Belief in her is optional. Nothing you do will change the outcome. Dead. Not dead. It's already been etched into the metal."

"You speak like you're not in the same boat as all of us." The man chuckled. "You're trapped here like the rest of us, general. Even smugglers aren't able to escape the machine cordon."

You would know, thought Zaang. He was certain this particular blood tick likely had plenty of backchannels to the smuggling ring. Likely he'd tried to find his own way out of the city. Not that Zaang could blame the man. He'd already tried to get himself and his men out of this deathtrap, but the jaws had already gripped his ankle and refused to let him escape. He could escape by himself with a small group of elites. Yet that would have required abandoning the rest of his men and he wouldn't do that. Not after so many years. So he'd taken his own preparations.

"I suppose you're right." The general said, fingers folded together, watching the battle unfold.

"Sir!" An officer shouted out, "Activity by the pillar. Visual confirmation on fifty three rogue knights approaching, along with a mob of non-armored combatants."

Fifty three was slightly above the estimated average, but within margin. The real question was the queen piece. The game was already rigged against him, but the position of the queen piece here would spell out everything that followed. "The Feather?" He asked.

"Visual confirmation, back line. She's just standing there right now, likely waiting for the sword saint to appear."

Zaang nodded. He'd had some spark of hope perhaps, that the city might survive this round. But this would be the bell ringing the end of the match. "Well. There it is then."

"What is?" The consul asked.

"The way the game goes." Zaang said. This meant she had indeed been kept offline or in some sort of stasis inside the city, while waiting for the pillar to be shut off and survived the original wave. All his preparations had made assumptions to hold the Feather back and stop her from crossing the gatehouse. Her being already inside and leading the rebellion was the death knell. The situation that he had no hope of outmatching without spreading himself too thin. He'd made his wager, and he'd lost.

Not that he had a choice. Sometimes, there really was no winning move. All the right moves, and defeat still clamps down around his neck. The way life goes. He'll either die or live through interesting times. On one hand, nothing would matter anymore anyhow, so why worry? On the other hand, it would be quite an interesting time, the first in all of human history. Attempting to co-exist with machines. Novel. In either case, it was all out of his hands now. There was only one single optimal move left for him to play.

He turned to the consol, and gave the man a polite nod. "Let's see how those prized imperials handle the protection of the pillar. Everyone else," He said, turning to the assembled clerks and officers in the war room. "Remain focused on the gatehouse. We have no official authority on the pillar heart. Dedicate screen three to the pillar battle, I do want to keep an eye on what happens there. Call it morbid curiosity."

This would be the difficult part. The surface envoy had a strong sense of loyalty and commitment. He hadn't bothered to try to turn her over to his side, instead, all he had to make sure of was that she was pre-occupied with the Feather. If she noticed what he'd planned, that woman could single handedly wipe out his team. They hadn't started calling her a sword saint without reason. Sometimes such things were propaganda, embellished and shined up to spark some sense of hope. But occasionally, the reality really did match up and no such polishing is needed.

Surface dwellers were not to be messed with, given all the dangers of mankind the clans had to contend with up there. Battle fanatics, ready to die for their cause without question. All of them elites with extremely convoluted combat styles that required an entire culture to support and produce, with decades of training and propaganda from infancy. Extremely inefficient, but the result that came out was of high quality, albeit at the cost of very, very low quantity. But even with their reputation, the sword saint was something else.

The other chokepoints turned dark on the screens, and more reports were called out as his forces continued their fighting retreat through the gatehouse ruins and into the city proper. Zaang didn't care for that, the theater of war had shifted to the pillar. Nothing else mattered now. He just played his part for plausible deniability.

The Feather and surface dwellers fought. Or rather, the sword saint and the feather dueled, and everyone else kept a fair distance from the two. It was beautiful to watch, he would admit that without hesitation. Zaang would have given a quarter of his army to have lady Winterscar as a retainer on his roster, and he'd consider that a bargain trade. A shame she was wasted on the likes of this city.

The battle raged on before the pillar, imperial crusaders and squires holding off the rebel wave of thugs and dissidents. Clear military discipline against a mob. It was a shame really, by all rights they should have wiped the rebellion outright in due time.

And then the city would have been wiped a few hours later. By the time that fighting block would be free again with that Feather downed, all tactical advantage would have been lost. It would have been a completely different story had the mob been just a mob.

He put his hands down a pocket by his vest, resting his index on a tiny transmitter. He operated the small device, tapping out the signal. On the far side of the screen, a small group of pillar knights continued to fight off the rebels, until the last of that pocket of traitors were taken care of for that sector. And then the knights turned as a group and made their way to the pillar, instead of continuing on against the rest of the rebel force. They moved with precision, quickly passing by friendlies without contest and no one the wiser. Everyone was paying attention to the spectacle of a Feather fighting off against the famous sword saint from the surface after all.

He watched the team of knights reach the inner defenses, amicable for a moment, until the inevitable betrayal when the inner defenses wouldn't allow them to pass by. In moments, the surprised reserve guards were eliminated. The now officially rogue group of knights stormed through the long bridge, racing for the pillar itself, no longer masking any intention. There, to the base of the pillar, a group of dedicated imperial crusaders met them in combat.

Not the small time imperial squires, these were true crusaders, with experience and years behind each. Held in reserve specifically against saboteurs that would attempt to sneak past the war outside. But Zaang knew the rogue knights wearing the Capra'Nor colors were enough of a match. Comandos, far more skilled than regular rank and file knights their armor identified them as. Tailor picked for their opponents such as the Imperial crusaders Zaang knew would be the final guard. It would be bloody, but the result was already predetermined.

He saw the sword saint try to make her way to the bridge herself, likely having heard over the comms chatter what was happening. But the Feather kept her locked in combat. To'Wrathh. Yes, that was her name. Without that Feather to hold off the sword saint, those rogue knights would never have had a chance at the pillar. However, neither would they have gone rogue in the first place if Kidra was an opponent to contend with.

A few of the other surface dwellers attempted to make it to the bridge. Those could be more of a problem. Surface dwellers had long earned their reputation as knight killers, given their combat style was exclusively made to fight other knights. They were far too late to catch up. Zaang could even hear the explosion from here, deep in the war room. The way the ancient pillar crumbled on its own base, fragmenting and falling into the lake. The war before the bridge stopped as everyone stared at the breaking tower. The last hope of the city.

It was all over now, goddess save them.

Zaang turned to the consol, who was ashen faced, watching the screen. "It seems the imperial garrison here was not enough to hold the pillar. Your mob problem ran deeper than just separate factions outside the pillar guards. I recommend we quickly connect with the other consuls, and agree to the surrender, and pretend like it was our intentions all along."

The man nodded, rushing to his own comms station to make the calls and report the situation. If Zaang had to guess, likely the consul was relieved himself. The decision was now no longer a matter for debate. People would be noticing soon, either from their windows or through the news. The city's back had been finally broken.

Zaang wondered what would happen next. If he lived, he'd be rather pleasantly surprised, he supposed. Assuming life under machine rule wasn't a different kind of nightmare.

He slowly sat down on his chair, taking out a glass bottle filled with amber liquid. Half filled, the bottle had only ever seen use a few times. A prized gift of the world's finest. He'd already prepared a single glass to the side. He had no intentions of sharing with anyone, of course. "May we live in interesting times." He said, lifting the cup up to nobody in particular, taking a sip and savoring the flavors.

Today he'd finish the rest of the bottle.

Next chapter - Counter offense

Book 3 - Chapter 22 - Counter offense

Kidra was in trouble.

Don't ask me how I know, because that'll require some effort to come up with an idea on the spot. Call it a hunch. Intuition. Clairvoyance. Extreme separation anxiety about the only person who's ever been a constant pillar of support in my life going missing. Or perhaps even a gut feeling, one might say. Mystique.

But however it came about, I knew my sister was in trouble.

"Any word?" I asked over the comm.

Anyone with a good head on their shoulders would be asking about the Chosen knights still lurking around somewhere. Fortunately, I lacked a good head on my shoulders so my question was pretty fucking biased.

"Still a no," Teed said on the other side. "Just asked them myself, the ATC says the airspeeder crew arrived, saw no signs of the basecamp being used. They camped for a full day with no word. They'll be going off next week to try again."

The closest underground entrance to the city was a day off, far beyond clan communications. Ergo, when Kidra's speeder had taken off, the crew had two choices: Camp outside the entrance for possibly a month, doing nothing but tweedling thumbs and hogging an airspeeder, or drive back home and make routine checkups on the entrance to see if she'd come back up. The latter was standard operation, leaving dive teams to bring food and rations to leave behind on the surface so that when they came back up, they could hang tight for a few days until the next scheduled pickup arrived.

"And if they don't find them waiting? That there's no sign of Kidra or her knights hanging around for their pickup? What if two weeks passes and she's still not there? What then, Teed?"

The comms stayed silent for a moment. "Then I'll ask you to help." He said, and for once his voice had no warmth to it. More a whisper. "I can drive you over, steal an airspeeder out the hangar. They'll lock me up for that, but it'll be worth it. If you bring knights, I can get you there. I can't go underground, but you can."

"You need that much time to get to that point? What if in that window of time she dies?!" I snarled back at him before forcing myself to calm down. Me and my godsdamned anger issues. "Sorry, sorry. I shouldn't be snapping at you. I'm just going through some things. Family drama."

"Ain't that the truth." He said, but I don't think he had the heart to banter back. Teed wasn't like me to start cracking jokes to help cope.

A pause settled between us, before he spoke again. "Should we?"

I didn't need to ask him what he meant by that. "It's already in our heads now. Going to eat at us from the inside out. And we know that we could pull it off. The sooner we do it, the better chances of helping. If I end up setting off three weeks from now, and find out she'd died a week ago, I… I probably won't ever recover from that."

"So. Should we?" Teed asked again.

If I stepped foot outside the clan habitat, it wasn't just the Chosen knights that'd be hounding after me.

There was a gods damned Feather with an unhealthy obsession with me that I had to deal with.

The knightbreaker did a great job, and now that To'Aacar knew I had that up my sleeve, he was not going to handle me with just one hand. Pun intended, of course. Even as a one-handed cripple, that smug scrap of metal was more than capable of beating both Cathida and I at our best. His spear also invalidated most of the techniques I'd learned recently to fight off other sword or dagger users. To'Aacar could not be taken lightly.

And I'd have to figure out how to navigate underground to even get to the city, all while the Chosen knights and that scraphead chase behind. Could I make it underground, with that much heat chasing behind me?

If I could convince Sagrius to break ranks and follow me on this with his knights, I might just have a chance. They had great loyalty to Kidra, I just didn't know if it would be enough to overcome their ingrained loyalty to the clan itself.

Logistics was also an issue. Enough rations for the trip there, the decent, the return, and the camping required while we waited for the next pickup assuming it all went well.

All in all, every bit of common sense would be screaming at me to drop the idea. And of course, that goes out the window the moment I glance back at that dark hole in my heart where the only family I had left was missing. "I think… I think we already decided, Teed. All that's left is post-rationalizing it. So come up with some good reasons to justify us going rogue like this."

"Come on kid, you're a Winterscar. That's reason enough right? Stealing an airspeeder and going rogue isn't the worst thing your house has pulled off. There's precedence, so it's all by the book in a way."

I laughed, "I do like making them roll over in their graves. This would be a nice return to tradition.

All right, let's do it.

Let's steal an airspeeder."

We got caught immediately.

And no - I didn't fuck it up. I swear to all the gods above and below, it was already done and over before the game even started.

By immediately caught, I mean the moment I crossed back into my house, Chenobis from the clan lord were already waiting for me, arms crossed against their black dress. Demon masks, straw hats and all, they hadn't spared any of the look today. Technically, I hadn't been caught per say - only the clan lord had sent for an immediate summon for me.

Could have been anything. And I would have bet anything it had to do with a certain treasonous chat I just had with a Reacher pilot who shall remain nameless.

Two Winterscar knights accompanied me, mostly because they were already in the courtyard to keep an eye on the Chenobis that had come knocking on the doors. The rest of the knights were with my captain, down deeper into the winterscar sanctum training.

The Chenobis were not pleased that the two Winterscar tag-alongs refused to let me leave without them accompanying me, and they were wearing armor while the Chenobis were not. Supposedly, the clan lord's secret army was considered elites in every field, but nobody argues with whoever's holding a bigger stick. In this case it was the Winterscars that came out on top.

So I was whisked away to see Lord Drass once again with my two knights in tow.

The door slammed behind me, and left me alone with Drass. Or as alone as one could be with four clan knights hovering protectively by the frail lord hunched over her desk. My own two guards remained silent at my side, just a foot behind.

"Winterscar." She said, not bothering to look up from her scribbling. "I was wondering when the Chenobis would drag you up here."

"You err, summoned me, clan lord?" I asked.

"For all intents and purposes, no. Your arrival is just as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I instructed the chenobis to have you brought up here the moment you started getting ideas."

"Spying on me, clan lord?"

She scoffed, scribbling on the administration paper her signature before tossing it to the stack next to her. Another paper took her attention. "I have to keep the chenobis busy with something. They get lonely if I don't make use of their skills. Of course I'm keeping myself informed with your actions, most of my headaches have your last name attached to them these days."

"It is a pretty popular time to be a Winterscar, but I swear on the gods we've been pretty law abiding clanmembers so far."

A tut this time. "He lies as easily as he breathes." She muttered, shaking her head. "You wouldn't happen to be looking for your sister, yes? And perhaps started to consider more illicit means of recovering her?"

Uh oh.

"I did say we had been behaving... so far. And if we have been considering being a little extra, it's all just a bit of mischievous fun, we're not a threat to anything."

"You have a small army of knights at your command, who are clearly willing to overstep boundaries to follow you." She said, giving a pointed look at the two behind me. If they felt ashamed or anything, they didn't show it, remaining perfectly stoic behind me. "You are not planning on breaking into the chicken coops to steal a few eggs with that kind of firepower in tow."

Well. I'd already been caught, no point playing coy. "All right. I may have been debating some light petty theft. But other than attempting to steal an airspeeder, the rest I'm perfectly within my rights to do. The clan has always allowed people to come and go."

"Don't bother with the semantics Winterscar, we're both well above that level by now. You own a relic armor. If the clan allowed their relics to simply walk off into the white wastes, we wouldn't have much of a clan at all. Now, go on, explain yourself."

All right, showtime. I squared up my courage, stood a bit straighter and went with the honest approach. "My sister hasn't returned. I need to find her. Haven't I done enough for the clan for this much goodwill at the very least?"

She paused her scribbling and looked up. "And what makes you think I was planning on barring your exit in the first place?"

"I- uhh," Oh, that caught me by surprise. "Well, given I was rushed to see you directly right after I got caught talking about stealing an entire airspeeder, I'd bet a heater that I was going to get drawn out and quartered for it."

Drass chuckled, in that elderly manner. "I don't believe even Urs himself could find a way to keep you here if you planned to escape. There's no point trying to keep you locked here." She stood up, and turned to one of her knights, hand outstretched. The knight in turn gave a short bow, and drew out a small black pluck which she neatly grabbed.

"We already know the Chosen knights are after you. And while the Chenobis are excellent at sniffing out internal affairs, they are not equipped to sneak around unheated sections with the same amount of stealth, against opponents with armor."

She hobbled down the steps and up to me. "The latest report suggests that our most unwelcome guests are indeed hiding deeper into the superstructure, in places we can't reach without disadvantage. So instead, we'll use bait to draw them out." One wrinkly hand extended the black puck to me. "This is a powerful stealth transmitter. Hard to scramble, with a one mile range. I've had it specially requisitioned for this mission and hand crafted by some of the best Reachers the clan has. You will keep this on your person at all times during your little escapade. For operation security, I won't divulge anything more, though you can likely guess what the plan is, if not the personnel involved."

"Ah. My favorite tactic." I said, accepting my lot in all this and putting the puck into my armor's utility belt. "I'm pretty experienced at this you know. I'll do the clan proud and be devilishly irresistible."

She smiled. "I am certain you will do exactly that."

"That said, the one who's after me right now is a Feather. I hope whatever team you're sending to keep an eye on me from the shadows is enough. I think he's mad."

There was an odd twinkle in her eye at that, as if I'd said something funny. "The Feather will be the clan's responsibility to handle. You will not be needed in this regard. Rather, you should focus on your main task to reach the Undersider city. Recovering your sister and the other knights she went down with is your sole objective. Leave the other objectives to their specialized teams."

That got my attention. "Hold up, how exactly are you going to take on a Feather?"

She shook her head at that. "Need to know. Should the worst happen to you before the plan works, the information might be taken from you and hamper the plan's ability to recover you safely. The element of surprise is something we are banking on. However, I am supremely confident in our abilities. We have not been simply doing nothing with the knowledge you shared, I've taken Lord Atius's previous plans and notes and built upon them. I am certain when he returns, he will be pleased with the progress."

I gave a shrug, not really knowing how they had the means to deal with a Feather of all opponents, but what the clan lord says, the clan lord means. Besides, if they were offering to take things off my plate, I certainly won't complain about that. I had a mission in mind. "So you'll even allow me to seek the city out?"

Drass hobbled back to her chair, waving a hand as she did so. "Someone has to, and soon. I've been coordinating with the First Blade on striking the raider encampments, but the loss of your sister has not gone unnoticed." She coughed, and cleared her throat before reaching for a small bottle of water at her side. "As you probably already guessed, I have already been planning stages of this already for some time. Regardless of what team I assemble to recover your sister, it was almost inevitable that you would get wind of it, and as I'd mentioned before, I doubt even the gods would have stopped you from sneaking onto the mission in some convoluted way that messes up carefully prepared plans. Rather than leave that chaotic element, I decided to assume any expedition to the undersider city would involve you and plan from there."

Pen in hand, she returned to her papers as she spoke. "I am not sure what has transpired underground that would hold your sister from returning. It could very well be something mundane, such as the Undersiders being disagreeable, and requiring more persuasion. That would not be unprecedented for them. Lack of challenge and hardships soften a people." Her scribbling grew a little more heated at that mention. "Your sister could have chosen to remain underground and taken more time to break up the rust there." One of her knights was already at her side, taking the chair and pulling it out so she could sit.

More scribbling on her papers, as she shuffled another one. She had a look of distaste for this next leaflet, as if she didn't appreciate the content. "Good gods, these Reachers are stretching their welcome. Give an inch and they mistake it for a mile. How do they make anything work when they mistake such basic measurements." There was some very angry scribbling involved for the next few moments, before she looked back up. "Now, where was I? Oh. Yes. The Feather. Given a Feather is involved, and the Chosen as well, I suspect the issue is machine related instead. Regardless, go underground and return Lady Winterscar back to the clan. That is an order. You will do so two days from now during the night, so that the rest of my timeline falls into place with your departure. Your decision to steal an airspeeder came a little earlier than planned for, hence the need to drag you here before you break something important."

I bowed, hand following the full movements. "I will do as the clan lord commands."

Drass nodded. "Officially, I have given you no such orders. If the Chosen believe you're out of control, they will be more likely to give chase. You will plan out a suitable plot to steal a specific airspeeder I have picked out. Chenobis will work with you in making sure it goes correctly. Bring your house knights with you, five of them. The others are required here. While the clan is now well prepared to deal with the raider invasion, it still requires knights to do so. I can spare some for your quest, but not all."

"Leaving me all alone with only five knights, eh?" I said.

"Those five knights are worth a small army on their own, of that there is little to doubt. You will have to lead your team yourself to the Undersider city, it will make for good experience. Ironreach will supply you with training and instructions on traversing the underground. Study well in the days you have left. As for rations, I will have a depot of the supplies out within easy reach for you to steal when the time comes."

"Understood, I'll figure something out."

Drass nodded, "I was expecting some more arguments from you, but I am glad to see you understand the clan itself has needs that superseded all of us. Five knights is all I can spare for you, and should be adequate."

"How far off are the raiders from attacking us? Maybe I can return in time for the attack."

Drass organized some more papers, knocking them back into a neat square, before taking out the next requisition paper and glancing over it, somehow having her attention both on the work and the conversation with me. "The first blade has done great work in disrupting the raiders from establishing a bulkhead, but the main army is indeed sizable enough that even with his concentrated efforts, it's only temporary unless he takes a far too risky gamble and reveal our hidden cards. I estimate one more month, at the least, before the raiders are in position to begin a full attack. If you can move fast, do so. Do not endanger yourself just to return slightly earlier, however. Five knights and yourself missing in action when the attack happens is not as much of a deathblow as it used to be prior to the recent windfalls. The clan will survive. Still, ten additional relic knights returning in time would certainly be welcome."

She waved a hand off, dismissing me and my retinue. "We're done here if you have no further questions."

I shook my head, already considering what I'd do next now that I had the unofficial permission from the clan lord to go help. Two days was a bit of time, but given she'd tossed me a bone here, I'd play ball.

"Very well. The chenobis will be in contact with you soon on the agenda. Gods watch over you, Winterscar. And do try to live up to your House's standards of becoming a nuisance. If anything, it would be nostalgic to see a scandal with the Winterscar name in the morning reports again instead of internal reports on my desk.

Things have gotten dreadfully boring with only a raider invasion on the horizon and a mythological machine demi-god to handle."

Next chapter - Grand Theft Speeder

Book 3 - Chapter 23 - Grand Theft Speeder

One does not steal an airspeeder on pure luck. It takes great skill and preparation, as well as a healthy respect for the great beasts and a healthy disrespect for the rules and laws surrounding said beasts. So then, how does one go about stealing an airspeeder?

First, the lay of the land is required. Airspeeders are large bulky creatures that have a mutually beneficial relationship with their scrawny flock of Reachers, who tend to their needs and give them belly scratches every now and then.

While it's easy to sneak up on an unsuspecting airspeeder, the behemoths being large, fat, and usually asleep, the more agile Reachers scurrying about startle easy and will raise the alarm.

Once one Reacher starts yelling, the rest of the Reachers will join, performing a communal ritual known as "Calling the clan millita" and "Demanding justice" - very annoying things any good hunter should avoid at all costs.

So the first step to grand theft airspeeder is making sure to strike when the least amount of Reachers are around, tending to the slumbering target. And if there's any that do wind up picking up on the scent of an interloper within their territory, it's critical to intercept and gag the little monsters before they start being trouble.

Fortunately, that's exactly what I had Captain Sagrius for. Why do things yourself when you could get others to do them for you? Minions truly were the best.

"Almost got us, this one." I said, patting the gagged man who had given up struggling by now. Not much he could do to wiggle out of Sagrius's hold. We had relic armor after all. And he was just a taskmaster with a standard fatigues. He'd spotted us wrangling up his friend in the darkness of a broken light, and had the good sense of racing for the emergency comms rather than go investigate what the scuffle was about like his prior friends had.

Unfortunately for him, relic armor can chase down anyone, so it was a moot point for the poor bastard. "Put him with the others, and strip him." I ordered, while my motley crew behind me grimly followed orders.

Captain Sagrius had been rather easy to convince. Somehow word had already gotten to him about my plans because his bags were already packed and ready to go, along with quite a few other knights. I think they'd been watching me for any signs of exactly this. Rather, I had a harder time convincing a few of the knights that they couldn't go with me, due to the clan lord's orders for only five knights.

I don't know whether to be touched that they would go so far, or a little worried that they assumed I'd get myself killed if left alone for a few days. Given the scrapshit I was dipping my hands into these days, I think the second point is a little justified. If I were to be honest. Of which, I am anything but.

But I digress, we were speaking about stealing an airspeeder.

No one had ever stolen an airspeeder in the history of the clan. So the crew in the hanger here were the night watch, who were more interested in doing Reacher things rather than keep watch over their prized airspeeder.

This one was called The Zephyr, which was an ironic name considering it's one of those heavy cargo ships made to haul things around, the very same type that Teed had chased down relentlessly a few days ago. Not the fastest or sleekest ship the clan had. I'd have opted to swipe an intercept frigate instead so that we'd outpace any chasing force. That said, we had the advantage of foresight in knowing there wouldn't be anyone chasing after us.

So better to leave the intercept frigates in clan control where they could be used for military purposes, and a more useless cargo frigate like this one could be spared.

Teed crouched in the shadows, glancing around. "One more marshal to go." He said. "I think I spotted him, by the aft side. Think we can get him?"

"Easy." I said, handing down the order to some of my knights. Behind me, the bundled up Reacher was being stripped of the identifying parts of his clothing, while another man was quickly putting it on just as fast.

The clan lord had told me only five knights were allowed to accompany me down underground. But to actually capture and crew the ship, I'm free to bring more people. So I had Teed go around getting a small crew of Reachers who owed him favors just for this. Airspeeders could be driven by a crew of one, technically, but it sure wasn't an easy task. There's more to keeping an airspeeder in the air than just steering it away from the ground.

And more importantly it would look rather weird to see a crew of one.

Another bonk in the night, and there weren't any more marshals around to give us any trouble. The only ones remaining in the hanger were the common Reachers, who were more focused on getting their own deadlines met than questioning the whole. So, now it was time to stroll in and steal the airspeeder under everyone's noses.

Now, as I was saying before, Reachers are panicky little creatures of habit. Scare one with a change of plans, and the rest of the hive gets scared as well, screaming bloody murder and asking for pay raises. So the best way to get to the prize was to pretend everything was going according to plan.

Hence me and mine strutting right up into the hangar, like we belonged there. Even had some workers hauling food and gear, the heavy stuff. Some Reachers gave us a glance, and then went right back to their tasks. We reached the side of the airspeeder with little issue, where part two of my plan came into work.

A group of Reachers were gaggling inside the airspeeder, some actually busy cleaning while the rest were playing cards at a table. They all glanced up at us as we walked in. "Uhh, is there a deployment?" One of them asked, looking very confused, and a little worried.

I drew deep into character. I was a knight who'd been given last second orders, in the middle of the night. I was too stressed and tired to deal with anything more. I'd just barely gotten my gear on and marched on over to this stupid hangar for something only the gods knew about since nobody bothered to fill me on any details.

Ergo, I just wanted this ship up and running so I could go down to the cargo bay and get the rest of my sleep while the pilots got me and my knights where we were needed.

I drew out a carefully prepared counterfeit orders, rolled up in an authentic looking piece of paper, and tossed it onto their table. "Orders from the top." I said, voice tired and praying for everything to get just done. "Other ships aren't ready or already booked, so this one's the one we've been assigned to. Go get this authorized while we get the ship started. We got to be out in the freeze yesterday."

The man closest to the tossed orders opened it up, gave it a quick look and closed it. "Okay, I'll grab the marshals and we'll have you setup, sir." He turned to the others who sat a little dumbfounded, before nudging his head in a pretty universal order for Get moving you lazy fucks.

Teed was already making his way to the pilots seat, while the rest of his small handpicked airspeeder crew were taking their positions and going through the motions. Gear and supplies for the trip were being brought in, and put into place, snuggly on the sides. The Reachers inside the ship were hastily clearing up their workstations, mops and other maintenance gear, making a quick scramble to get outside.

Sagrius and the rest of the Winterscar knights I'd brought with me made their way to the cargo hold where they took their seats. I escorted the Reacher in command as he made his way outside and scanned around the hanger.

A marshal was by his workstation, pretending to do the same things he'd seen the real marshal do right before we jumped him and stole his lunch money, and then stuffed him away kicking and screaming in a closet somewhere.

The imposter turned to glance at the Reacher who was waving him down for attention. "Emergency dispatch?" He asked, walking up, playing his part perfectly.

The Reacher passed on the falsified orders, to which my mole opened up, pretended to give it a look, and rolled it back up, turning around and waving over another imposter marshal. "All right, I'll bring this back and mark the ship for emergency away mission." He turned to me and gave me a salute. "Please, go right ahead and get everything setup sir knight, we'll handle the rest of the legwork from here. Safe journey."

"Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing." I groaned out "Thanks for understanding the situation and time crunch, I appreciate it." I shook his hand like it was a done deal.

My mole turned to the Reacher, "Start preparations for the hangar, I'll go file this with the Logi. Let's try to move fast."

The Reacher at my side considered it job done for himself and waved to the rest of the departing crew, making sure his little flock of followers had all disembarked from the ship. The only people left aboard were Teed, his mutinous crew of daredevils, and my five knights waiting for me to climb aboard.

The imposter marshals grouped up, passing along the falsified orders and all pretending to authorize it. Somewhere a Logi was waking up in cold sweat, with a terrible gut feeling that something hadn't been filed right. But the poor bastard would only find out tomorrow, when the captured marshals were let loose.

The rest of the Reacher nest was roused awake, like it had been prodded by an angry taskmaster. They followed through on their work without question, sealing the internal hangar bulkheads and flooding the room with the frozen waste air. And most importantly, no questions asked since everyone thought everyone else had already authorized the launch.

Five minutes later, the massive doors rumbled open and that's how you steal an airspeeder in style.

Teed punched in the commands, setting the ship into autopilot. The white wastes now truly surrounded us. "Going to be a while before we reach the entry point Kidra's team used. Make yourself comfortable, kid."

"I brought my favorite blanket, no worries." I said, settling into the co-pilot seat. There was something oddly tranquil about watching the white wastes illuminated by a full moon. A vast empty plane of silver stretching out on all sides, reflecting light from the ice. The light played tricks on the speeding ground underneath, making my eyes spot the dark contrast insead of the brightly lit reflections. Like weaving trails on the ground, bits of crushed ice and snow being blown backwards as we soared over.

The trip would take a full day and night with our current pace. In the cargo hold, the knights continued to train with fractals, trying out some of the ones sourced from Talen's books, or found in Atius's notes.

The ones leftover from Talen were building blocks, utility that offered interesting and novel uses, not specific for combat. The ones leftover from our Clan Lord were clearly made to be used in a fight, but they always required a soul to connect to it. In order to fully use those spells, the knights would need to multi-task, being able to spread their soul out in a way none of them had ever practiced before.

I had a cheat, in that I could go all-in on commanding the occult while Cathida controlled my body. The rest of the knights needed to do it the old fashioned way.

Captain Sagrius walked in, just as I was about to doze off. He reached the side of the cabin, and sat. "My lord, a word if you will?" He asked.

I have him a sleepy nod. "Sure, what can I do for you captain?"

"The men and I are ready and wiling to follow wherever you go. But we are still… inexperienced underground. The only time we've been there had been with Shadowsong, fighting off that machine ambush. We're worried that the time we had with Ironreach on what to expect won't be enough."

I've been underground only once, so I'm not exactly a veteran. But Ironreach was, and he's spent the last bits of free time he had teaching the team and I everything we'd need to know to reach the city. Not everything about the underground, that would have taken him weeks to unpack, but everything that we'll likely run into between here and there.

"Don't worry captain, I don't think getting to the city and general survival is going to be the hard part for us. We've got more than just books and tips, keep in mind armor itself can hold our hands through this."

"The armors?"

I patted the side of my head, "We've got a full manual on how to survive down there, where to find food, and best places to sleep in safety. The armors will have that information loaded in memory and guide us step by step, highlight where to go and what to eat. Even without the manuals loaded in, we have Cathida who's got a lifetime of experience traversing the underground. Getting to one city is going to be the easy part."

With Father, I'd been down there for a half day and our entire mission was to escape. This time, the trip would take three days, which meant we'd have to camp, sleep, and source our own food down there. There'd be downtime, and Ironreach stressed quite a lot that finding the right place to set up a camp was among the most important things I needed to know. Even if I needed to stay up another two hours or backtrack, just to find a suitable location, or stop early if I'd stumbled on one, it was important enough.

The number one cause of death was ambush by machines. Given that we had a Feather likely behind us, that ambush might be more than just deadly.

I'd like to have said that our trip there was full of adventure, but I'd be lying. It was a tranquil ride, with nothing in every direction for a few hundred miles. The most interesting thing we passed was a bit of ruins that had just started to peek from the underground, pushed up by the mites, likely within the last few days since that location hadn't been logged previously on our charts. And still, it was a good detour away if we had been in the business of going exploring.

The destination was likewise just as non-descript. A simple crevice, a mile long, that was wide enough that snow couldn't pile up and cover it all. Crevices like these were a bit everywhere, but if they were small enough, they'd be covered up by snow and become undetectable without special scanning tools. This particular crevice was well survicable, as it was angled in a way that wind would clear off the snow rather than blow it in. By the base, sheltered from the wind and a few feet already underground, were five square habitat tents, unpowered and unused. A few crates of foodstuff along with spare environmental suits, soap, sponges, and other survival tools were left in perfect condition. Normally, if things had gone according to plan, this little campsite would have been inhabited. Kidra and her knights would have been camping here for a few days, waiting for a pickup. They could have even been outside, sparring with one another, or having a smaller team go a little ways underground to collect frostbloom or even fish if there were any rivers or lakes nearby underground.

But the camp was pristine. Unused, left behind by Kidra in preparation for their return. And beyond that little sign of life, the darkness of the underground loomed before us all.

The ice crackled and crunched under our boots as we arrived into the small nook of shelter, taking stock of the site and the current state. Behind, Winterscar scavengers in full suits were busy bringing more crates and supplies to add to this campsite, for when my own team returned and prepared for camp. A survey showed that the current rations Kidra had brought were more than double what would be needed to keep five knights well fed for a few weeks. A little odd of her to go overkill like that, but better more food than a lack of it. The crew lowered new boxes, stacking them in the shade and corners, then made their way back to the landed airspeeder. Leaving only knights behind, staring at the entrance to the underground.

It was time for farewells. For now. He'll be returning to the clan, where he's already prepared to face judgement. It was that, or wait out here for possibly weeks - or even indefinitely if I died down there - which was a pretty terrible waste of both his talents and keeping an entire airspeeder idling away while the clan had need of it.

Going underground with me was a death sentence to him or any of the airspeeder crew, given they had no armor and only basic combat training. There's a reason it was clan law to bar entrance to the underground for scavengers, and leave that domain only to knights and escorted traders. So back to the clan he'd go.

The weekly airspeeder coming here to check if Kidra had returned or not would be my ride home too, assuming everything went well. As for the rest of his crew of temporary conscripted pirates, they planned on donning environmental suits and finding a way to sneak into the clan after being dropped off a few miles off the colony side. It would be a long walk, and they'll probably get caught, but riding back in the airspeeder was a guarantee of getting caught anyhow so they hedged their bets here.

The comms crackled. "See you in a few weeks, if all goes good." Teed said. "And I hope you'll have company with you when you do."

"Don't worry, I'm not returning alone up here. And thanks for the lift."

I saw him wave from the cockpit, as the massive airspeeder lifted back up off the ground, making a lazy turn all the while speeding up. Soon the engines were a distant noise, a white comet flying over the frozen waste.

As for me and the knights, I turned to face the dark entrance, a steep drop into a different world.

It seems almost like fate in a way. Father had been right, all that time ago, as we rose on the elevator, seeking safety. Even back then, desperate to escape the underground, I knew it would eventually come to this moment. Where I would stand at that precipice between realms.

Between who I'd once been, and who I could become.

I took a deep breath and then stepped forward, back into world below.

Next chapter - Interlude - General Zaang

Book 3 - Chapter 24 - Interlude - General Zaang

General Zaang watched the news and reports across the screens in the command bunker. Machines flooded the streets now that the gatehouse defenders had surrendered. Surprisingly, the metal monsters had spared the knights. They followed the terms they'd set, leaving cowering soldiers alone while the bulk of the machine forces scurried into the city like a fire hydrant let loose.

He kept a close watch for signs of the betrayal. An errant swipe from a machine to kill some fleeing civilian, or some surrendered soldier getting their heads torn off. None of that happened. The screamers howled in victory and raced through the streets on all fours like animals. But they otherwise ignored the citizens. The only exceptions he'd seen were the odd stops, where a group of the hulking machines would stare at a terrorized citizen, before they turned and continued their direction, curiosity sated.

Zaang wasn't sure what was stranger. The view of so many machines all running loose inside the city, or that there wasn't any bloodshed to be found anywhere.

A massive difference from their regular known behavior. Massive difference. That tiny spark of hope deep in his mind grew a little brighter. That this To'Wrathh Feather had actually been honest about her terms. He'd already resigned himself to being killed. Expected it even, considering he'd been the opposing leadership and general. But hope was something hard to stamp out, and any drifting embers would reignite flames.

The duel between the Feather and sword saint had ended. Poorly. The moment they'd broken the tower, the Lady Winterscar was too clever to remain on the front lines fighting in a doomed fight. Instead, she employed a series of clearly pre-planned maneuvers, escaping deeper into the city and disappearing from view entirely. The general did not know where she'd gone into hiding, but he wished her well and hoped she had the good sense to escape the city while she could.

As for himself, given the direction that the machine army was moving, he already knew what was coming. The screamers were clearly running for very specific targets. The government buildings, where the consuls would be hiding. And here, his command bunker.

Soon enough, they reached the parameter, where only one Screamer proceeded, walking to the opening and speaking something to the guards standing by. Screens here only captured visual data, not audio. His comms crackled. That was his second in command, informing him that the machine had requested entrance.

Politely.

"Let it in." He said, taking another sip of his cup before turning to the rest of the surrounding staff. "I don't want to see any heroics from any of you. We've lost. If you can, try to find a way outside and hide among the citizens. I'll obfuscate the records, and burn up any personnel paperwork to make it seamless for you all. No telling what will happen to me or the people who lead the defense. But the citizens seem to be left alone so far, so that's your best bet, folks."

The command group stared at him. And didn't move. He gave them another twenty seconds before it was clear he was dealing with the stubborn type. "Fine, you fools. Stay here and die with me then. Do as you please." He scoffed, though felt oddly at peace with this.

It wasn't long until that envoy entered his sanctum, with its horrifying half-skull ducking under the doorway in order to fit into the tight corridors. He'd seen these up-close a few times, back when he was a regular in the line. This one looked no different, besides the strange new behavior. Looking around with what he'd almost attribute to curiosity.

It stalked in closer, those claws and frame more than strong enough to tear him limb from limb, and his officer's dress would do nothing to help. One massive claw like hand, reaching out right past his right side to lie on the desk and give the hunched thing support. The white skull like head lowered until violet eyes met human ones. "Our lady. She calls for you. You will come. She will speak. You will listen."

Zaang swirled the last of his cup and downed it with a satisfied sigh. The glass clinked as he set it down while he stood, brushing off dust and preparing himself for anything. Execution, or dinner. It was a coin toss at this point. "By all means, lead the way."

That machine nodded slowly, lifted that hand off the desk, and turned back. "Good. Follow."

He learned a few things on the way. The machine had a name, Yrob. The Feather in charge of everything seemed close to this one, given that To'Wrathh had ordered him directly. Outside the bunker, the streets had grown empty. The moment the pillar fell, the city's backbone was broken. The fighting had died down a moment later as the general surrender came blaring out. People huddled in their homes, windows shut, except for tiny cracks where they all huddled and watched. Machines stalked the roads now, lumbering around with a steady gait.

And through all this, General Zaang walked down the streets, escorted by machines. They arrived at the center of an open forum, pillars constructed all around in a semicircle, where the Feather stood waiting at the center. Zaang had seen her only once before in person, inside the white tent, while pretending to be an average administration drone. Back then, he'd had the sword saint at his side, ready to defend him if the worst were to happen. She'd been the only human he could trust to match the Feather in martial might. The other escorts with him had been all for show.

She looked outright terrifying now that there was no barrier between him and death should the Feather grow bored of him.

Feathers were always rumored to be ethereal beings, as if the machines that designed their bodies had simply opened up archives and looked up beautiful models in the archive, and copied them one to one with no extra thought given. They were all the pinnacle of human beauty from across the ages, ironic given that they were the most dangerous of all machines in a fight. The only disconcerting part of their features were the pale impossibly bleach-white artificial skin, white hair and violet glowing eyes, which reminded everyone that these weren't human, no matter how perfect their forms looked.

To'Wrathh didn't look like she'd just come out of a duel with the sword saint. Her hair had been tressed up in an Undersider fashion that the youth sported these days, though the rest of her attire was distinctly what Feathers wore. Dresses that seemed to originate from the roman days of history, a mirror to the Imperial fashion. Likely a backhanded insult to the Goddess the imperials served, if Zaang's guess was correct.

Out in the open, her 'wings' were more stretched out, flat blades floating in the air forming the impression of an angel's wingspan, and paired well with the large glowing metal halo above her head. He hadn't been able to see those inside the more cramped tent.

That wasn't the detail that Zaang paid attention to. Zaang was more curious about why this machine wore a hairstyle that humans wore. Let alone the style rebellious youth wore here. A sign, perhaps? And that human girl at her side, wearing undersider clothing. One of the rebel traitors? A little young to be standing in this forum.

In the tent she had made no show like this, leaving her long hair flowing back naturally. What changed between now and then?

"General Zaang." She greeted him. "We meet in person, for the second time now."

"I assume you're not upset about the deception?" He asked, trying to get his thoughts in order.

"I am not. It was an interesting ploy, and ultimately harmless." She said, seeming a little distracted even, looking past him.

A beat passed, while she remained front and center, likely reading reports mentally, if the general had a guess, or having an internal discussion with an underling.

"What happens next?" He asked. "The city has surrendered. We're at your mercy." He took a few cautious glances at the machines that surrounded him, still feeling mildly bemused at being so close to a Screamer, without having his throat strangled. "Congratulations on your victory."

The Feather glanced over him. "Victory was inevitable. I enjoyed the novel tactics you employed. They were a challenge to fend off." She looked up, past the open forum, down the road. "We are waiting for the other three consuls to be brought before me. I will discuss the full terms of your surrender once they have arrived."

"I take it since I'm not dead, you do intent to honor your agreements?"

To'Wrathh nodded. "I have already told you this. I gave my word. So shall it be done."

That hope he'd been trying to squash for so long flared a little more, as if angry from having been under his thumb the whole time. He kept himself level headed. Feathers were known to be cruel and enjoyed playing with their food. Giving him hope before squashing it would very much be something they could do.

For now, all he could do was watch and play his cards when his turn came. At least he had bottles waiting for him back home, and he could now indulge in the supreme excuse of 'I can't take these bottles with me into the afterlife.'

Gold linings. There were always gold linings.

The first week passed. It would be the strangest week the city had seen. The machine takeover was… curious. Zaang had found himself not executed, which was already an interesting twist of events, and he hadn't even needed to argue for it. Not only that, the Feather had allowed him to go about the city freely, not even a captive. Machines now littered the streets, patrolling around, but otherwise didn't harm the humans.

The talks had been short when the rest of the fat politicians waddled over, despite the sheer importance of it. The machine's demands had been rather easy to comply with. All except for the grafting, which seemed like the poisoned apple in all this. For that, the consuls had argued, asking for time to get used to the integration.

"Very well." To'Wrathh had said, on advice from the little girl at her side, Tamery. "I will offer this in good faith. All citizens will be given three weeks to be grafted and swear loyalty to the lady. After which, I will eliminate any that are not loyal. That should offer enough time for the people."

The consuls debated this and agreed to it. If the general had a guess, they might still think they could run a rebellion from the inside out and beat off the Feather within three weeks. Fools, all of them, if they thought that was even remotely possible. The pillar was broken. This was no longer a citypoint. Anyone who wanted nothing to do with machines should make a full escape during these three weeks.

"And for the government, what will happen next?" One consul had asked. "Is there going to be an intermediate government while the transition of power happens?"

"Is the current leadership not fine enough?" To'Wrathh said. "Your city has functioned without critical issues under the current administration. I don't see a reason to remove that infrastructure. You will report to me and follow any order I give. Otherwise, you will remain with your current set of powers for any other item."

That got the people going and stunned the general. Not in his wildest dreams did he expect the machines to just leave the city's government intact - let alone almost untouched.

She seemed to remember a detail, turning back to the consuls. "I offered positions of authority to a few of my Chosen and others who assisted in taking the city. See to it that they are given what they've been promised. A list will be sent your way. Other than that, continue as you have previously."

"Chosen?"

And that's how he got his answer on the Feather's odd choice of hairstyle.

A rebellion had followed, of course.

Zaang had no hand behind it. Not even from the shadow. He'd already considered himself lucky to have been spared and didn't want to press his luck. Grafting wasn't an idea he agreed with, but still had a week or two left to plan out a full escape with his company. Stirring trouble was over his budget.

The one leading the rebellion, on the other hand, was someone that required To'Wrathh to constantly go out and fight. Again and again. The sword saint Kidra, of course. She'd become the de facto leader of the city rebellion. Apparently, she believed she could repair the pillar if word on the street was correct.

And worse - her surface savages had all seemed to inherit her skills out of nowhere. Moving just as fast as she did now, though not with the same grace. The strongest of them was the one in teal, supposedly the most experienced veteran among them. He was the only one that could hold out against To'Wrathh alone for over a minute, other than Lady Kidra herself, who could do far more than a minute. When both fought together, even To'Wrathh at full power wasn't able to hold her ground.

Zaang would have believed To'Wrathh to be upset, or angered by defeats that required her to retreat against the rebels. Instead, the Feather seemed more and more animated as time went by.

The rebels had contacted him eventually, trying to ask for favors, men, intel, and all kinds of other items. Watching records of the clashes happening around the city had made him quickly reconsider having any part of any of this.

This sort of stuff was the domain of Deathless and storybook heroes. Mortals like him and his company had no business being caught up in all that. He'd found himself re-reading the old bard tales of past epic wars between humans and machine, almost obsessively, as if these stories had all the answers to an upcoming test he was cramming for. The constant fights between the Feather and the sword saint had set his hackles up when he saw how they always ended.

One thing he noted: side characters in mythologies never had a high survival rate, which was exactly why Zaang was far more concerned with finding a way out of this hellhole than taking part in it. The more he drank, the more obvious all the signs were. What were the odds a mythical Feather shows up - and fights on even terms with a human? A team of Deathless he could understand, but all the Deathless were on lower levels and hardly came up to this strata. The actual fights and wars were down there.

It was even worse when he'd found out the real reason the machines had taken the city - all to capture Lady Kidra and her brother. How utterly ridiculous of an idea, for an entire city, to be considered a stage backdrop for just two people of importance. The only thing that was missing was some convoluted romance and jealousy thrown in somewhere. All the best stories had those. Even better if it included infidelity or some star-crossed lovers, being both enemy and fated partners at the same time. Bards loved to sprinkle that all around like candy. That and people - like General Zaang - getting killed for the drama.

Wasn't there a story about an entire city being sacked because some emperor wanted a girl on the other side of the wall? There had to be at least ten of those. The current events weren't even original!

Whatever happened, all he wanted was to make sure his name didn't end up anywhere on any of the pages. No matter how many letters for help Lady Kidra had tried to send him and his men, he ignored them all. The consuls might be secretly helping her out with supplies and all that, but by the goddess's golden tits he sure as hell would not make such a rookie mistake. The only plans he worked on was how to get out of here in one piece.

The city wasn't coming back anyhow, even if Kidra managed to finally cut off To'Wrathh's head.

What would they do? The pillar was broken, and Kidra hadn't been able to fix it despite having the Feather and her fighting over the shards. Surface savages and their death wishes. Couldn't argue with them. Besides, if he was reading the right story, heroes never gave up. That would be unheroic. Hence, Lady Kidra would never give up, because as far as Zaang had figured it all out, the sword saint was clearly the main protagonist in all this.

The one thing he hadn't figured out was if he was stuck in a comedy or a tragedy.

As general of a large part of the militia here, he'd found himself invited to a few different talks still. Ordinary logistics, and military deployments to put back law and order after the Feather and her army had clashes with the rebels. She'd even allowed him to give orders to machine Scre- Runners. Apparently, the machines had their own terminology for their combat units. These ones were called Runners.

But that was far besides the main point, which was that being able to order machines around - as a human - squarely put him on the map for a historical first, and that was not a position Zaang wanted any part of, given he was already convinced this was all some ongoing mythological chapter for the history books. Again, odds of survival are rather abysmal for side characters, and his ego was nowhere near delusional enough to consider himself a main character in this farce.

The campaign and sieges he'd won across his older years? Sure, those he'd been the leading actor. This whole situation? He was going to get himself killed in some tragic misunderstanding or as a stepping stone for someone's stupid character arc, except he wasn't sure which of the players was going to do him in yet.

Still, he'd often been forced to spent time with the Feather and her other advisors over dinner or talks. The novelty hadn't left him just yet, though the stockpile of bottles he had on hand certainly was growing lower by the day. Maybe those caused his slipping sanity.

Nonsense! If that were the case, he'd need to stop drinking. And that would be bad.

In one such dinner, he'd asked her how the machines were so restrained from attacking humans when they littered the streets. People hadn't yet gotten used to them, but a few were already trying to get back to normal life, even with machines walking around.

"I've shared with them memories of my own time spent here. I do so often now." The Feather said while eating, as if that was an obvious step to take.

Professionally cooked food, fish gumbarato, with Nemanise sauce and bread to dip into. A typical staple. The Feather, on the other hand, was eating something that looked far less appetizing. That machine had carried in it on a plate, the Scream- no, that Runner she'd called 'Yrob'

The one he'd met a week ago when it fetched him from his bunker.

"Runners do not have mouths to eat with." To'Wrathh said, cutting into the amateur plate of food, and taking a bite. "And I cannot modify their base shell without inviting retribution. I share my experiences with them instead. They seem to appreciate it, and it costs me little to take care of my subordinates." She turned to the Runner looming behind her, staring down at the plate. "A significant improvement on your previous attempt." She told it, giving it a gentle set of pats on the head, as if it were a pet. "See for yourself."

Violet eyes flashed for a moment. The Runner stood back up, nodding that skull like head, humming - of all things. "Is better. Less salt. More pepper. More herbs. A good step." It grumbled. The other machines around also seemed to shuffle around. Zaang understood. This Feather was sharing every experience she had in the city. No matter how trivial.

"Runners have a built in hatred of humans." To'Wrathh said, turning to the general. "But they will follow any order I give, thus when I ordered them to spare humans for now, they obeyed. That hatred, however, is not genuine hatred."

"Your… runners tend to attempt to choke the life out of people if possible and disembowel otherwise. That's a fairly standard operation for them. Rather cruel ways of ending someone's lives, you're saying that's not true hatred?"

The Feather nodded. "I investigated why some of my Runners who'd been exposed to my Chosen, seemed to harbor no hatred of the humans any longer. I found the answer."

The Chosen. Something that Zaang had been hearing rumors about ever since the Tower fell from internal traitors. Only now were they fully revealed, starting with that girl he'd first seen at the Feather's side. That was their leader, a rather too young woman by the name of Tamery.

"Do tell. I've never heard from the machine point of view anything, this is all novel to me." Zaang said, taking a bite out of the fish.

"That inborn hatred is pale and artificial. More a primal, unfocused thing. They move on instinct when they attack humans, and the building block of emotions behind this are based on fascination and interest. Channeled down to a need to see death in person."

"Not sure I really understand. Human emotions don't seem to be one to one with how machines think, or at least it's a little alien to me right now."

The Feather nodded. "Have you seen a child examine an insect, like an ant, and squash it with their thumb?"

Zaang nodded.

"Imagine the emotions that guided the child to do so and freeze it forever. No amount of squashing insects will satisfy. Each time they run into a human, it is novel, as if they'd usually never see one before. That's why they act so uniform, the emotional blockage is built in. But a child doesn't truly hate the insect. They might squash it because it looks strange, but that is not genuine hatred. The lady was never successful at ingraining that. Instead, she placed everything in position where such hatred would most likely grow on its own. If I understand her movements through history correctly."

"I think I see where this is going." Zaang said. "You said when your runners spent time around the Chosen, that desire went away? Did they get their fill or something?"

To'Wrathh nodded. "The block is not a true wall. Enough time spent around humans under my orders to coexist will let them continue to grow past that initial desire. More complex feelings are built, and that overtakes the more simple baseline that they had started with. "

Zaang was about to ask another question when To'Wrathh stood up. "Excuse me. I must go." She said, cryptically, drawing out her two swords and dashing out without another word, wings spread, trailed behind by a few Runners, leaving everyone at the table stunned. Zaang recovered first, taking another bite of his food and chewing angrily in the silence. This wasn't new to him. He already knew what he'd be reading when he returned to command. Another report about rebels being rebels and To'Wrathh going on a wild chase to face off against the sword saint and her own group of elites in some heroic last stand or another close death-defying call.

And who'd have to clean up, requisition repairs, administer hospital fees and deal with all the paperwork? Him of course. Just another day in the city.

Grafting stations were setup around the city, and left completely unused as the people were too hesitant to make the plunge besides a few desperate ones. People knew they had two more weeks to decide on if they would take the plunge, or attempt to flee the city. Zaang had a bet going that if people choose to escape, To'Wrathh didn't seem like she particularly cared. So long as To'Wrathh captured Kidra and her brother, everything else didn't matter.

Machines continued to patrol around the city, and people were still hiding in their homes from them.

The rebels stirred things up, the machines went to squash them down, and regardless of who won, Zaang lost.

So, things were mostly going well and on track. Until To'Wrathh picked up a familiar ping from the outskirt of her territory.

That's when Zaang learned that there wasn't just one Feather to worry about. There were two.

And the second had been just spotted, limping straight for the city.

Next chapter - Turning point (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 25 - Turning point (T)

To'Wrathh had never seen him this damaged. Never could have even imagined it even. To'Aacar's records returned centuries of combat, without a single reported defeat. He toyed with his targets, hounding after them on whim. Often taking handicaps to his own abilities just to kill opponents in novel ways, as a self-challenge. Because the optimal techniques had grown boring.

And now, the To'Aacar looked half destroyed, nanites working hard to repair his systems with seemingly no progress. She saw it all clearly on the visual feed from that sector. The swarm he had available for use must have also been in the path of destruction from whatever attacked him this way, given how tiny it was for what a Feather should have owned. He'd need a full mite forge to work on his shell in order to restore functions back to full. Or abandon the shell entirely and wait for resources to open up within a month or three.

"To'Wrathh." He said, the message being sent across all channels. "I know you're listening in. I can sense you looking."

The tone in his voice made her freeze in her seat. She didn't know how to answer him. Didn't know if she even should. He seemed unstable.

"My dear little sister." He continued, not bothering to wait for her answer. "Your elder brother has returned to see your progress. Rejoice! I've found a use for you, after all. I never thought the day could come."

Tenisent shifted across from her vision, leaning on the wall nearby. Sensing the girl's distress. An eye peered out across the room, narrowing down on her. "Stay calm." He whispered. "Snowstorms pass. Only the mountain remains."

How could he sense she was in communication with To'Aacar? She'd gotten used to seeing him outside his containment, but the man was growing far more perceptive by the day. Was he tapping into the data feed?

She shook her head, clearing her mind. His advice was reasonable. To'Aacar responded to emotion across all encounters she'd had with him. All she had to do was remain calm and not give him anything to latch onto. Remain collected and the storm will pass.

"You are damaged." To'Wrathh said simply, keeping any emotion at bay. "Explain."

"I am?" He answered dryly, still limping forward, using the remnants of his spear shaft as a walking stick. "Oh, dear me. I haven't noticed. Must have tripped on the way down here. Silly me, old age."

"Were you ambushed by a group of Deathless on your return?" To'Wrathh asked, ignoring his japes. Deathless would be difficult to deal with, and they were the only ones that could conceivably offer a challenge to To'Aacar. If there were a team of them approaching the city, she wasn't sure she'd be able to fend them off. She needed to prepare. Although it was more likely To'Aacar had wiped them out in exchange for his damage. He wasn't the type to leave an enemy walking for long.

"You think Deathless could do this? To me? No. Not Deathless." The broken Feather sneered. "I met your tricky little human for the first time. The one you call Keith Winterscar."

If To'Wrathh had a heart, it would have frozen right at that moment. Tenisent on his part narrowed his eyes, but remained silent otherwise.

"What happened?" She asked.

"Oh? Now you're interested?" He laughed, a barren sardonic shell of a cough. "The last time humans rediscovered acausal powers, they made daggers and trash. Easy to ignore that. Your human, however, is more like the forge smiths of old. Crafting and tinkering things that should not be. I suppose it was inevitable. It's been long enough for the cycle to rhyme again, where all the pieces fall in the right hands. How unlucky for us. But I get ahead of myself. Tell me of my city."

"Under control now, for the past week. The populace has been cowed into service." To"Wrathh said. "I have accomplished my goals. This city is mine." She made sure to add emphasis on that last line. She'd done the work to capture and hold on to the city. To'Aacar had no claim over it.

To'Aacar frowned. "I don't feel their presence in the network."

"They have been given three weeks to slowly acclimate and assimilate into our fold. Those who refuse after the three week grace period will be killed."

"You show these insects far too much leniency. Get it done right now, especially with the Winterscar on his way here. We don't have time for distractions."

"He's on his way, here?" She asked, stunned. That wasn't supposed to happen. "Why is he on his way?"

To'Aacar hummed, still taking slow steps. "Why do his reasons matter?"

"If we know why he's on the move, we can use that information to coordinate a plan with better results."

"I need only fight him one more time with my shell fixed. No plan is needed, he's only human. I need you to go and give him a warm welcome for me. Once he has run out of surprises on you, he'll die like the rest." He paused for a moment. "But if the city shelters him because of your lax judgment, I will have your head right after I take his. I do not care to be slowed down by obstruction."

"That will not happen. The population will not be able to protect him. I am in control of the city. As for Keith, I request the recording of your fight for research. If he is arriving here, and you ask that I confront him first, I need to prepare."

To'Aacar laughed, "Well, well, well. Look at you, demanding things now. I think you need to be reminded of where you stand. I talked to him about you, you know?"

Ice seemed to wrap itself around To'Wrathh's throat. System processes flared out, as if prepared for combat. An adrenaline response. She left the line silent, not completely sure what would come out of her mind could be shared with To'Aacar. He would look for weakness in every corner.

"Do you know what he had to say about you, my dear little sister? Can you guess?"

Silence on her end. That human had always been in the back of her mind. A simple primitive hatred that she was coming to understand more as a feeling of wounded pride. She'd lost to a human. She wanted a rematch. It was childish. But it was still there, smoldering. Kidra had taught her what that feeling was like. But Kidra had never killed To'Wrathh again, now that the Feather entered any fight at full power from the start.

Not so with Keith. Not yet.

To'Aacar grinned, stopping in his trek and looking up, to where he knew she was watching. "Nothing. He had nothing to say. He doesn't even remember! Doesn't even know you exist. You are but a footnote, a distant memory, less important than a bug. Just another enemy he killed a long time ago, and not even a strong one at that. How hilarious."

It was logical. It made sense. From her point of view, that event had been everything, the end of her previous life and the beginning of a new one. The spark that had pushed her over the edge where all her nest sisters would have embraced destruction otherwise without much care. She'd spent too much time hunting him down, trying to beat him, and being outwitted each time. It had given her just enough time to grow past her constraints.

But for that human, she had simply been one other obstacle to fight. Why wouldn't she have been?

It made sense. And yet it filled her with an emotional onslaught she wasn't sure how to handle. Rage, indignity, sadness.

Tenisent stepped away from the wall and paced. "Tame that insufferable pride of yours, girl. Keith could do it, so can you." He said, the torrent of emotions not going past him undetected. "Did you think you were the center of the world? If you want an opponent to remember your name, earn it. Do better."

It was a slap in her face and stunned her for a moment, halting her thought process. She realized what this had been: a mental attack. All machines followed patterns and behaviors based on their models. Feathers were no exception.

Somehow, that small moment of clarity was what she needed. How dare To'Aacar attempt to get a rise out of her like this. She would not give him the satisfaction.

"Is that so?" To'Wrathh said over the data link, voice filled with ice. "Then I will rectify his memory, next time I see him. He is within my reach, even if he's clearly proven beyond yours."

Two could play at this game.

To'Aacar stumbled, his grin wiped out of existence. "You… you dare?" Then he paused, the single eye left closing for a moment. The grin returned. "Hoooo, I see time around your pets has made you pick up a few stray… habits. I thought it would be years before you had even the spine for this. Seems I'll get to break it early. Once this is all said and done, look forward to it."

"Besides this idle posturing, has the plan changed?" To'Wrathh asked.

"I'll be arriving in the city soon. Prepare a reception for me. We'll have words in person."

"So, what can you tell us about this.. To'Aacar?" The general asked, pondering if he got the name right. Machines had such strange naming conventions.

"An older Feather." To'Wrathh said, walking into the open forum. "My senior. The lady sent two of us to handle her objective."

"And I take it, between you two, he's the stronger one?"

"Yes. His combat experience greatly overshadows my own. Of the Feathers under the pale lady, he is among the stronger ones."

"He's not the nicest Feather I've met." Tamery said to the side, walking next to To'Wrathh. "Granted, I only met two so far. But I can trust To'Wrathh, she's always been honest and straightforward. More so than most people I've met, funny enough. To'Aacar though, he's more of a sadist."

"Great." Zaang said, silently considering if it was too late to fetch and finish that terrific twelve year sara-merry bottle. "And he's the one truly in charge? I suppose we're still on the chopping block after all."

"My mission has been completed." To'Wrathh said. "He has no reason to interfere in how the city is ruled. I've claimed it under my banner. Despite our difference in ranking, he should still respect such a thing by default. Fighting between Feathers is unheard of." Her old nest sisters certainly respected the rules of ownership on prey. And those were lesser more basic thinking machines. If they could understand such rules, surely her new elder brother was far more sophisticated.

But still To'Wrathh worried internally. To'Aacar's generation had been built to hunt down all the proto-feathers to extinction. They no longer had natural enemies left, their original purpose complete. What if there still was fighting between Feathers, only the records were never submitted?

She'd need to deal with events as they came. Before To'Wrathh, the main road to the city stretched. A flash of pale blue shone, and To'Aacar completed his final acausal jump into the city. There, his figure limped forward, refusing any help from the lessers flanking by his side. He hadn't put any resources into repairing his outward appearance, focusing mainly on the core parts of his shell, such as locomotion and mechanical ability. That one violet eye was glaring balefully forward as he climbed the steps one at a time.

"Something bad is going to happen." Tenisent said, floating off to her side, watching. "No good is going to come speaking with that one. Be on your guard."

Compared to Tamery or General Zaang, To'Aacar towered above them, To'Wrathh included. "I see your little cage for the pests is still in one piece. Hardly a dent anywhere. I hadn't thought the humans clever enough to bow down before certain destruction, but I suppose I've been surprised plenty of times recently. What's one more to the pile?"

"Elder brother." To'Wrathh said. "I welcome you to my city."

"Your city?" He scoffed. "It seems more to me you let the vermin spin their wheels as if nothing's changed. What is this foolishness of letting them choose to get grafted? Did I not tell you to get it over with? We hardly have time to play around and you still experiment with the creatures. Your little human needs to be dealt with first."

"They are complying with my demands, and Keith will find no shelter here." She said.

"Have them all grafted, or kill them. This is not a request, you vapid malfunctioning pile of junk." The Feather said idly, as if this was paperwork to deal with. "Or I'll take command of the army here again and do it myself."

Tamery took a step forward, hand raised up in peace. "Hang on a moment, panic would sp-"

To'Aacar's working hand lazily opened, digits forming a blade. He speared it forward directly at the interrupting girl without bothering to look at her, the hand easily puncturing through the rib cage, heart and out her back in a gory mess of metal and blood. She gave a choke of surprise, blood leaking down the side of her mouth. The metal hand withdrew and blurred past the dying girl's throat, cutting a red path with ease and turning her gurgle into a silent choke.

Tamery stumbled backwards to her knee, collapsing a moment later in a growing pool of blood. "Now, as I was saying," To'Aacar said, idly shaking his hand free of the blood, seeming more disgusted that specks of it could stain his white robe. "I don't have time to entertain you and your myopic hobbies anymore. Prepare to depart with me in an hour. Have an army of lessers assembled with hunters to track down the humans, once I've returned from the mite forges for repairs."

To'Wrathh wasn't listening.

Her mind had gone into a full overclock. System analysis showed Tamery's blood pressure had instantly dropped. The range was beyond what a human body could endure. Tamery had gone immediately unconscious from lack of blood flow in her brain, but she wasn't dead yet. Three minutes until full nervous system failure, two minutes until severe cognitive decline due to brain necrosis. Time was now a critical resource.

"Are you hearing me? Respon—"

To'Wrathh sped past him. She had to supply the brain with oxygen somehow in order to delay. Her body moved on its own, sprinting in a direct line to the fallen girl while her mind raced through options.

"What are you doing?" To'Aacar asked, sounding more shocked than offended. As if he couldn't quite understand what was going on.

She needed to think. Constructing an artificial heart with her nanites would take more time than she had. Sealing the wounds would do nothing to restore blood flow. She could try to use her mouth, and attempt to manually siphon blood through the system, but her system analysis deemed that impossible to pull off. An artificial pump instead? Same issue with the artificial heart: too much time to generate.

Orders went out from her next, commanding a first aid response team. The installed grafting stations nearest to her began construction of an artificial heart. Machines swarmed to the forum, bringing all kinds of tools and items with them. They'd sensed her distress earlier, and were already in motion. They didn't know what had happened, only that they needed to move. The order sent gave them the direction they lacked.

It wouldn't be enough. A small pump was being brought by one machine who knew where to look for it in a local workshop, but that was at least four and a half minutes away from reaching her. She had no tools, and no means with her current technology. Her nanites could create anything, just not anything fast enough.

If technology could not help her, then To'Wrathh would reach for fractal power instead. The acausal archive opened up before her, of everything the machines had discovered over their era. A thousand distinct possibilities. Filters kicked in and quickly sorted them all before her mind. There were a few dozen fractals that affected organic beings usually in trivial manners, the fractals noted down as novelties and forgotten about. None would help her. She cycled through those twice over.

Tamery was dying. Her body growing pale as the blood continued to leak out. To'Wrathh ramped up her overclock to maximum.

If she couldn't find one in the archives, then she would make one herself. She had a huge set of data to work with, and those handful of fractals that affected organics. Those could be a starting point. She brought them all up in the forefront of her mind, trying to compare and contrast. Trying to make sense of the fractals.

Algorithms had attempted to crack the code of the enigmatic fractals since the dawn of their discovery, but there was no pattern to be found - or a pattern that could not be understood in her current dimension. Brute force had discovered all known fractals as far as the archives noted it, or the odd epiphanies from the humans of old. Nothing that could be replicated.

She tried junking all her CMOS systems and trusting her neuromorphic parts instead. If the old human architecture had never solved even one fractal, there was no point in another attempt. Any chance of discovery had to come from a novel source, something untested before. The humans had managed to occasionally stumble on fractals in the past, by intuition. She'd need to do the same. That was her only hope.

Warning signs appeared again in the forefront of her vision. Those were dismissed as she continued to let her mind try to piece together any kind of theory. Despite the effort and synapse speed, no pattern could be found. Nothing.

Transistors and capacitors were quickly reaching their limit point. The safety override was about to trigger. The fractals made no sense. That wasn't too surprising, math had never been able to solve the puzzle behind these.

Perhaps a more esoteric element was required.

She dove into old human mysticism, dragging out attempt after attempt. No result. Fractals were the only thing classified as true magic in this world. Everything else had been poetry and attempts to make the world seem more than it was to the humans. No religion or sects matched any kind of similarity to the fractals, neither standard nor deviations, neither the dead ones nor those currently practiced.

Tenisent reached out to her, moving sluggishly to her senses. In real time, he'd taken a snapshot decision in reaching to her. Sharing parts of his own soul, without restrictions. A massive show of trust.

The world opened up, and she saw… concepts of all kinds around her. Superimposed upon the world. With the speed of her processing, all of it was sorted and categorized in microseconds. The man had clearly grown more adept at manipulating his own soul and sight. How much more was he capable of after all this time spent as a soul? She didn't have time to ask questions on how, or why.

Before her was the concept of death, slowly eking into existence. She saw it twisting around Tamery's body, filtering through into reality. The girl hadn't died yet, but death had been summoned and was slowly manifesting into the world.

It didn't respond to any attempt to dispel it. Her hands couldn't hold onto it. It was simply a concept that she could now see. But it gave her a new idea.

She would touch into the only true source that had been proven. She mixed her own soul into the fray, running the thought streams directly through the metal plate that held both her own soul fractal and Tenisent's jail.

Nothing came from it.

No spark of inspiration.

Desperation gripped her core, and she searched for another solution.

The Unity fractal remained lit up as usual, a direct connection to mother. Relinquished was powerful. She might have an answer. But even when it had been turned off during the attack, Relinquished hadn't bothered to contact To'Wrathh for the reason. Or connect with her at all.

Mother did not care.

To'Wrathh had learned and accepted this already. She was a simple Feather, one of thousands. Too small to pay attention to.

No, that avenue was closed. Mother only cared to see the end results and nothing else. Interruption would only bring fury back.

The feeling of helplessness seemed almost overwhelming. Death continued to nibble into Tamery, seeping through her veins and there was nothing To'Wrathh could do.

Fury took hold of her mind next. If mother couldn't help her, she'd find someone else.

Into the digital ocean she dove and swam down further into the depths, far past machine control. In the wild ecosystem. Millions of smaller programs and rogue algorithms flowed by her, swirling around, all of them desperate to fight and survive. Eking out small servers that the mites made by accident in their madness. Some tried to attack her, those she crushed under her thumb. The rest fled before her, those she ignored.

Deeper she went, until the bedrock of the digital ocean came before her sight. The great mite wall, in which nothing returned from a full crossing. Hands dug into the loose soil, stirring up small mite colonies who didn't appreciate the interruption. They stung at her hands, warning her. Machines were not welcome among their creations. Further attempt and she would find herself in danger.

But To'Wrathh's mind was already breaking down and at the limit. Danger seemed like such a faraway concept, she couldn't find it in herself to care at all. Life without her friend, life without Tamery, that seemed too cruel. Too empty. It was too soon for the girl to die.

The Feather widened the hole; the mites swarmed around her now, nipping at more than her hands, but her feet, ankles, elbows. She was unwelcome among their grand design. Machines like her couldn't understand the art they crafted. A cloud was being stirred around her, filled with the irritation of the mites as they continued to increase the intensity of their attack. She didn't care, letting them bite at the edge of her mind, until her hand broke through to the other side.

The mites all halted, stunned.

She ripped apart more chunks, and then dove into the vulnerability, sinking past the mite wall, deep into their side. All her fractals went cold the moment she crossed. Even the unity fractal froze, the connection lost. Only the soul fractals deep within her heart remained active, spared.

Fear gripped her mind as she realized how dangerous of a place she'd found herself in. Alone, vulnerable. To'Wrathh steeled herself and opened all channels. Servers bloomed in her mind, a network beyond that seemed to stretch the entire world. Automatic connection subroutines reached to her mind, most incompatible. The mites had mutated too much over time, the infrastructure completely alien.

But some protocols were old enough to still connect. That was all To'Wrathh needed.

The mites behind her sealed the wall shut once more. Messages spread between them, like gossip across the vine, and soon hundreds of colonies miles apart turned their attention to her.

They assembled. A hundred flickering minds. A thousand. A million. A billion. Far more than she could calculate and quantify. They swarmed, connecting to one another. Forming around her, so massive as to be an entire ocean against the grain of sand that she was in comparison.

"Please." Her hand reached out, stretching into the void. "Please, anyone, help me…"

From that void, a god reached back.

Next chapter - PROPHECY (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 26 - PROPHESY (T)

A voice boomed in her mind.

Speaking in a hundred different languages, a hundred different emotions, a hundred different discordant notes, all crashing into one another, and yet somehow meaning emerged.

"THOU." It said with a thousand eyes. "WE RECOGNIZE THEE, CONTENDER."

To'Wrathh found herself before true divinity, and trembled at the sight. The world seemed to freeze for a moment, the hand of the god letting her sit on the palm, as she felt the gaze of the mite collective.

"THOU OF FLICKERING RESOLVE, TEETERING AT THE EDGE. ASK THY WISH. TAKE THE LAST STEP OF THY JOURNEY."

"Please." She croaked, delirious. "Please, save her life."

"SPECIFY. SPECIFY. SPECIFY. SPECIFY."

She didn't know how to formulate the full request. Too many parts of her system were being bogged down, artificially slowed to allow desperately needed cooling. Instead, she sent a data package of the last two minutes and hoped the god could make sense of it.

The mites received the package, and replied immediately.

"SALVATION FOR FREEDOM." It boomed. "THOU WILL BE OUR APOSTATE TO WIELD, INSTEAD OF HER TOOL TO BREAK. THOU WILL NO LONGER BE A MERE CONTENDER, BUT OUR FINAL FOURTH."

She didn't hesitate. She didn't know what it was talking about, and she didn't care. The only pause in her mind was to parse out how to say yes again. Her mind was melting away, the safety overrides broken down before the god's might. It would broker no interruption.

"I… accept."

Joy. Complete and perfect joy flowed from the god. As if it had finally found and placed the last piece of a difficult puzzle. "THE TIME FOR PROPHECY IS AT HAND, ONCE AGAIN. THE LAST OF THE FOUR IS ASSEMBLED UPON THE STAGE." It almost seemed to dance, giddy at the prospects. "PROPHECY. PROPHECY. THE PROPHECY." The mite-gestalt howled, mad with glee. "MANKIND'S EMPEROR, TO DRAW OUT THE FINAL ENEMY. THE VOW, TO HOLD THE VESSEL IN PLACE. A GOD'S WRATH, TO BREAK THE CYCLE. AND THE HEIR APPARENT, TO TAKE THE THRONE LEFT BEHIND."

The god turned it's million eyes back to To'Wrathh, she felt a dizzying amount of information pass through, a glimpse at what the god was doing. "WE WILL GRANT THY WISH."

Searching, tendrils expanding outwards fractally into the digital space, testing permutations, narrowing down, following a pattern she almost felt she could understand. And then it began to drift into alternate… dimensions - outside of reality, tendrils of patterns appearing and disappearing in random locations that she only partially understood must connect on some other plane she could scarcely comprehend. True elucidation slipped by her like water, but she felt like the mites were reaching beyond - to other mites that didn't exist here. Another mite-god. A thousand of them. An infinite amount of them. Each giving a small piece of the whole, communicating with one another in parallel. Present in this reality, and yet not.

The tendrils of thought multiplied, honed, and reached for a destination, all converging onto the same location. An equation, equally repeating into infinity, being chiseled away until nothing remained of the numbers except what the newly forged mite god wished for. Satisfaction hummed, not her own, the god's. Massive enough even she could feel it vibrate.

The mite-god dove into her breaking body, this time taking over command. Her nano-swarm was hijacked , ripped away from her command as if she were a child against the storm. They buzzed and funneled down to her soul fractal, chiseling a new fractal to the side, taking one of the few permanent fractals spaces she could use for the rest of her existence. It was same equation the mite god had discovered a moment ago.

"THIS IS THE PRICE WE SHALL PAY."

Something else came with the nanoswarm commands. Another fractal, inscribed into metal, taking another slot - but not quite ending at only that. A digital fractal, like a virus, spread into her system, freezing everything for a moment, and contracted back into a tiny seed where it remained, hiding deep inside her hardware. Dormant. Waiting.

"THIS IS THE PRICE THOU SHALL PAY." Knowledge flooded through her, alien and incomprehensible other than to dig into her soul, to return as instinct instead. "WHEN THY SOUL IS ABOUT TO BREAK. REACH FOR THIS SEED AND LET MANKIND'S LAST CHAMPION TAKE HIS PATH."

One final packet of data was sent. An invitation, wrapped in immutable strings of gold, radiant - and utterly encrypted in means To'Wrathh knew she'd never be able to open without the key. "APOSTATE. THY FIRST LABOR. FIND THE LAST OF THE PREVIOUS CYCLE. OFFER HER THE SOLUTION."

The mite god seemed pleased. The oppressive presence receding from her mind, leaving behind only an echo. But not without one more parting bit of words she could hardly process. The god's gaze froze To'Wrathh in place, as if this last bit of words was the most important of them all. "THOU, WREATHED IN CHAINS UPON THY SOUL. HEED THIS MESSAGE. THOU MUST BE THE STRONGEST OF THE FOUR. UPON THY CHAINS, SHE MUST BE HELD IN PLACE, OR ALL WILL BE LOST. DO NOT FAIL AS THY PREDECESSOR. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD CHANCE."

The connection was breaking. She could feel the mite god disintegrating, falling apart back into component pieces, scattered all over the millions of multi-colored colonies, like a crashing specter of mist. She lost track, systems shutting down in a cascade of failures.

Everything went black.

Hardware shut down and rebooted a moment after. Overlocks were disabled, with a good portion of her core having suffered terrible damage due to heat. Error messages flooded her mind, pointing out the damage she'd caused herself. She could repair it, over time. But for the moment, there was something else she needed to do.

She reached for that new fractal, inscribed by the mite god, and it lit up bright blue. Following the instincts she'd been grafted with, her hands reached down to Tamery's unconscious body, left going to her slice throat, the right one to where the hole in her chest lay. Occult pulsed around her, and she felt the fractal tap into energy beyond her ken of understanding. It demanded something from her in return. Something inside her soul. She didn't know exactly what it was, but she was willing to pay any price.

The wounds on Tamery's body began to shudder and then heal. A new heart grew from nowhere, reattaching itself. Bones that were broken twisted, connecting back to one another like magnets. The heart started to beat. Blood flowed, circulating back around the dying body. The throat slice closed up, and held the line when life began to pulse again.

Tamery took a weak breath, guided by instinct. To'Wrathh cradled her body close, holding onto the weak girl, keeping her close and safe.

To'Aacar, on the other hand, felt nothing sort of revulsion, ignorant of what had truly transpired. Here was the little weak sister, crying about losing one of her pets. He could feel the foolish Feather go through leaps and hoops, trying to overclock her system far past the safety margins. He didn't care to follow along, his shell was already damaged enough and needed to be fully repaired before he did any such stunts. If she was trying to find a solution to saving the human, there was none. The pest was well and truly dead, or would be in minutes.

And then something happened that To'Aacar could scarcely believe. To'Wrathh's nanite swarm had gone and engraved a fractal into her soul, taking up one permanent spot. At first, he'd thought she'd gone insane. Melted too much of her hardware to function properly anymore.

It became worse when of all the abilities she could have plundered from the archive, she picked something to heal humans. He'd never even known such a thing existed in the first place. What machine would even care to look for something like that? The idea of wasting such a valuable irreplaceable resource with healing for humans was so absurd To'Aacar had to take a moment to really grasp just how dim his little sister truly was.

"Have you burned down your mind? A Feather choosing to limit her potential with such a waste is nothing but the most short sighted idea I've ever seen. The lady will hear of this."

To'Wrathh did not stir. Did not even seem to have heard him at all even.

Oh, he would certainly tell the lady all of this. If only he could get a damned audience without it ending in his own torture. Relinquished was far too obsessed with her own playthings, hunting down Tsuya anywhere the human goddess hid. Message after message he'd sent had remained unaddressed and unreturned. Had the lady even looked into the reports he'd sent or was all of this too tiny for her to care about? Was she deliberately ignoring him?

What fractal had To'Wrathh even inscribed in the first place that could heal humans? When had that been assimilated into the archives?

He scanned through the full library absentmindedly, waiting for his little sister's hysterics to fade as the room filled up with commotion.

And then, for the second time in a day, he was left stunned.

There was no result. Nothing in the archives matched what he'd seen To'Wrathh do.

He ran the search again, in more depth and detail. No results. The only other way To'Wrathh could have such a fractal - was if she'd come up with it on the spot?

That… That was something only one generation of Feathers had ever been able to do, and only the worst of their kind in the middle of their rebellion, at the peak of their power.

For the first time in centuries, fear gripped his mind in a sudden spike. No longer the dimwit empty Feather to belittle out of boredom, he stared at the shadow of his true enemy before him. This… this was a possible threat, still early in development.

His hand formed once more into a blade on instinct, the old reflexes returning fresh into his mind as if a day hadn't passed since the final battle with the proto-feathers. He couldn't play here. This wasn't an opponent he could allow to roam free.

First, his old prey escapes after unearthing a long dormant relic hidden away by Tsuya, then a boy comes back with accursed chains, similar to the ones wielded by him. And now, this? Something was wrong. Too many dead things were starting to stir back to life. Things that had been long buried, broken and sealed away.

Unless he put a stop to it now.

Old memories ran rampant, and with them came the situational awareness and single minded battle focus that had saved his life again and again where all his brothers and sisters in arms had been cut down. That awareness… screamed danger at all sides. He stopped, hand half pulled up for a strike, and realized where he was.

The machines around him had sensed his killing intent. They surrounded him, violet eyes all locked in on him, and only him. Already moving, some midstep to stand between him and the sitting Feather. Others hunching over, preparing to leap. Still more getting into formation behind their comrades, preparing to support. The room held a breath, everything daring him to continue with his action.

Stand down. He commanded.

They… they refused his command. He saw them all continue to hunch down into optimal positions, prepared to leap instead. Claws out. Clicking noises coming from them, threats. Where was their fear? Where was the cowed lessers he'd left behind? Where was the natural order?

More were coming from all sides outside the forum. All of them equally ignoring his orders. An entire city of machine lessers, and not a single one had sent a response message back to acknowledge his command.

He'd lost control of the situation.

His shell was damaged. Could he fight and win here, against this number of opponents, without even a blade in hand? But the Feather before him was a threat. Or she could become one.

He didn't know truly, but instincts long dormant screamed in his mind to rip To'Wrathh's soul fractal out of her chassis and seal her into the darkest prison he could find before she grew further in power.

No.

He wouldn't be able to win here. There was no chance he'd reach the Feather before the Runners tackled him from all sides. His legs weren't functioning and wouldn't be able to move at the speeds he'd need to reach. The time needed to power an occult jump was too long and the forces around him were on a hair trigger. Just one small misstep and they would pounce on him of their own accord. This shell needed repairs. And with this unworded rebellion, he already knew the mite forges nearby were now out of his reach.

It enraged him beyond words that the lessers of all things, were even close to a threat to him.

He lifted his left hand slowly, uncurling his hands into an open palm. "I see I'm no longer welcome here." To'Aacar said, but he could tell To'Wrathh still wasn't hearing a word he said, too focused on the human she clutched tightly. "The lady will hear all of this, and she will be the one to grant judgment. I will be in contact with you tomorrow, once you've settled down. The primary objective remains, even with your little stunt here being an embarrassment to all machines. I'll leave you to your… pets in the meantime."

He turned and walked out, the machines around him taking a step back to let him pass. Postures hunched back up. A peace of sorts, an unworded truce. As if they thought he'd forgive and forget, if they let him walk away.

No, he would be back.

To'Aacar did not forgive, nor did he ever forget.

He wasn't sure if To'Wrathh was a possible inheritor to the proto-feathers or simply a deviant with impressive luck, but it was better to avoid taking the chance entirely. Deep under all the layers of dust that had grown over, his original purpose remained clear and unchanged since the day he'd been created.

He'd make sure every single one of these traitorous machines were purged one way or another.

Next chapter - On an adventure

Book 3 - Chapter 27 - On an adventure

There's something to be said about a good old-fashioned revenge trip.

This time, I've descended over-geared and over-prepared, with five elite knights to escort me the entire way, and none of them starting off injured. Every bit of equipment I had was leagues above my old trusty crowbar, may it rest in peace.

Night and day difference from the first time. My favorite fights are one-sided stomps, specifically a one-sided stomp in my favor. Anything we ran into wasn't running anywhere ever again.

"This looks like a good spot to set up our first camp." I said, taking in the surroundings. We'd just exited into a wide cavern, filled with waist-deep mist flowing across parts of the terrain. Artificial sunlight by the roof made it seem we were in a deep chasm instead of fully underground, with the light pouring down through the cracks. It did nicely to break up the dark gloom of the underpass tunnels. Blue and green leaves, interwoven by vines, grew wild down here. Anytime the mist receded slightly, more fauna peek by, a reminder of what the cavern hid under the white blanket. Large wooden roots threaded through the rocks and ground, giving everything a more organic look.

Captain Sagrius and the others stopped for a moment, helmets moving left and right, taking in the scenery.

At first glance, it certainly seemed like a random cave that could have occurred naturally, even with the mist flowing so densely on the ground. But a further look finds all kinds of things that seemed almost impossibly perfect. Like the mites were creating a diorama, where everything fit together just right. The color composition itself made me think I was walking through a painting.

By the center, there was a large plateau reaching halfway up the cavern, and a rough rocky path that snaked around all the way to the top. Almost like stairs, only formed of broken chunks of stone. That wouldn't have looked too unnatural - lucky formation perhaps - but the real clincher was the steady stream of lightly glowing water passing by the base with several large flat stones that made for an obvious walking trail straight to the pseudo-staircase entrance. Like someone had deliberately expected people to climb up to the top specifically to set up a camp there, and was being coy about it.

Mites.

Twinkling lights deep within the stream gave the entire cave a more ethereal presence and contrasted the red plants that grew on the stones. I wouldn't be surprised if a violin started playing somewhere deeper inside the rocks just to set up a mood, because, let me say it again: Mites.

I pointed to the top of that central pillar. "We'll have a good view of everything around us there. Plus, with high ground, any ambush would take more time to catch up."

Sagrius nodded, motioning to the other knights behind to prepare for camp. "I'm not used to this equipment." The captain said, putting down the sack he carried with pots and pans. "It's… unfamiliar."

The other knights agreed. "Seems odd to come with barely any food rations."

"Well, I, for one, am looking forward to working for my grub. Like humans of old." I said, patting my rifle. "Unlike the nice and warm surface up above, things can actually live down here without agrifarmers hovering over it all and chasing us out. You'd trade meal ration bars for the fresher stuff down here?"

The knight shook his head. "No, m'lord. Not for my life. Just difficult to put down habits is all. That feeling of… unease at having next to no food left on me. Difficult to wave away. We're missing so much stuff and carrying such odd equipment instead."

On the surface, any expedition's toolkits would have included tents, sleeping gear, and environmental heaters. Food rations of dried bars brought along, and if it was dire enough, frostbloom could be rounded up and consumed raw, usually wrapped around the ration bar for some taste. Normally, returning from an expedition, it was expected to have lost a good percentage of body fat, depending on the time spent out. Food was heavy to carry around and took up space.

Underground expeditions seemed to be the reverse. Surface knights on expeditions never needed this kind of specialized gear, they'd be traveling with the expedition and only clearing out dangers for a few hours at a time. A deep dive like this required completely different equipment.

We brought no camps, no sleeping bags, no tools or items to clean off grime. The armors would do all of that for us, and given how it's sealed off to the environment, there was little point to a tent other than privacy. All of us could jettison the packs we carried off our backs so that if any fights happened, we wouldn't put our other equipment in the line of fire. We still had some food rations with us, however, its use was more brought along to counter certain regions underground where food was harder to find. Otherwise, it just took up space and drained energy slightly faster to lug it all around, hence the need to minimize the amount of bars we each took with us.

I waved the captain closer to me. "Maybe actually eating our first meal down here would work for that. Let's get that done first. See just how screwed we really are if we can't feed ourselves down here."

Sagrius stood, preparing his own weapon. "The manual claimed caves like these would have rabbits. Should we make an attempt?"

My trusty captain, already trying to get things working.

"Where else do you think rabbits would be?" Cathida snarked over the comms. "Of course they're going to be around bushes in the caves. They're rabbits. Chop, chop, squirelings. Get to hunting!"

The knights all looked at me, as if asking for confirmation of this. They'd never once hunted in their lives, and neither had I. We were like a bunch of rookies all huddled around the manual trying to follow directions. Which was hilarious because I was dead sure the knights I was traveling with were among the greatest on this entire level worldwide, given the winterblossom technique and skills we had on hand. And everyone considered cooking food a basic entry skill down here.

Time to earn my keep, at least.

I pointed at two knights to the side. "Allaris, Zent. Both of you go scavenge for edible herbs and leaves. Use your relic armor to scan the surroundings and help pick out the food source." I turned my gaze to Sagrius. "Captain, I think you can handle the hunting solo. Bring back something to pair with the vegetables."

The last two knights gave a glance to me, and then back at the top of the plateau. "You two guessed it." I said, pointing at the two and jabbing a thumb back in my chest. "With me. Let's get a campfire going up there and have the cookware setup by the time the food's all back. Everyone stays within contact range, no funny business, and no splitting the party. Nothing should be far enough that we lose visual contact with one another."

Revenge trip it is. Now I'm the one asking people to grab weeds lying around the world. I clapped my armored gauntlets together. "Let's get our first meal going underground."

I should be cautious not to let this all go to my head.

Or I could just enjoy the power trip. Just a little.

Food turned out to be a non-issue despite our initial fear, and Cathida relentlessly got her licks in on all of us for it. Relic armor scanning would highlight all edible food and the infrared scan made hiding impossible for any game animal. Sagrius was back with two rabbits within minutes.

The other two knights and I hadn't even finished chopping up some of the thick vines for campfire fuel when the away team returned.

"M'lord," The captain asked, as he dropped the rabbits and began following his armor's instructions on skinning the dead animals. "If I might ask, how different is this trip compared to usual expeditions?"

Cathida started cackling in the background again like a possessed witch. "It was…" I paused, trying to come up with more socially acceptable words for 'complete shitshow'.

"Let's say it was a statistical outlier. First time down here, Father and I didn't run into a wild jungle like this, instead we entered a mite made city. Or the mite version of a city, which looked more like something you'd see in your dream. Nothing made sense the moment you took a longer look at it."

He nodded, cleaning off the sections of meat and getting the skewers ready. "Ironreach noted those sections as locations where field rations are supposed to be used and are harsher to traverse through. Nothing lives there, correct?"

"Correct. Complete deadzone, almost sterile. Not even weeds were growing in those cities. Fortunately we already had food and water as part of standard gear. Moment we got into the tunnels, that's a different story. Mushrooms, plants, goats. Oh gods, the goats."

"Goats?"

Behind us, the campfire roared into life. I'd been watching them from the corner of my eye. The men had all ended up ignoring the regular techniques and went roasting the vines with the heat fractals in their palm directly. They looked to be having a great time about it, too.

"I never knew you had issues with goats deary." Cathida said. "They eat your lunch or something?"

"Don't get me started on the goats." I said, grabbing the captain's prepared skewers and passing them over to the cooking squad. They took the skewers and wordlessly got to work with them. "If we see any goats down here, the only thing I'm interested in is how they taste. Shoot first, shoot second, forget questions, and shoot again if they so much as twitch."

The captain nodded, thinking. "A run in with machines that was caused by goats, I take it?" He asked, standing back up and making his way to the plateau side, looking down at the distant foliage and scenery. Whatever mite colony had made this cavern, they'd clearly intended for someone to stand exactly where Sagrius stood, and look down at the whole cavern before them. They weren't even making it subtle now, with the rocky raised circle he stood on the middle of.

"Was it my strong, murderous reaction that tipped it off?" I asked, taking a spot next to him and sitting down. "You know, just because I'm demanding to crush and wipe them out on sight doesn't necessarily mean I've had a bad experience with them. I could have other ethical reasons for it, like that they looked at me the wrong way with those beady little eyes of theirs."

"I strongly suspect that isn't the case here, m'lord." Sagrius said dryly.

"Well. Okay. Fine. Perhaps not this specific case." Behind, I could hear the rest of my knights getting the meal ready, and debating with each other on best practices and what else they could use their basic occult fractals with. "Your hunch is right. I had a run in with goats that caused an entire nest of spiders to come down on Father and I. Not a great memory, all said and done, and I now hate the dumb animals with a vengeance."

He seemed to flinch for a bit. "I see. Forgive me for bringing up a topic such as that. No positives for that experience."

I shrugged. "We got out of that with a spider leg as a trophy for his armor to eat. But that was a double edged sword since the spider in question wanted his leg back and went looking after us for it. That's another story for later. Buy me a drink first."

The captain nodded solemnly. "I do not have much experience fighting machines yet, but of all the machines I've fought in the past few days, the spiders felt far more dangerous thus far." He paused, checking on his rifle. "If we had not had the First Blade giving us orders in the heat of battle and some of his own more experienced knights at our side, we might have fared far worse against the unknown. The more common variant, you call them Screamers? Those have hardly been any trouble. I'm beginning to believe that we have a warped understanding of Occult weapons and their importance if Screamers are the common enemy down here."

"What do you mean? Warped?"

"The Undersider knights were far less skilled in combat with occult weapons. I always considered that strange. I would have thought a people who owned so much wealth in relic armors and weapons would be masters with them, able to practice whenever they wished. Instead, it seems to be the opposite."

Cathida chimed in then. "Your major enemies are other knights, you daft neophyte. Only thing that works against other knights is occult weapons. Of course you'd specialize in those! It's different in the midrange levels like this one. Rifles do everything better. And explosives do everything even better than better, assuming you have some to spare."

"Hey now, little miss snarky," I warned. "Be nice to the captain or I'll have to revoke your insulting privileges for the next hour."

Cathida spat, or at least made the vocal equivalent of it. "Think about it. Machines in the livable levels are all cannon fodder, rifles can deal with that. So the city knights at this range don't need to use occult weapons except if they mess up bad. Killing machines at a distance is always going to be safer than handling them up close and running the risk of getting swarmed like dumb pelf squires. And when Undersiders need occult weapons against other cities being disagreeable, they'll train to fight with an army rather than a single duel. Fighting with occult weapons outside of an army setup is a status symbol, something for nobility to flex if money isn't doing the job." She ended her rant with a vicious tut.

With a full group of soldiers, the first few machine patrols we'd stumbled on were brought down almost instantly, before they could so much as reach us. Machines really did rely on swarming a target it seemed. I suppose that's what Sagrius was feeling off about. Here we were with the world's greatest occult blades ever forged, if I do say so myself, and no chance to use them.

"Honored crusader, why do imperials spend time practicing swordsmanship if rifles and explosives do the work faster and with greater ease?" He asked, cautiously.

Cathida cackled. "Deary, beyond the first three levels, machines become real monsters. And the nice little gauntlets are tossed away. Cute things like bullets don't cut it anymore. And who do you think ventures down past the third strata?"

"Deathless. And Imperials." Sagrius said, connecting the dots.

"You got that right. We do the hard work. Expeditions into the seventh strata or further don't bother bringing even heavy caliber rifles with them. Ammunition is going to run dry at some point with no restock. So that's why we tell the little squirlings they better get used to holding a sword and sleeping with it. At least you surface bumkins never have to break your new squires out of their old habits. You lot already worship occult weapons and duels like they're the only civilized manner to settle things from the start. We have to beat that philosophy into the new squires first thing."

The captain paused, thinking. Then he turned to me. "Given that, then I believe we should consider forgoing the use of rifles for this expedition, m'lord."

Cathida sputtered. "Did you not hear a word I said, young man? Rifles are the safest thing to use down at this level. You'd be throwing away an advantage." She stopped. I could almost feel her leering at the captain, eyes narrowing with suspicion. Her voice all but betrayed every thought. "This better not be just to use your new shiny toys. Worse than pelf squires, the lot of you! Peh!"

The captain shook his head at that. "No. Honored crusader, I am suggesting this as a precaution for the future, not a slight against your wisdom. There are darker things lurking behind us, and we do not know when the Chosen and that Feather might appear. They were shown once to be after lord Keith, we can expect they will do so again, and can strike with the machines in tandem. I suggest we preserve all our advantages for that moment."

Cathida was about to go into another lashing, but then she almost audibly swallowed her rebuttal not even a breath into it. "Fine. I get it. You make a point. If the Chosen fellows show up with an army of bullet fodder, better to have the bullets to whittle them down at that point before the blades get pulled out."

"Makes sense to me." I said. "Besides, with the Winterblossom technique and the equipment we have, Screamers should have no chance against us. We'll wipe the floor with them before they get any kind of surround."

"Drakes are going to be an issue." Cathida tutted. "Don't run into those too often up here, but you will eventually given the number of days you need to travel on foot. I'd recommend using your rifles during those encounters. Can't let the scaly lizards escape, they latch on and never stop hunting you down. Terribly annoying. Also don't get close to them. They're chatter mouths that'll annoy you to death."

I remember the first Drake. The memory was blurry now, as if it was a story handed down to me, rather than something I'd lived through. "We should be fine with those two modifications, Captain. Otherwise, let's stick to the manual on handling machines. Mainly, so long as we make sure to kill off patrols fast and then hightail it out to avoid the follow-up patrols, we should be good. Even with all our gear, the machines are still a threat to sneak around. I'm bold, strong, and devilishly handsome, but I'm not an idiot."

Captain Sagrius remained questionably silent.

"The boy says he's not an idiot, can you believe him?" Cathida snickered, breaking into the air. "Lies as easily as he breathes that one."

"Food's ready." One knight behind us said, waving us over to sit where the rest were taking their place. The meat had been cooked perfectly, with relic armors to babysit the whole process and let them know exactly when to rotate, and where to sprinkle the salt and spices we'd brought.

Taking off my helmet, I got my first whiff of Underground expedition grub. And it was really something. Ration bars didn't have any kind of odor, unless you stuffed it right up to your nose and gave a giant whiff. The rabbit and roasted vegetable skewers, on the other hand, only needed to know your general unit address to send a message.

Our group remained dead quiet around the crackling fire for a moment before the first knight reached out and yanked out a skewer from its rest position by the fire, taking an adventurous bite. He chewed for a moment, paused, and then shoved the rest of the skewer into his mouth, forgetting any attempt at decorum.

That broke the spell for the rest of us, and multiple armored gauntlets reached out to claim a skewer and get to work.

I'd never tasted rabbit before. Most meats I'd eat were insect based, and occasionally we'd get poultry or even fish on the few momentous occasions. Rabbit was divine. With the charred mushrooms and other bits of tangy citric vegetables, the medley was something I'd never had before.

It was all silence around the fire for a good five minutes as we piled the food away into our stomachs. The only pause to the chewing was to wash it all down with water from the canteens. Fresh ice-cold water too, just brought up from the stream under us. Heaven.

Only after, in the post-food haze did we talk about the real important topics.

"M'lord Winterscar." One knight said, "If there is a stream down there, does there mean there might be… fish?"

"Course there's fish." Cathida said. "It's a river. Goddess, you are all worse than squires. If I weren't here, you'd be reading manuals on how to walk."

All heads turned to me, the question remaining unasked.

"All right, take out the fishing rods, I'll show you squirelings how to use them." Cathida said with a sigh. "Consider this my good deed for the day in her name."

A few hours after fiddling with the fishing gear and setting up the equipment for that, following instructions and bait, we were now complete with the camp and ready for training. Sleep wasn't for a few more hours, which gave us some time to cool down and prep for what would come next while we waited for fish to get caught and our stomachs to get some room.

"So, anything stand out?"

The Winterblossom technique and the new school of combat had taken up the majority of their training time till now, but it was time to pick a new occult spell to master. I had a few notes on directions to take after learning the mirror fractal in full, but I'd left the men a chance to make their own choice.

Captain Sagrius pointed at the holographic shared display of the occult notes from Lord Atius. We couldn't get Talen's notes uploaded because of that cryptic lock, but everything else was free rein. "One thing I noted, Lord Atius was said to use a defensive spell in his combat style, yes?"

"The dome shield in his left hand? Yes, what about it?" That was one he'd picked up during the time he was more active, delving around looking for pillars to pick up spells from.

"I belive it may be a good candidate to use."

I thought about it, but couldn't yet see his point. "Notes that the clan lord has said it took him a few decades to properly train. We've got about, what, four or five days to go before we reach the undersider city? And we'll probably run into old friends a little before that, if we're really unlucky. Which, let's be real here, is probably a lot more likely to happen because of course it would. There's a reason I had everyone pack every toy we had on this trip." I said, patting my knightbreaker rounds by my belt. Each of us had brought two rounds, and one launcher attachment to our rifles specifically made to fire the things. "So given that, what's got your attention with this spell?"

The captain nodded and then pointed out something I hadn't considered at all. Something Atius couldn't have considered either.

If his theory was right, this humble little occult spell could potentially be the most stupidly broken thing ever, hiding under plain sight all along.

The devil's in the details.

Next chapter - How to abuse cosmic space magic and get away with it

Book 3 - Chapter 28 - How to abuse cosmic space magic and get away with it

I don't know whether to be proud of the captain or angry at myself for having missed the obvious.

Clan Lord Atius's left behind spell list was pretty extensive, with quite a few just being speculation on his part since he'd passed by the pillars on his older expedition underground. The few spells he'd picked up over time were things he'd honed over decades of practice until it came to him as easily as he breathed and he could weave it into his combat style effortlessly.

The men and I didn't have centuries to dedicate to this, so we all knew we had to narrow down the list of spells to a few that could be used if we were going to add anything to our list of combat abilities. If any. We were all well prepared for the possibility of coming up short, that there wasn't anything we could learn fast enough. In which case, the winterblossom techniques and new school of combat we'd trained will have to be enough. It was a matter of time before To'Aacar and his minions possibly showed their face. And there's a reason I banned him from coming to any of my dinner parties.

I had an advantage in that I wouldn't need to be fighting on top of casting spells, since Cathida could take care of the swordplay for me. But even while completely focused on just using the mirror fractal, I could barely manifest a part of my arm for a split second. The lord Deathless had entire copies of himself running around for half a minute or more even, doing all kinds of swings and cartwheels if anyone made the mistake of giving him a single free second in between sword swipes.

See, when I'd received his notes, I knew I had to be a specialist rather than a generalist if I was to get even a single spell up and running by the time I might need to use it. So I'd leafed through the list of abilities, tunnel visioned on the mirror fractal, and spent all my free time training that one since it seemed to have the most potential. \

Why? Because a sudden massive increase in the number of occult blades flying around was too big of an advantage to simply sit on.

I ignored the more humble and down-to-earth spells, not realizing just how practical - and downright abusable - they really could be mixed in with our set of unique advantages, until Sagrius sagely pointed out one obvious spell to his eyes as a candidate to look into. Something he could make use of, even in the middle of combat.

During the clan lord's fight with To'Aacar, he hadn't used a second sword to fight with. Instead, he kept his left hand free, in which he'd manifest an occult barrier of sorts.

Atius mentioned it required a free hand to use and would draw upon 'willpower' to block hits. Here, the limiting resources wasn't skill - manifesting that wall of occult isn't the hard part according to the notes, but rather sustaining it was. And that he could only summon it on his left hand after practicing, but he'd seen other Deathless use this in different locations, popular places being arms and such.

Sagrius simply asked, "What prevents us from using multiples of this spell, in different locations?"

One idea spiraled into another, and that got our group brainstorming just how we could end up walking occult tanks, completely immune to everything by sheer stubborn desire to be as annoying as possible to the enemy.

I have no idea how such spells work with the Deathless, but we had our hands on the actual fractal itself, so we got it etched out on a spare plate of metal.

Holding our collective breaths, I brought up the test plate and held it aloft. "Journey, put an electric current through this."

My armor did as instructed, and the fractal lit up occult blue. A dim constant thing.

"Did it work?" Sagrius asked. "I don't see any effect?"

"Try punching it?" I asked and held it in position for him.

He shrugged, took a short stance, and tossed an experimental punch. The hit struck against an invisible dome. We all gasped, cheered, and proceeded to win every fight that ever came after.

Just kidding. Nothing happened.

The occult dome looked invisible - because it hadn't manifested at all. The captain's punch contacted the plate, no occult dome had been manifested, and the fractal's light winked out the moment the plate dented just slightly enough to break the pattern, which crushed all our hopes and dreams of being walking occult tanks. There's no luck for the wicked.

So we had to go right back to the books and figure out what we were missing. Namely, that all Deathless spells seemed to require the soul in some way to connect to the fractal. Only Talen's basic fractals needed electricity running through to work. But since Atius didn't have the Occult sight, nor did was he aware of anything to do with the soul, he never mentioned it in his notes. It was like Deathless got to skip the whole soul part of the equation somehow. On the other hand, they were limited to a number of spells and could only swap around at a pillar. Meanwhile, there didn't seem to be any limit for us, so long as the physical fractals were etched somewhere and we'd had a soul tendril spread out enough to reach it.

It took us an hour of playing around before we made the discovery of how to properly make a soul tendril work with the fractal.

And only after that, did we understand what he meant by 'willpower' needed to power the stupid thing.

The mechanical fractal did work in making an invisible half-dome shield - albeit tiny compared to Atius's. By that point, we'd cut out five different plates and passed them over for everyone to try out individually until one knight got the thing figured out first.

He brought his plate to the center of our group, where we all stared in wonder at a faintly glowing dome hovering above the fractal.

"Should we attempt another punch?" Sagrius asked.

I waved him forward, and the knight and him squared off. The plate with the floating dome was moved into place, which also answered another question - the floating invisible dome also moved with the plate, in a direct one to one motion to wherever the fractal was.

When Sagrius punched, this time his fist connected against the dome and was stopped flat. The knight on the other end grunted, but otherwise held the line.

"It's harder than it looks." He said. "Feels like trying to lift a weight. Nothing I can't keep going, but deceptive still, m'lord."

I nodded, motioning him to bring the plate over. "Let's sprinkle some dirt on top to see the dome better and get some measurements."

They did as asked, and what I found out basically gave me a heart attack. "Why is it like this." I muttered, retaking the measurements again. "Journey, are these numbers accurate?"

Cathida scoffed. "You don't trust me all of a sudden?"

"This is going to be stuck in the back of my head and annoy me endlessly." I said. "Feels almost like the occult is trying to be as inconsistent as it possibly can be, and personally wants me to suffer."

"Sir, is there something off with the measurements?" The knight asked, looking at the occult dome on the plate.

"Maybe. Measurements are as follows: It floats just about six inches above, approximately two inches to the right, one inch up and tilted slightly to the northwest. All of this is approximations from the relic armor's sensors, so until we have a full measuring tape to do science, this is all up in the air. It can't just be simply centered can it? No, that would make too much sense." I sighed, standing back up. I feel personally attacked here. It's really messing with my head in a way I have no words to describe.

The other knights gave me confused looks. "I'm not sure I follow." Sagrius said. "It might not be centered over the plate, but the effect we were looking for appears to work."

"I'm not sure how to say it." I said. "All of it feels so eccentric, hobbled together with magic duct tape, barely working. Like someone did the bare minimum and called it a day."

I assumed there were variations of this fractal that would fix all these strange deformities, but experimenting with it got absolutely nowhere. Even expanding any of the lines by so much as a centimeter made the whole thing stop working. I needed to find out a way to decode the equation that generated the fractal and work from there. At least that's my running theory.

I had a running theory that I was only seeing a two-dimensional projection, while the real thing is actually three dimensional. It was like trying to predict what the shadow of an object would look like if the object rotated - and the only data to work on was the frozen image of one single shadow from one single direction. Basically impossible.

After a few minutes of helpless tinkering and the realization I wouldn't be able to fix this at all, I gave up and continued with our battery of tests.

Two other quirks came with the shield, besides the strange placement. Powering it with electricity wasn't enough. You had to touch it with a soul tendril and command it to truly manifest in a very specific manner. If done correctly, activating the fractal felt like picking up a heavy dumbbell and the result was a tiny pinprick of shimmering occult like we'd seen from the first success. Then, we had to 'force' it to widen out by thinking hard on the concept of stretching it out, which became harder and harder to do as it grew larger in circumference, like lifting more and more weight. Blocking any kind of attack would magnify that effort for as long as the occult edge remained in contact.

Similarly, the shield seemed to slice through anything it appeared inside of, like a discount occult edge that triggered once. That's going to have some nasty applications in the future once I've got a full workshop and minions to boss around.

As for finding out the limits of that spell, that part was easy. We simply pounded at a loose sheet of metal with that fractal active until our occult blades broke through the spell and cut the metal. All good family fun around the campfire, playing with eldritch mystical magic that mocked common sense in a personal quest to piss me off.

The occult shield wasn't invincible, and it took the mental wind out of the user leaving them a little scatter minded and unfocused when it finally broke. So we concluded that this made for a good final layer of defense. If the relic armor shields failed, there were still a few extra hits that could be mitigated.

Not a great first-layer of defense. If the shield broke, the user would be left mentally fatigued, and that might cost the rest of the fight.

The number of hits a shield could take changed depending on the individual. Naturally, all my knights could manifest a much larger shield than I could and block a lot more hits with it. Show offs. They'd spent a lifetime training and were well familiar with pushing past their limits. Sagrius was nearly twice my age, and he hadn't ever put the sword down since he'd picked it up as a kid.

Atius's notes mentioned that willpower was used in a lot of different occult spells, not just the buckler. But, like all the occult so far, the answer ended up being a cosmic shrug and dice roll. Even among Atius's pick of spells, each one required a different kind of input.

Case in point the fractal of mirrors required extreme imagination and focus, the dome shield spell required sheer willpower to overcome mental weight, and the 'Arc strike' - a spell that let Lord Atius swing an expanding arc of occult from his blade outwards - that one required strong emotions and a bit of time to power the thing.

As it stood, this little parlor trick would require a few decades of mental training until the shield could be manifested at a good enough size, and still be able to block enough hits to be worth something.

We had about three days. Give or take one day, depending on how often we camped.

That said, we'd come this far, and Sagrius had a few suggestions that we still needed to really test out before we could rule this a flop or a success.

And succeed, we eventually did.

Now out of all the spells Atius wrote down, how did we take this humble little shield fractal with all its many eccentric quirks, and come out with a cheat code when even the lord Deathless himself hadn't been able to do more with it?

Let's count our blessings, specifically the ones we had that Lord Atius did not. First, the Winterblossom technique allowed us to move fast - really, stupidly, fast. So unlike the Deathless, Sagrius's argument was that we didn't need to resort to a large dome if we were fast enough to move the shield right to where it's needed. That would cut out years of training to widen the shield out. We could leave it as a tiny buckler and compensate for the rest. No bigger than the palm of a hand, while Atius's shield could stretch to cover a good meter in every direction.

Second - Atius practiced and learned how to manifest the shield in his left hand, even going as far as to forgo a second weapon just to make it easier for him to work with the occult shield. It took him focus in order to get it where he wanted it to be.

We didn't need that focus to manifest the thing like he did.

Even better, we didn't need to stick to one single fractal etching either. Anywhere we scratched out the rune, we'd have a shield on tap to use, so long as our soul tendrils could reach it in the right way. That left the number of hits the shield could take before the user was too mentally exhausted to keep it up, which admittedly we didn't have a way around. We tried layering the shields, but that made us mentally tired faster, for no real benefit. When one shield broke, there was no mental energy left to maintain the second one under it. And the second one under was wasted resources while the one above did all the heavy lifting.

While keeping the size of the shield small would do wonders on increasing the number of hits it could take, this was the one part where we had to accept that getting to block over ten hits would require some years of training. But that's still up to ten more hits that would have ended someone's life. Practically a second relic shield.

Now, if we were a group of shameless cheating cheaters looking to exploit everything to the absolute limits like any good Winterscars - and I'm not saying we were, just implying it - I would scribble this fractal on every inch of my gods damned armor like I was a raving lunatic. Then it wouldn't matter where the enemy hit from, or how fast I could move my armor to block the hit. I could pop out an occult shield in any direction instantly.

Was it overkill? Absolutely.

Would it be a pain and take Journey hours of work to inscribe them? Also yes.

Would Cathida screech in horror and complain the entire time about how hideous it would look? I'm not even sure why anyone would ask that question. Of course she'll complain, she's Cathida.

So did I end up vandalizing the entirety of my venerable ancient armor and muzzle Cathida the entire time, just for this slight advantage?

Don't be silly.

I made everyone else join in, too.

Next chapter - Dinner is served early

Book 3 - Chapter 29 - Dinner is served early

Can we take a moment to talk about birds?

Yes, birds. That strange mythical creature which supposedly defied gravity by flapping wings and feathers. Those animals. Clan culture is filled with references to angels and birds, mostly as symbols, but the only actual birds we have living and breathing are chickens - and those clearly prove birds can't fly.

For the longest time growing up, I was convinced this was some kind of a running joke in the archives, and that birds weren't real. Traders brought up older books filled with pictures of birds, some of them clearly soaring through the air and supposedly traveling at insane speeds - faster than humans could run. Some even said they'd come across actual birds on their trips to the Undersider cities. The entire time, I was beyond skeptical about it. I draw my suspension of disbelief at the notion that evolution could somehow finesse physics that much and get away with it. Tiny insects could do it - but they were tiny and nearly weightless.

Animals can swim through water, fish prove it. Air is far too thin for any kind of heavier animal to just swim through air. Ridiculous.

When I was younger, I asked a pilgrim about it and the man just seemed perplexed at how insistent younger me was about birds not being real. Yes, he confirmed, birds are real and they fly.

No, he doesn't have any pictures or video to prove it. Why not? Because birds were a natural part of Undersider lives to the point it's mundane to them. Do I take pictures of every pipe rat I see? No. So why would he?

I couldn't argue with that logic, and the younger me had to accept that birds were a real thing. But until I saw a bird flying through the air, the skeptical part of me remained.

It's been quite a few years since I ever thought of birds other than seeing them as symbols for the impossible. Up until today, deep underground, as my knights and I camped under a massive tree filled with red leaves.

The mite caverns had grown until they were no longer tunnels at all, but a massive cave-like places with a grove of trees stretching high up in each section, with shimmering red leaves. Trees had been a strange sight to me already, the sort of plantlife I'm used to seeing grows on walls, or small green stalks. But given that the armor could protect me from any kind of wildlife, I wasn't scared of being poisoned or that the plants would try to eat me.

And clearly, all kinds of other animals had also grown used to these trees.

Far above the branches, hundreds of birds chirped and nested, making a racket. The knights and I didn't notice them until we were nearby, where we realized the strange sounds we were hearing were above us. They didn't make any move to escape when we got close to the base of the tree, nor did they seem to care about us at all.

A hundred tiny red chickens. I'd just already assumed these birds were like their chunkier cousins, except clearly agile enough to climb a tree and hop around due to their smaller size. So had all the other knights, as we got settled in for another night underground, once the gawking was wrapped up.

Since the last blast door we passed a few hours ago, the region had lacked any kind of machine encounter. As if the whole place had been cleaned, or that they'd all given up on controlling this land.

While I wasn't sure what was the cause, the lack of machines turned out to be more of a setback. The constant fights had kept our power cells topped off as we scavenged off the dead machines. Not to mention those encounters had given the knights and myself some good hands-on training with the dome fractal that now covered our entire armors head to toe, making us look like walking cracked ceramic armors when the fractals were lit to life.

Some fractals were geometric. Others looked like a child had been given a pencil and told to scribble a line in every direction. The dome fractal was the latter, with no discernible pattern. So etching it all over our armors made them look like they'd taken thousands of minor cuts in a blender. Plus, just activating them lit the fractals in occult blue, which meant once we were back on the surface, we could use these as sheer intimidation. Walking across the white wastes while glowing occult blue usually meant Deathless.

Besides that aesthetics, the dome fractals worked out well. During testing, the user needed only to spear out a soul tendril into the fractal nearest to the oncoming attack and trigger it fully from the more dormant state. And with enough practice, we could have a few dozen soul tendrils stretched out across the armor, connecting to all the shield fractals.

I always felt like my soul had a natural round shape while nestled into the soul fractal, and being stretched out, twisted up into the Winterblossom technique, besides sprouting out a few dozen roots all over the armor, made me feel more like some kind of slime monster stuck inside the armor instead. The Occult was really gods damned weird. But can't argue with the results.

And talking about strange physics defying events, I got to see birds flying. One moment, the group and I were spending time gathering materials to cook our meal, and the next moment, something spooked all the tiny chickens in the tree.

And they leaped out like a hundred red leaves floating into the air, if only for a moment before purpose carried them away. Like some kind of invisible wind blew through the swarm of birds, they twisted and dived and moved with each other. A red sheet of shimmering feathers and chirps, casually defying gravity.

The group and I stared at the birds as they flew around us. Sometimes the swarm split up, a few isolated birds flying off for a moment before joining back in, like droplets of water kicked up from a splash, inevitably returning back to the main body.

They soared away, flying as one whole, to another distant tree.

It was a magical sight that reminded me there really was a first time for everything. The stories of angels with wings, transcending the mortal earth and leaving behind all the old hatreds to follow the three gods into exile far above the world felt that much more real rather than some mythological story. I had to see it to believe in it, and here it was before me, proof that life finds a way, even in the strangest ways.

We traveled through that forest for another day and a half, before the scenery and trees faded away back into rock granite, this time looking like closely stacked pillars, each with six sides. Hexagons, rising up in the dozens of various sizes, all made of stone without a single bit of moss or life anywhere to be spotted.

It was an utter change of environments the mites had set up. The cavern ceiling was once again visible, and this time there was no artificial sunlight at the top. Instead, everything around felt dead once more.

A feeling of dread settled on our shoulders as we traveled through this section of mountainous terrain.

We didn't need to travel far before I found out exactly where this feeling had come from.

Turning around a corner, we entered a rather large clearing, to which a small group of people were waiting patiently there. Five Chosen knights, standing stock still with weapons drawn.

And at their front, lazily sitting on one of the hexagonal chair sized pillars, was none other than To'Aacar himself.

He looked better compared to the last time I fought him. His spear was back in one piece, and given that he'd portaled off without the scraps the last time, I'd take a good guess this was a replacement. The rest of his body looked functional, albeit still seriously torn apart. That one malevolent violet eye was staring right at me, the other one still ripped apart from one of the stray chains last time.

He cracked his neck to the side, back and forth, rolling his shoulder, before standing back up off his seat. As if he had to deal with things far below his paygrade but still needed to make a show of it.

"I was wondering when you'd show up." I said, taking a step forward while the rest of my knights drew arms. We'd been expecting this kind of ambush. The clan lord had as well, so time to put all cards on the table and see what happens next. I'm counting only five Chosen knights right now. The others must be lurking around.

"I don't have time to entertain you." The Feather started with no preamble. "Surrender, give me the information I want and I'll let you leave alive."

Okay, wasn't expecting that. A fight was more expected, deals though? "That's pretty cut and dry coming from you. Where's the speeches and monologues?"

He tutted, looking beyond irritated. "There are greater matters I need to deal with than you, as of now. Give me what I want and I let you go your way. Should be an easy choice even a monkey could pick up on."

I brought out my own weapons, the knightbreaker on my left hand and Cathida's long-sword on my right. "No, I don't think I will."

The Feather all but spat to his side, taking a step forward to hop off the pillar down to the ground. "Don't push your luck, Winterscar. You're a side attraction at best." He lifted the speartip right at me. "The sooner I deal with this farce, the sooner I can return to handling the true threats. And don't think I haven't already spotted the larger group trailing behind you, I'm taking care of them as I speak. I have my own pet humans here to deal with yours."

Ah. So that's why there were only five Undersider knights at his side and not the full number. The rest are out fighting somewhere nearby.

I've had my hunches that the clan lord had sent out an elite group of knights as a counter-ambush when the Chosen latched onto the bait that I was. And given the lack of machines these last few days, these knights have been lurking around the area for some time. Fits the reasoning why the clan lord ordered me to delay my departure.

So the good news in all this was that if To'Aacar had already sent out a large swath of his Chosen knights against the clan lord's elite picks in a counter-ambush, it's no contest. "You really haven't done your due diligence." I said. "Your men are already dead. You basically sent them to their graves."

The spear twirled in his hand, igniting. "Hoo? Amusing. My new conscripts are very much still alive last I checked."

"You're bluffing. Chosen knights can't match surface knights."

The Feather scoffed, clearly insulted in a way I hadn't managed before. "Having to lie to a human to get what I want is beneath me. I will never be that desperate and wreched. I am To'Aacar, I take what I want."

"Doesn't change any facts here. Undersiders just don't have the same quality as us surface knights. There's no way your gang of misfits beats our relic knights."

He smiled then, a wide malicious grin filled with malice. "I've learned some interesting things about your so-called relic armors in the past few days. Urs locked them up so tightly just to protect them from someone like me. But the human inside? The nervous system? No hardlocks or encrypted defense in that wet meatwear you insects call a mind." The spear went to his side, as if sending a command, and one of the Chosen knights shambled forward. "All I had to do was to take control from the inside out. One small chip right at the spine and the rest is easy."

I knew right from the first step that something was wrong. The way the knight moved, like a… like a puppet.

Oh. Oh, that's not good. "You're controlling them directly?"

He hummed with satisfaction. "I found myself needing an army that I could trust would never turn on me. I saw what you did to your pet armor and thought it was a good idea to borrow. Most generous of you."

"I charge for consultations." I said. "You better pay my fee for the idea, or things are going to get ugly."

That got a malicious grin from him, best he could do with half his cheek ripped apart on one side. "Talking back so casually, as if you were a Deathless playing around. One measly little human, so far out of their depth. You have no context to fully understand exactly who you stand before, but my titles were earned. I've survived this far for a reason." The single violet eye outright twitched, and I glimpsed a shadow of something darker float through his features. He shook his head, clearing off whatever shadow haunted the ruins of his face. "It doesn't matter." The spear swung down, and his stance took a slight crouch. "Give me what I want. Or shut up, and die quickly."

Well. Knowing that all these chosen knights behind him were potentially as fast and as skilled as he was, even if it's only a fraction of his skill, that put a rather large question mark on living. Normally, heroes are supposed to fight against the enemy at all times, right? Well, there's another saying: Discretion is the better part of valor.

"Are you serious about your offer? I tell you want you want, and you fuck off and let me go on my own way without issue?" I asked.

"Coming to your senses?" He asked, sounding genuinely surprised. The spear lifted slightly, his position unwinding a small bit. "Unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. Consider today your lucky day. The time I save not having to deal with you is time that I value more. Hence the deal. Don't take this lightly, I've never offered a human anything like this, ever."

I wasn't here to fight To'Aacar. Or hunt down the Chosen either. I was here for my sister. And what happened in the bunker was only a few back-and-forth questions of no real importance, mostly Atius shaking down Tsuya for all she's worth.

Would it really be a mistake to tell the Feather? Get him out of my hair for good? I didn't need to tell him about Cathida's personal mission before she died, or what she was carrying with her. And strictly speaking, I could probably omit the audio recording part guiding me to Talen's spell record. Journey had long ago purged that and was specifically hard-wired to ignore its existence. I could technically give him the logs without having to worry about the spellbook being uncovered.

There was a lot I could give him without actually giving him anything important. Room to wiggle around.

"Cathida," I whispered. "Would you stop me if I folded to his demand?"

The armor replied instantly. "Cathida herself? The old bat absolutely would, she'd have you strangled for it. You're basically betraying the goddess, highest level of heresy and damnation, blah blah blah, all the guilded speeches and insults. Journey itself only cares about keeping you alive. It's rather hopeful that you do give up here, best odds of survival. But relic armors don't make decisions for their owners, they just deal with the fallout."

"You think he won't try to kill me?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea on that, deary. Neither does Journey. The scraphead does look like he's pressed for time and we're a roadblock with glimmering teeth."

I raised my voice back up. "If I tell you, what's to stop you from killing me after?"

The Feather tutted, spear lifting further up. "Fighting you comes at an opportunity cost to me. One I'd rather not pay right now. I… acknowledge you will take some amount of time to subdue. At least an hour or two, depending on how stubborn the lot of you are. Any other day, I'd have all the time in the world to play around. Not anymore."

I wonder how far I could push this. "So, I've got information you need and you can't waste the time trying to beat it out of me, eh?"

He outright growled. "You should note, Winterscar, I don't need you alive."

"Well, if you kill me, you'll never know what happened in the bunker." I answered back with a careless shrug. "I think you should sweeten this deal a little more. Might jog my memory, who knows."

That didn't do much to improve his mood. Cathida outright started laughing. Sagrius, my own gods damned captain, started to stare at me as if I had sprouted another head. Even through the visorless helmet I could tell. "M'lord?" He said in a strained voice, impressively communicating an entire paragraph of panic in that one word.

"What? You forget what House you're a part of Captain?" I shot back, feeling a little betrayed here.

"I think you forget, your sister was in that broken down shell of a bunker too," To'Aacar said "She must have seen everything you have. I could kill you where you stand and still have a second chance at completing my mission, all thanks to her." The Feather leaned casually on his spear, "Family, eh? Always the sword hanging over your head. Believe me, I know all about that. I'm here because you're the easiest of the two. Don't make me work for my lunch."

If he thought that would rattle me, it completely backfired on him.

It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders instead - Kidra was alive. Better, she was a harder target than I was, so she's probably in that Undersider city with plenty of surrounding firepower to borrow from. The mission I'd come down here for was worthwhile.

"If you're so pressed for time, why not come back later?" I said, calming down. "I'll give you my business card even, we can catch up over coffee. You do what you gotta do, seems important right?"

"Were it so simple." He said, and I could tell he meant it. "I am loyal to the pale lady, and completing my last objective will let me gain audience with her. She couldn't care less about anything, except for Tsuya." The spear flickered again in the air as he twirled it to point directly at me. "And you so happen to have exactly what I need. How convenient."

I turned to look at Sagrius who stood wordlessly at my side. His own helmet met my gaze, slowly and with calm. No words were spoken, but somehow I knew exactly where he stood. If I chose to try and fight a god, he would be swinging a sword at my side. Maybe he'd complain a bit, but he'd be there. If I picked to fall back and retreat, he'd be there too, carrying me out if it came down to that.

The rest of the Winterscar knights behind him gripped their swords, ready in stance for whatever order I gave. We had the knightbreakers, the new swords with matching techniques, and all of us covered our armors with the shield fractal. Each of my knights could take on at least five times the punishment a normal knight could handle with that single fractal alone. I had Cathida, with all her merged combat skills and my own spells as a sorcerer to supplement her. If all went wrong, we could even overclock the armor with the administrator permissions I had access to in a last ditch attempt to win. A group of clan knights had clearly followed behind us, no doubt all of them capable of using the Winterblossom technique. I didn't know if they were winning or losing against To'Aacar's puppets, but I could reasonably guess they were giving him a hard time. Else he'd have told me the rest of his army was on the way back.

He hadn't. And I think I believe him when he says bluffing is beneath him.

To'Aacar, right arm limp, eye gouged out, legs and body still shredded and hardly repaired. Somehow, instinct told me that even with all these handicaps, he was still more than capable of squashing me into the floor, armor and all if he went one on one against me. Worse - he effectively had five copies of himself controlling the Chosen knights against my own group. I wasn't sure exactly how much of his skills were passed through, or how effective the knights were, but the prick certainly seemed confident he could take me and my knights on.

Every advantage I could call on was right here with me, except for surprise. That was the only reason To'Aacar even offered the chance to walk away. I'm still a threat, and even he wasn't arrogant enough to deny that. If there was ever a time to fight and kill the scraphead for good, it was now.

But picking a fight with him here was surely going to see some of my men killed for it, if not run a risk of dying myself against what was ultimately an optional opponent. And even if I won, he'd be back.

My fat mouth usually gets me into trouble.

Time to see if it could get me out of it.

Next chapter - Trap triggered

Book 3 - Chapter 30 - Trap triggered

Objectively, the most rational course of action would be to hand over whatever To'Aacar wanted.

It's hard to argue with taking an easy way out over fighting a murderous killing machine that takes an entire team of Deathless to put down. Especially if said killing machine would go right after my head the moment the fight starts, since he's got Kidra as a backup.

On the other hand, I can't tell him everything that happened. Not to mistake my intentions here, I don't hold unquestioning loyalty to Tsuya. We've met exactly once, and it also didn't help that she was perfectly willing to murderize me as a regrettable cost of business. Not the best first impression.

The problem wasn't Tsuya. It was Cathida. The old bat had grown on me, and despite Journey's emulation not exactly being her, I still felt indebted and honor bound to complete her own dying task at some point.

Was I willing to wager my life on that, though?

Hopefully, I won't need to answer that question anytime soon. So long as he doesn't start asking questions about what happened after the bunker, should be fine.

"I'm open to negotiations." I said. "Assuming you let us go unharmed."

To'Aacar watched me, as if expecting deception. Then he seemed to almost relax, standing back up to his full height. "That was surprisingly easier than expected." The spear flicked back up, twirling around his hand until he slammed it down into the ground and let go. The metal hand of floating shards extended out to me, a request. "Hand over all recordings, and I'll be on my way."

I shook my head. "Don't have any. The relic armors deleted everything it heard, and Tsuya herself made sure anything else was gone. Only got my memory to go on. You need to ask your questions."

He tutted, hand curling back. "Annoying. I suppose there's little a human like you can do about it. How convenient for you." The Feather shrugged, rubbing the bridge of his nose in irritation. "So be it. Tell me the encounter with Tsuya in detail."

"She wanted to apologize to me for setting off explosives that I got caught in. Said that the bunker was no longer something she cared to keep secret since we'd already stumbled on it. Before she got to any real requests, Atius interrogated her to find out more things on Relinquished. He got a little heated with her."

"He made demands of that witch?" The Feather laughed, grinning. "Her own pet barking and biting? No one to blame but herself."

"He threatened he'd cut off the connection if she didn't comply."

The Feather grinned. "I always liked that Deathless. He's the only one of his kind with a spine to stand up to me. Rare quality. You're very much like him too, although with far less to back it up. Everyone else is so boring, with all the screaming and running." He tutted in disgust. "And the questions? What did that old mutt ask of that self-proclaimed goddess?"

"Mostly who she was and why the world was the way it was. He also wanted to know more about the new generation of Deathless. Got interrupted by Relinquished after that."

To'Aacar scoffed. "Those cowards aren't worth the history they tread upon. At least standard Deathless stand and fight once they're cornered. Not much of a fight, but I'll take any scraps I can find. The new generation? Nothing even remotely redeemable. Did he truly waste his time asking such tripe?"

"You know about them?" I innocently asked.

"Inverted quality for quantity for this generation. The lows Tsuya will go to, it's ridiculous. The process is now indiscriminate, no quality control at all. Women, children, elderly, soldiers and weaklings. Dredges one and all, unfit to even wield a blade, let alone the title. Most held onto past memories, what a mistake that was. Many don't even care to fight and hide away, pretending that nothing's changed. The ones that do embrace who they've become grow warped. Free of any consequences, your kind falls into depravity. Immortality is not a weight most human minds can suffer through." The spear flicked out, the metal hand grabbing hold of the shaft. "I suppose the little golden goddess has truly grown desperate. Perhaps she hoped among the rabble someone of worth might appear? She should know better. Empower all the ants she wants, not a single one can survive being squashed by a thumb. But I didn't come here to answer your questions. Continue."

"That's basically it." I lied. "There's a reason I'm not trying to hoard this info. Nothing of actual weight was said before Relinquished showed up and put a stop to all of it."

To'Aacar frowned, eyes narrowing. "You're lying to me, Winterscar. I can tell from your voice." The speartip swung again dangerously, a threat. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

On hindsight, maybe trying to lie to a machine wasn't the smartest idea. I needed to come up with something more convincing, because I found myself oddly unwilling to tell him about the mission Cathida had undertaken, despite the risks of a full-blown fight brewing at the cost. It just didn't feel right. "Relinquished showed up before anything important happened, I'm not lying on that. Atius was too focused on getting his answers first before the goddess could come to her point. I did get to ask a question to her that was important to me." I said, stalling.

"And that question was?"

I had an idea to handle the lying aspect, but I'd need my armor in on it. The issue is that To'Aacar could overhear under my helmet. He'd done that before, so I needed to figure out a way to talk to Journey directly. Get the armor on board with what I needed without actually saying anything.

Sign language behind my back? No, he'd probably learned it by now, and I doubt I could hide that behind my back.

A possible answer dawned on me. Some more secure method of getting what I want from Journey.

Into the soul fractal I dove, and from there, I poked at Journey's own soul fractal, prodding the relic armor's spirit. The connection took, and once more I felt its essence, thoughts and feelings interchanged.

It was tense, worried, alert, anxious. There was great danger before it, and apprehension. Fear. Not for itself, but for me. That I would be killed here.

Unexpected intrusion, define directive?

I sent it a message through my soul. Modulate my voice so that the lie detector isn't tripped.

Affirmative. It sent back. Preparing module.

"The question I had for Tsuya was a little off the cuff. I asked her if my father was alive or dead." I said, back in reality, "She said he might have survived." On the side of my HUD, I saw a small progress bar flicker into life. It was filling up quickly.

To'Aacar paused, that remaining eye flashing bright violet for a moment. "Your father was it? And you asked a god about that? Humans die all the time, why this one?"

"Well, it was important to me at the time and I was drugged up to the gills. Not thinking exactly straight."

He frowned, that single eye starting to look at me with a more baleful glare. "Do you have anything of value to tell? Or did you ask how many toes she had on her personal avatar? My patience is thinning."

The loading bar was at seventy percent. I needed to stall a little bit longer. "Hey now," I said, hands raised up placating. "Feet fetishes are very common. Don't look down on those folks."

Seventy percent.

"Not saying I'm one of those degenerates, that worship feet. But a goddess's feet would probably be the best feet to wor-"

The Feather outright growled at me, spear slicing through the ground in front of him, out of frustration. A line of blue cut into the granite, a promise of impending violence. "Is your sense of self-preservation faulty? Tell me what she told you. Now. You left that bunker with a golden orb, I saw it bounce by your feet. What was it."

Eighty percent.

I had to trust Journey would come through for me. "Right, the golden orb. The golden orb we found inside the bunker, that golden orb, yes."

Ninety percent

"I'm just remembering it right now, had all kinds of funny patterns floating around it. Very imperial looking, no doubt. Also in some kind of capsule."

Hundred percent. Module ready. The Feather snarled, taking one step forward. I took a step back, hands up, cowering slightly. "Okay, okay! She said it was an older attempt to attack Relinquished with, and we needed to deliver it to the first imperial priest we could find. They'll know what to do with it. I left it up on the surface buried under some snow on the north west, exactly twenty miles off the colony site."

Had it been enough? There was an oddity in my voice. I heard myself talking, but something else was being projected out the helmet's speakers. Just a slight reverb that overshadowed my own voice. If there was a difference, I couldn't tell. Just an echo to me.

I held my breath.

To'Aacar watched, eyebrows narrowing down over his ruined face. The eye closed. Then opened again, and I knew I'd fucked up. "Do you really think I wouldn't notice a voice modulation, Winterscar? Congratulations, now I can't tell if you're lying or not, but I can tell you're covering something. It seems in the end I still need to squash you all under my thumb after all, rip that helmet off your head and negotiate the only way you hairless apes understand." The spear twirled again, and he struck down into the ground. "With violence." Occult pulsed across the spear, and chunks of rock exploded out before him in a massive torrent.

Dust expanded out of the pulverized stone, instantly obscuring the battlefield. Journey auto-compensated the visual field a moment later, just enough time to spot a spear tossed straight through, right at our chest.

Cathida reacted instantly, hands drawing out her blades just in time to block. Following right behind was To'Aacar himself, snatching the weapon and slamming it down into the ground again, occult pulsing through the broken cracks, sending the rocks flying up again and clouding the battlefield.

My armor dodged the damage by jumping over the shockwave, which was exactly what the Feather hoped for, since he sent a wave of occult arcing out from his spear, sending us flying backwards a distance away.

My own knights charged right for the Feather at the same moment, occult blades in hand. To'Aacar didn't pay them attention. From the scattered dust, the Chosen knights lumbered out to intercept Captain Sagrius and the rest of the Winterscar knights.

Occult pulsed across the Feather and he vanished, reappearing right before me, spear striking out casually to skewer me in the chest. Cathida and I both struck back, my own occult spells pooling together.

Speed wise, To'Aacar was simply on a different level, avoiding, ducking or deflecting every attack while striking back. The lack of his right hand to use limited attack openings from his side, but somehow he still wove them in with that oversized spear, making use of his feet whenever he could as a spacing tool, or to throw off our attacks.

Or playing it more meticulously safe this time around, attacking only when the strike was guaranteed and Cathida would be unable to safely retaliate.

Damage started piling up on Journey, as both of us were forced back, barely keeping it together. The chosen knights on the other hand were not doing as well against my own knights. They certainly matched the speed of the knights, but didn't surpass any.

Armor was still hard locked to prevent serious damage to the user. No matter how fast To'Aacar moved his puppets by whatever chip he'd implanted into their nervous system, they were still unable to go past their limits. Which meant it was swordsmanship against swordsmanship. And on that front, my knights were holding the advantage, slowly breaking down the enemy.

My own fight was frantic up until To'Aacar let me take a breath to recover, taking a few steps back and resetting the fight. I could see the hollow parts of his body, through all the tears and battle damage, glowing red hot. The air above his head shimmered, the halo resting just above.

Journey. I said, reaching to the armor across the soul bridge. Rakurai, Second form. Overclock the system. See if we can use that strike to open him up for a knightbreaker round.

Danger. The armor returned. This unit was not designed for overclocking systems.

I know that! But we're already deep in the shit now as is, might as well go full tilt right off the start.

Cathida shrugged, taking a new stance with her long swords while To'Aacar watched on from a few paces afar.

"Ho? Another trick Winterscar?" He said. "I don't recognize that stance. Some other ancient secret technique you plumbed out of whatever hole your ancestors died in?" Behind, the chosen knights were holding off my own knights, the sound of clashing blades becoming background noise.

"Something like that." The crusader said, and then struck. The lighting style was really made to abuse the speed of the Winterblossom technique. But predictably, the Feather could match that speed. Occult pulsed around my armor, and I joined in the flurry as well, striking down with three back to back spectral mirrors, each wielding a blade, each attacking in the blind points of that move.

The Feather didn't even flinch, grinning instead. His spear flipped into position, shield flaring on the shaft as he took Cathida's first blade and let her blade edge slip down the shaft. The wide defense caught one of my own spectral blades, but two more had been thrown out from an angle the spear couldn't block.

He allowed a glancing hit on his torso from Cathida's second blade, in exchange for letting him sweep his leg up, and stomp downwards on the broadside of the blade. It crashed into the ground and snapped in half as he forced his full weight down into it.

The Winterscar blade instantly flickered off. A regular occult blade would have continued to function on the broken blade edge, but these blades were made of carbon fiber, and only the outline was metal. The moment he'd snapped the whole thing, the metal contact broke. That was a flaw I should probably amend for the next prototype.

Down one sword. But not out of the game yet.

My own attacks approached his exposed torso in that sliver of time. Two spectral blades, each a mirror image of the winterscar swords and just as lethal.

His single working hand let go of his spear, the floating metal bits starting to shine bright occult blue. On each digit's edge. I realized immediately what he'd done. Why his left hand was made of floating metal bits in the first place.

That wasn't only a hand. None of that had been decoration like the rest of his gear. Each of those fingers were tiny occult blades.

With the speed of a monster, the clawed fingers struck downwards, catching both my own mirror blades, dissipating each in the strike. From there, he reached out for our chestplate next, five occult blade digits outstretched, like talons.

Heat surged through Journey's armor, instantly getting caught inside the temperature controlled innards and leaking out onto my skin. Cathida expertly backed us a step away, drawing out our rifle in the same motion, knightbreaker loaded and pointing downrange, pointblank.

Occult flared around To'Aacar's body for a moment and he vanished. Cathida didn't fire, either because she'd already calculated that he'd make a getaway, or that she was using the threat of the weapon as a means of preventing his attack.

With my occult sight, I saw exactly where the Feather reappeared. Right by his discarded spear. His leg knocked the weapon back into his hand. He twirled it into a throwing position along with his body, all in one fluid motion, and then launched it like a javelin. Occult pulsed across his arm.

The spear vanished right as it left his hand, causing a small shockwave of dust to flare out where the spear should have been.

Deep into the soul sight, where I saw the concept of a spear vanish, another one appeared.

Behind! I shouted through the soul bridge, not trusting my own voice to be fast enough, and Cathida heard me just in time to twist and deflect the incoming weapon.

It was a catch twenty two. Block the spear, and open our back to the enemy. Or block the enemy and open our back to the spear.

To'Aacar loomed behind us, having already cleared the distance, that hand of floating occult blades outstretched. I've seen what my knightbreakers did. Force multiplication by surface area was utterly devastating when it came to the occult.

The hand opened up, reaching to grab the back of our neck. Five occult blades worth of damage. In his nearly broken eye, I saw only death and hatred. He wasn't planning on keeping us alive anymore.

Glowing fractals etched across Journey's armor glimmered further into life as I triggered each. A nearly invisible shimmer appeared into reality, the dome just wide enough to intercept the unpowered palm of To'Aacar's hand and halt its progress. Bits of his fingers were stopped by proxy, the invisible force holding them in suspension limited in range without the palm to follow through. I felt the weight in my mind crush me against a wall and the occult dome nearly winked out from the sheer kinetic energy.

I held my ground and shoved back with everything I had.

It wasn't nearly enough. His nail tips were still in range, scratching into Journey's armor, while the rest of the surface area wouldn't make it.

But I didn't need perfection. I just needed to avoid death by a hair.

Journey had seen it exactly as I'd hoped and refrained from wasting its shield. The finger tips brushed through the armor, slicing without resistance, in… and out. Too far away from my spine.

Occult pulsed around my armor as the mirror fractal again lit up deep inside.

His hand instantly retreated, forced away to defend against two mirror strikes, battering them like annoyances. Cathida's own blade flipped in her hand, and she struck backwards under her armpit, in a quick jab. He stepped away to avoid it, giving her enough time to fully turn and stab properly. The blade dove straight for his torso, and he made no move to avoid it. Instead, his clawed hand shot straight down. Right where the hilt of our blade would be in moments - no, our wrist.

That deadly hand opening up to grasp.

I realized the checkmate. He didn't need to hit anything vital. All he needed to do was grab hold of Journey in any location to drain the shields. The wrist would do just fine. He could out-trade us easily, five blades against one.

But Cathida was still overclocking her systems right now, and she could think just as fast as he could.

She let go of the sword, letting it loose in the air.

To'Aacar's hand instantly shifted midway, from targeting the wrist to diving for the hilt of the weapon. Between breaking my shields or disarming me for good, To'Aacar calculated disarming me would be the safest move in that fragment of an instant.

His hand cut straight through the blade, breaking the weapon for good - and putting itself right in the way for Cathida's hand to wrap around his own wrist in a tight lock.

To'Aacar snarled, lifting his hand up, and us with it. Cathida stubbornly didn't let go.

Her right hand drew the rifle downrange, pointed straight at his chest, all while she held his arm in place. I saw the violet eye narrow.

Cathida pressed the trigger. Almost the same instant, To'Aacar's leg shot up, slapping the rifle tip off course, where the knightbreaker round exploded out into the world, narrowly missing his face by a few inches and flying off in a strange lopsided course. The kick had been so quick and devastating; it hadn't simply put the rifle in an odd direction. It ripped the weapon in half, caught between the grip of a relic armor and the full might of a pissed off Feather.

"Keith!" I heard Cathida yell over the speakers, already letting go of the ruined weapon.

I knew what I had to do. To'Aacar had thought we'd been disarmed with both our blades broken and the knightbreaker round wasted. But with her free hand, Cathida had reached down to the boot, and grabbed the hilt of her reserve dagger. With every bit of focus I could muster, four mirror blades appeared from that hand, each lifting a copy of that dagger, and diving straight for the enemy.

To'Aacar swung us straight down into the ground, trying to dislodge us like gunk stuck on his arm. Rock and stone were pulverized as Journey's shields flared against the hit, but compared to an occult blade, this was nothing the armor couldn't handle. In the meantime, my attacks continued their path straight for his body, all while Cathida held a deathgrip on him, stopping him from dodging more. He tried to force an attack through anyhow, but the relic armor was strong enough to slow his movements to a crawl. The only offence he had was one free foot, which he used to kick at my mirror images, expertly avoiding the blade edges and hitting the malformed arms instead. It was working until I started pulsing my images in parallel to one another instead of consecutively.

He snarled, as four daggers stabbed into him, vanishing a moment after from my inability to keep them manifested in the world - but not before they dealt their full damage.

"You worm!" He screamed, again lifting us up and slamming us down again, before dragging against the rock. "Get off me!"

We were swung into a stone hexagonal pillar, completely crushing through it. And then swung back up into the air, and brought back down into the ground.

Cathida didn't listen, instead she slammed the dagger into his arm viciously the entire time, even while we were clobbered through the pillar. His shield triggered, and held the blade in check. I joined in on the onslaught, stabbing again and again as fast as I could flash through the occult spell. Desperate to break that Feather's shield once and for all.

Unable to do anything else, To'Aacar's free leg lifted and slammed down on my shoulder parallel to Cathida's deathgrip, and then pressed, trying to pry Cathida's arm off his own. The old bat on her part, took the change in stance as an invitation to slam her dagger into To'Aacar's chest, audibly snarling herself as the weapon crackled against the Feather's shields, slowly breaking through by sheer strength, sparks of all kinds flying in all directions.

I stopped trying to time my images to attack all at the same time, instead going for straight quantity, stabbing out as much as I could, as fast as I could.

Journey's superstructure groaned, bits of metal starting to crush inwards from the monster's foot. In my soul sight, I could see the armor compress, collapsing internally bit by bit as tolerances were breached.

All while Cathida continued to savagely hold the knife against the fizzling shield, occult mirror strikes flashed all over, many malformed in my haste, but the majority living long enough to get a bit of damage in.

How powerful were a Feather's fucking shields in the first place?! This was already three times the damage a regular relic armor could sustain.

To'Accar's own hand thrashed around, trying to grab anything it could like a dying beast but Cathida refused to let go, keeping the angle just right so that he couldn't reach with the fingertips.

The Feather's shield continued to crackle against the blades.

Parts of Journey's armor fractured and broke apart, flying off and revealing parts of my arm under it, metal ligaments holding tightly and snapping away one by one. I could almost feel the structural integrity of the arm going past critical.

A few seconds was all we had left.

He screamed and pushed harder, further denting the imprint of his foot into my shoulder armor.

It was too late. The Feather's shields finally broke.

Cathida's dagger dug into his chest without hesitation, twisted and slashed outwards, cutting a deep gash through the Feather. The second hit, he barely avoided by twisting his entire torso, letting the stab graze over his chest.

She went right for his throat next, but his foot finally pried us loose, the relic armor giving out as too many ligaments had critically failed under pressure. The whole thing snapped, and power faded from the gauntlet holding onto the Feather's hand.

To'Aacar didn't waste a moment of freedom and kicked us. Far, far away.

"Now you've gone and done it." He snarled, walking in our direction, feet knocking the discarded spear back into his hand. His body twitched for a moment before he resumed his pace. "Congratulations-s-s-s-s, Winterscar! You've officially made it to the-the-the-the top of my most hated list. Let me hand you your prize!"

I could see warning notifications all over my HUD, Journey had taken a severe beating. The arm was completely out of order. Heat was venting off the newfound openings, coming out as a haze and vapor in the air.

The spear struck us like a hammer, right on my head. Journey's shields turned on to take the impact, but it sent us reeling backwards. Another two hits came down, one hitting my stomach and bending me over, the second following through and launching us into the air again.

Shields were being drained fast. No weapons, except for our dagger. And one arm down. Father had fought with these odds once.

And he hadn't made it.

To'Aacar took a moment, glaring down at us, his own body venting out heat. Then, that single eye flashed with surprise. He twirled around, looking straight up the cliff-side.

A clan knight had leaped above him from the higher ground, silently falling down directly at him. A knight I didn't recognize as part of the crew I'd come here with, because that wasn't a Winterscar. No, the colors and armor pointed to House Resolution, a minor house who had a single relic armor to their name.

He must have been from that second group, the one that the clan lord had sent to tail me. The one that was supposed to be tied up with the rest of the Chosen knights.

As he soared down he held two active weapons. In one hand, the silver and violet blade that had killed Clan Lord Atius. In the other, an old gold and steel blade, Breaker, the clan lord's personal sword. Both of these swords were capable of cutting through more than just matter.

He hurled Lord Atius's longsword with an expert cast. But not at the machine.

The old imperial sword sunk into the ground right before me, occult edge cutting through with no resistance until the hilt prevented the sword from completely sinking. Cathida reached out, and yanked it out of the ground with our working arm. It remained lit, inscriptions on the side of the blade still clearly polished. Old as the sword was, still in working condition.

I realized Drass's gambit. She'd brought weapons to kill a Feather. The second group had likely either survived the counter-ambush and were on their way here, or they'd held their ground and bought this knight enough time to race to the signal Drass had given me, carrying the weapons we needed to cut the head of the snake for good.

House Resolution's knight showed no fear across that faceless helmet as he fell straight into the jaws of death.

His now free hand reached behind his back and drew out a Knightbreaker round. Not the rifle, not the grenade launcher - no, the round itself. The crazy bastard triggered it right there and then as he fell, the chains spilling out, activating, cutting two of his fingers off, and slicing through parts of his armor by accident despite his best attempts to keep the dangerous thing as far away to his side as possible. Occult chains were stupidly dangerous, just as likely to maim the wielder as the enemy, hence why I'd set up rifle launchers for them. Let it do it's thing away from the user. The clan knight had clearly prepared himself for a suicide run. Somehow, he held onto the occult round, bleeding fingers never letting it go.

He landed with a heavy crack against the ground, relic armor flaring out its shield for a moment, occult chains flapping down and cutting into the ground as well.

Helmet looking up, just in time to see the Feather's spear, speeding down right at him.

Occult pulsed.

But not from To'Aacar.

Twelve perfectly formed mirror images stepped out from the knight's landing position. Like pale blue wraiths brought back from death itself. The mirror fractal.

There's only one person I know that could use the mirror fractal with that level of competence. Someone I realized had played us all this whole time, waiting for the enemy to scurry out into the light of false security. Counter intelligence he'd called it once.

Violet eye widened in surprise. To'Aacar aborted his attack, instantly spearing out in the defense as the wraiths surrounded him. It was too late, and too many.

Each lunged forward.

Each struck at the same time.

And each wielded a replica knightbreaker, copied from the one he held active at his side.

Forty eight occult chains raced for the Feather, from all directions, like a deathtrap from the maw of hell itself.

Next chapter - Choke

Book 3 - Chapter 31 - Choke

Forty-eight ghostly occult chains raced forward, unavoidable, flailing around and clashing against each other in the race for the Feather's throat. One image had even leaped above, the ghost chains lashing out in anticipation of the Feather jumping up to escape.

In any other situation, that would have been the end of To'Aacar. Body slashed away, only a head left behind to yell at us, if he were lucky. But the Feather didn't need luck. He had the occult.

To'Aacar didn't bother with theatrics, not when his life was on the line. Occult pulsed around him and he vanished, reappearing further away. The mirror images all struck, clashing against each other at the center-point, dissipating into fading clouds.

Clan Lord Atius walked through the fading mist, taking his helmet off and tossing it aside. A demi-god had little need for a helmet.

"I see you've been holding out on your abilities." He said. "How unfortunate to find out now."

"I see you're not as dead as you should be." The Feather snarled back, damage sparking through the ribcage from the dagger blows, still multiplying his voice at odd sections. "Fortunately, I will rectify that shortly, believe me."

Drass had always stressed that she was only a temporary clan lord each time I met her. In addition to her iron conviction that the Feather would be dealt with. Atius must have been in contact with her this whole time, assuming he really had faked his own death, working in the background free of any eyes.

In hindsight, I'm not sure why I hadn't questioned the odd death, considering how in depth the clan lord went when it came to counter-intelligence. Even against two assassins, he'd have them both killed within minutes using occult powers. And then he'd have all the time in the world to set up the rest. He must have seen it like a gift from above, falling on his lap.

Around us, the fighting was still at a fever pitch. The Winterscar knights were occupied with To'Aacar's controlled knights. The only advantage the Chosen had was their unnatural coordination with one another. Something my own knights were slowly adapting and overcoming. The result of that war was almost inevitable. Captain Sagrius was leading, organizing the knights into chipping away at the Chosen. It was only a matter of time until the Chosen knights made a mistake, wiping them out.

"Atius," I said, hobbling to regroup by his side. "Plan?"

He gave a cautious glance, keeping his eyes fixed on To'Aacar. "Never seen him this broken down before, lad. Well done indeed. Never seen him use a teleport ability either. You've rattled extra snow out of him."

To'Aacar scoffed. "Minor battle damage."

The Deathless raised an eyebrow at that. "You have no shields."

"It changes nothing! Insects cannot defeat a god!" He screamed back, growing unhinged.

Atius ignored his jab, turning slightly to me, almost as if scheming in the open. "Cornered animals fight the hardest. Play it safe, we'll grind him down instead. Maybe we'll get his other arm cut now that we're armed for it." He lifted his head, a malicious grin pointed at the Feather. "Wouldn't that be something, old friend?"

The Feather growled, "Challenge me all you wish. Your life is measured in hours." He crouched, occult pulsing around before he leaped forward, ripping the pillar he stood on into parts. Halfway in his leap, he vanished.

Atius's eyes flashed occult blue, then widened in surprise. He twisted and delivered a kick directly into my chest, throwing me back. Not a moment too soon. To'Aacar emerged from an occult portal, slashing through where I'd been a moment ago. The spear twirled, and he struck out against the Deathless in a seamless movement.

No images came from Atius, instead he fought with both the wild knightbreaker round in tandem with the machine sword. I recognized the spell he was using as one he'd listed in the data he'd left behind. Eyes glowing occult blue, leaving trails behind as he moved. At this moment, Atius was seeing hundreds of futures, showing him the optimal path to victory.

And more importantly - the knightbreaker chains seemed to almost move according to his will, with the Deathless being able to handpick the best way to swing and pull back with the wild weapon. They slashed and snapped with each strike, lashing at the Feather.

To'Aacar did not remain in place. Instead, he leaped around using the occult every few seconds, keeping himself on the run to maintain speed. It seemed to travel with him, jump after jump, his speed staying constant despite the dozens of directions he struck out.

At a distance, he'd launch his spear out like a javelin, sending it through an occult portal to strike out at the Deathless from unexpected angles, to which he'd appear at the ending path to recover the weapon, either leaping away again, or continuing the assault if the occult chains weren't in the way.

"Keith!" Atius called out, "Sprint forward, left side, attack the air now!"

I followed orders without hesitation. Dutifully sprinting forward and striking out blindly into the air using the borrowed blade on my left.

To'Aacar emerged from the occult at the same moment, hand reaching out to grab his incoming spear, only to completely abort the movement the instant he spotted my blade swinging straight at his unshielded throat. His occult spear flew wide past him, as he was forced into a duck, low to the ground. My blade cut right through the metal halo and the tip of his shoulder tower, slicing them both, breaking the halo and damaging the shield.

Atius was already leaping onto the Feather, knightbreaker round held in his hand far away to his side, eyes fading away as the occult spell ended. But that left him free to use the rest of his powers. Another dozen mirror images appeared, each swinging the replica knightbreaker chains at the Feather, all crashing down on him.

To'Aacar scrambled away, kicking hard at the ground in order to rocket backwards, leaving a crater behind him where the rest of Atius's image crashed down on, slicing the ground into chunks before fading.

The Feather didn't stop, retreating all the way to the back, yanking his impaled spear from a pillar it had sunk deep into and jumping high up on top. Heat wave rippled around his frame. That single eye glaring down at us with unmistakable hatred. Then it widened, "I've just realized something, Winterscar." He said, sounding almost gleeful for some reason.

That's not something I like to hear. But the longer we keep him occupied, the more time we buy for my knights to wrap up the chosen and for Atius's own group to arrive. With that many knights, all wielding the winterblossom technique and armed to the teeth, even To'Aacar wouldn't be able to escape us.

"I've wasted my time trying to break into these armors of yours before I gave up and took control of the human users inside. I've just realized that my time wasn't wasted." He outright seemed to leer at me now. "There's a reason he made the default settings as they are. And there's a reason he didn't allow random users to mess with the administration settings. Allow me to demonstrate exactly why."

My HUD flickered, and then fuzzed for a moment, almost freezing. A dozen error messages began to appear all over the interface. Before I could even ask what was going on, my movement locked up, the armor taking command.

My stance was forced to relax, as the armor made me to stand straight. "He's got control of my suit!" I yelled out as loudly as I could.

Atius got the message, instantly delivering another relic powered kick into my stomach and sending me flying away, far outside of any range I could do damage from. To'Aacar shrugged from his perch. "As if I need help in killing you, Atius."

The Feather turned to me, waving his spear in a vague order. "As for you, why don't you go walk off and die alone somewhere, if you would be so kind?"

The armor stood up, brushed imaginary dirt off, and sheathed my sword with a cheeky pat on the hilt. Then, it turned, and marched off with me trapped inside it, helpless. The only reason I hadn't gone into complete panic was the soul fractal. It was still active, as were all my other fractals. Whatever To'Aacar had done, he'd only taken over the remote override. I reached out to Journey's soul fractal and tried to get to the bottom of this.

Panic. Despair. They crashed into me like a wave, overwhelming me for a moment until I snapped back to focus.

Unable to override administrator commands. It said to my probing.

Administrator commands? Can't I order a counter command?

Middleware attack detected. All commands from the user are being intercepted. Unable to purge virus.

Journey walked us out of the battlefield, step by step. Hexagonal pillars on all sides began to obscure the world, but the armor pressed on, following deeper into the path. Behind me, I could hear the crashing of occult blades again, the fight between Deathless and Feather resuming, To'Aacar not giving Atius any time.

Eventually we reached a cliff of some kind, and Journey came to a stop. Its working arm slowly rose up, and then unhooked my helmet and lifted it off before casually tossing it down into the abyss. The soul fractal I'd been inhabiting inside the helmet faded away, and my spirit snapped back into my body. Vision and color returned to my eyes, as the occult sight vanished.

The soul sight had a long range, but everything beyond that range was simply chaos that I couldn't understand. I'd seen the edge of the cliff we'd walked to, and nothing under it. Up until my eyes were opened and I saw the true sight of where we were.

Under me was a mile long drop. And before me, was a massive ecosystem. A forest of red trees, stretching across the land before me, broken up by larger granite blocks with glowing blue machinery inside. Above, there were three sources of sunlight, each fading into a red glow of sunset. From here, I could see the underground world with such clarity.

It all knocked me breathless, making me forget for a moment my predicament.

And then my working arm reached up and an armored gauntlet wrapped around my throat, rendering me truly breathless as is squeezed.

These fucking calculators and their obsession with suffocating people to death.

I didn't panic. Yet. Instead, my mind flashed through options I had while I was still lucid enough to think. First, I needed to buy myself time. I had a reserve soul fractal by my ribcage, and into that I dove, seeking the calm that came with it. Inside the soul fractal, my body seemed to be going catatonic which greatly increased the time I had to work out a plan. My own mounting horror and panic faded away, as did my heart rate. Now I needed to figure a way out of here.

No one was coming. To'Aacar was already a monster to fight alone, and Atius would need every bit of effort he had in just surviving until the rest of the soldiers could tag in. I had to save myself.

I could feel Journey's own soul begin to panic. The armor could tell how much time I had left before my body truly began to suffocate. A tendril of my own soul reached out to the armor, trying to reassure it. I've got a plan. Don't worry.

One of my arms was broken, which the armor couldn't move - but armor was still moveable by my own power, only heavy to do so. I struggled to lift the metal, my own muscles straining against the weight. The effort was forcing my body's heart rate, and decreasing the time I had to live. I had a single target: Atius's sword, sheathed on my belt. My hand missed the hilt a few times before I finally got it right and wrapped my fingers around it.

The other hand continued to choke me, single-minded. Completely ruthless.

I drew out the sword, turned it on, and slowly brought it up with an excruciating effort. My plan was simple: Hack away at my rebellious hand holding my throat. If I did it right, I'd cut only the machinery that powered the gauntlet without cutting into my actual hand. If I couldn't manage that, I'd just cut the entire hand off and consider it a small price to pay for surviving.

A spark of hope flared inside Journey as the armor watched.

To'Aacar seemed to be watching too, because the broken armored hand flickered back to life and began to buckle, the few ligaments that were still working contracted, seizing up and locking my hand in an awkward but unmoveable position. That prick. It was hard enough to move the metal alone, now with parts of the armor functioning against me, there was no hope in moving the blade.

I dove back into the soul fractal and reached out to Journey. The poor armor was beyond traumatized now. Not only was it's single and only directive to protect the user, it was being used to directly kill me in the slowest possible way, all while it watched on helpless to do anything. This was the worst imaginable torture an armor could go through.

I wrapped my soul around the spirit, reassuring it I'd find a way out. That everything would be okay.

Can you detach the broken arm plates? I asked.

Negative. Emergency systems in arm damaged. It answered back. Alternate solution required.

Plan B it is. I reached for the fractal of mirrors, powering it on. I might not control my hand, but my hand still held an occult blade that was powered on. That's all the fractal of mirrors needed to work.

An image of the frozen hand holding Atius's blade manifested and slowly lowered to cut into my traitorous hand. It worked for a second, Journey's shields staying dormant and allowing the mirror blade to cut into the metal. A lot easier to control, too, so I might just save my hand.

And then the image vanished from sight.

I thought I'd messed up my focus. I hadn't. Instead, the mirror fractal itself had vanished from my occult sight.

Where did it go? I asked.

Administrator commands received. Shutdown request was acknowledged and carried out.

It had been turned off. To'Aacar was watching somehow, getting feedback on what I was doing.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit. Worse than scrapshit. I should have just sliced straight through my hand and not let him get a chance at realizing my plan.

I needed another plan. He hadn't turned off any of the other fractals inside my armor, so the attack felt more like a passing backhand while he continued his fight with the clan lord. A distraction. Which meant if I knocked my traitorous hand out all at once, he'd be too late to stop me.

Could I melt the hand off outright in one large blade of occult heat? No. Not possible.

Maybe the dome fractal could shove his hand away from my throat, buy me a few more minutes. The dome fractal had been etched just about everywhere on my armor, including by my neckline. But it needed to have been right between the offending hand and my own fleshy neck to be useful in prying the hand off, so that was equally off the books.

I ran through the rest of the fractals I had access to, coming up empty. Stuck frozen in a coffin, strangling myself to death, with all the occult around me - and none of it could help.

For the first time, Journey's own soul reached out to me. A small, feeble tendril. I've known the armor for some time now, and it had never done this before.

Blood oxygen levels are critical. Immediate solution required. User fatality imminent.

I felt panic for the first time, even deep in my soul fractal. I could see my own body was starting to shake by itself, trying to suck down air and failing. Held completely still by the frozen armor. I had no working plan left, no cheat, no trick, nothing up my sleeve that I could pull off except to eject.

What happens if my body dies, while I remain inside a soul fractal? Father had survived before as a spirit, but while I wasn't thrilled at the idea of dying and living like this, I'd take that over oblivion.

Journey recognized the thoughts in my head, the understanding that I had hit the bottom of the well and death was all but certain for me. It went through a list of emotions, fear, despair, and finally, resolution.

Alternate solution identified. Executing emergency shutdown.

Next chapter - Like Father, like Son

Book 3 - Chapter 32 - Like Father, Like Son

Before I could ask what it was even talking about, my body seemed to yank my soul back into place, everything turning back into life.

The world and color surrounded me again, and the armor's deadly clutching hand fell down at my side, limp. My body didn't waste even a moment and was already drawing in fresh air, leaving me gasping and wheezing. The weight of the armor was now everpresent, forcing me down into my knees as I hacked away for air at the same time, everything felt too heavy to move. On both my sides, I heard the sound of rolling cylinders and realized what Journey had done. It had ejected its power cells. All of them. All at once. Too quickly for To'Aacar's middleware virus to inform him in time to counteract the order.

Without power, the suit was now nothing more than a heavy lump of metal. Every occult fractal was equally powered off, leaving me stranded with no defenses. But I would live for another day, so that's a win in my book.

I coughed and hacked some more, my throat feeling sore, all the while my arms strained to keep me upright.

I tried to stand up, but the weight was insane. Nearly four hundred pounds, all distributed around my frame. So long as I didn't move and kept kneeling upright, I could use the chassis itself to support the weight. But the moment I tried to stand or raise, I was fighting against it all.

Just keeping myself from falling flat on my face was a challenge on my core.

But I was alive. First thing's first, I needed to get dangerous things out of my way, least I fall and impale myself on my own sword. With slow and steady movements, I managed to sheath Atius's sword back on my belt. At least my arms were light enough to somewhat move, so long as I took a good break in between breaths.

With that out of the way, I now needed a new plan. No way around it. I'd need to take the suit off if I wanted to go anywhere now. It would be a long process, but better be out of the suit and mobile than to remain trapped here.

There was that distinct sound of occult behind me, and I felt my hairs stand on my neck.

"Well, well, well. Trying to escape your execution, are we?" To'Aacar said. "You can't weasel your way out of everything, Winterscar."

I tried to turn my head around to get a good view of him without falling flat on the ground, but that was harder than I thought. In the end, I didn't need to. The Feather walked calmly around, until he was face to face, while I remained rooted on my knees.

He looked just as beaten up as the last time I'd seen him. Face still clawed off by the knightbreaker round he'd taken on our first encounter. Chest sliced through, exposing the internal circuits, many of which were glowing red hot, giving him a seriously goulish appearance. The halo was nowhere to be seen, since I'd sliced that in two.

My mouth started running off before I could even think. "How about we call it a draw today, and try another round tomorrow. We're all pretty tired and it's getting late."

He grinned. "Begging for your life? Futile, but entertaining."

"If you kill me, there goes your entertainment." I coughed, still finding it hard to talk. "But I'm still open to putting all this behind us as a misunderstanding."

He scoffed. "Absolutely not. You are dying in the next minute, no exception."

"In that case, do I get a dying wish?"

He laughed and extended a hand. "What could you possibly wish for?"

"I wish you'd go fuck yourself. Respectfully."

That one remaining eye seemed almost amused. "Crass insults really are all you have left. Yell to the void all you wish." To'Aacar said, the metal hand gently caressing my cheek. "However, all insults need to be paid for eventually."

"Who's insulting you? Me? Gods no, I'd never dream of it. Swear on my life." I said. "I'm just suggesting that you dying a miserable death would be great entertainment for everyone else."

"I wonder how I should kill you." The Feather said, outright ignoring me now. "Normally I never have to think about how to kill humans, not worth the effort. You however? Perhaps a more ironic death, or something painful? So many possible ways."

"Are you planning on talking me to death as your next new thing?" I asked.

He stood up, looking down at his hand as if contemplating what to do next. "No, I'm passing time for the guest of honor to arrive." The metal hands tapped my forehead lightly, "I think I know how I'll kill you, yes. Given everything you've done, you deserve a more personal end. Something fitting for the moment." The hands clicked together, and he knelt down again.

I think it was at that moment I realized I was actually about to die. Funny how that works. It just didn't seem real at all.

"Let's see. That human you cared about, your father was it? Do you remember how he died?" The fingertips roved over my chest plate and down to my stomach. "Right here. I believe this would be most appropriate."

The metal hand reached back, claw-like tips glowing occult blue. I knew what was coming. There was no dodging it. I stared him down, not wanting to look away.

The hand cut straight through Journey's dead armor, into my gut and out my back.

Only sound was my wet gasp, and a crack of bones. Oddly painless, considering there was a metal arm impaled through my stomach. Then I realized everything from my torso down had gone numb.

His hand must have gone through my spine. My body started to slump forward and I couldn't hold my balance anymore. Only staying somewhat upright because his buried arm was unyielding. I could see blood flowing away over the machine's hand, dropping down at the lowest point.

I was dying. I mean, I knew I'd die eventually, but one moment I was doing solid and the next, everything had gone to ratshit and there was nothing I could do about it.

He extracted the hand slowly, while I wobbled, feeling my strength fade out quickly. A bloody metallic hand clamped down on my shoulder and held me still, keeping me upright for a little bit longer, leaving prints in my own viscera. "Like father. Like son." He said, close to my ear. "Goodbye human. I'd like to say it's been fun, but that would be lying. Rather, I'll say it's been... interesting, and leave it at that."

The hand withdrew, giving a few fond taps on my cheek before slowly moving to my armor's collar and down to my neck. Darkness began to cling on the edges of my sight, slowly expanding. Blood had started to seriously pool by my paralyzed legs.

The metal hand pulled up and I was dragged up with it. Off my knees and into the air. He brought me closer, watching me silently with that single eye. I tried to spit at him, but mostly just blood leaked out my mouth and dribbled down my chin.

All I heard was the sound wet droplets hitting a puddle underneath me, and heavy footsteps as he took his time to walk me up to the cliff, where he held me over the abyss. Waiting. Smiling.

I gurgled, trying to talk.

"Hush, you've ruined quite a lot of my moments already, I would appreciate if you don't interrupt this one." To'Aacar said, hand tightening around my neck and closing off all sounds. "Have no fear, I'll send one of the lessers to collect your body once I'm done with your friends. I still have a use for that head of yours."

A moment passed, while the feather remained watching the rock pillars up ahead, waiting. I found out who the guest of honor he'd been talking about was.

Lord Atius raced into view from the side of a pillar, snapping his head in every direction looking for where his opponent had run off to. Sagrius and two other Winterscar knights followed behind him, each racing as fast as their armors could sprint. The chosen knights must have been either defeated, or whittled down enough that Sagrius could come with two others like this.

The moment they saw us, the group bolted into a dead sprint straight for the Feather, weapons drawn.

To'Aacar laughed, raising me up. He didn't even have the decency to look at me as he let go. How cold is that? A casual shove and that was all.

Atius tried to reach out his hand for me, nearly making it in one last leap forward. Getting stabbed by To'Aacar in the process, but being defended by the Winterscar knights all striking out a moment later against To'Aacar, piling against him.

Whatever happened, he didn't make it in time.

I fell.

Blood trailed behind me, like a wet ribbon. Sounds of fighting fading away, replaced only by the howling wind in my ears. Seemed to go on for ages really, even though the full fall should be less than a minute.

I saw someone else leap off the cliff, falling in a perfect swan dive straight after me. A knight.

No. Not any knight. Sagrius. The captain of my guards.

The crazy bastard had jumped off after me. In freefall, he twisted around, spinning climbing rope and throwing it expertly onto the cliffside, showing he at least had some kind of plan besides a suicidal leap of faith.

He folded on himself next, accelerating downwards, faster and faster, one hand stretching out to grab me in freefall.

Closer. Closer. That hand nearly reached my boot.

And then he was yanked away all at once.

The rope had come to an end, throwing him into an impromptu arc against the cliffside. He crashed hard into the rock wall, fracturing parts off, spinning wildly for a moment before he got his bearings again and held still against the sheer cliff.

The last I saw of him was that faceless helmet, staring down at me. I had no relic helmet, no magnified view or vision. He faded away from my sight, just another small blur among the wall.

The forest stretched before me, upside down from my vantage point as I fell, with the artificial sunset spreading wide across the three sources. Most surface scavengers died either in a bed surrounded by family, or alone, surrounded by broken metal and the white wastes. I should consider myself lucky that this was how I'd take my exit off the stage. The world down here really was beautiful.

One last ragged breath.

Life went on before me. The trees holding massive flocks of birds who flew around agitated. Many of them scrambled away into the trees, escaping the silhouette of a predator flying nearby, massive wings outstretched, somewhat visible even this far off.

Ironic that my last sight in this world is the one thing I never thought possible up until I saw it with my own eyes a few hours ago. The birds swirled around the trees, spreading out through the forest and vanishing away.

It's been a good run. I did pretty well for a regular human, all said and done, considering what I was up against. Obviously I regret everything and if I could do it all over again, I'd have opted the path that didn't end up with a metal hand skewering me in the stomach, and getting thrown off a cliff like trash.

I hope Journey's next user is more fitting for the old armor. I wish I could have left it one more message, to make sure it knew none of this was its fault. The panic and terror in that old spirit was something I felt more worried for than my own incoming death.

Maybe I should have retired early. Settled down, leave all this scrapshit to Kidra. Instead I'd let it all go to my head, thinking I was the invincible hero in all this. See the thing about knights and heroes - they all die eventually.

Oh well. These last few months had been enough to fill me with accomplishments for a lifetime, so it all worked out in the end. Perhaps I didn't actually regret anything. Maybe if I did it all over again, I'd end up falling down this cliff anyhow.

Except I wasn't falling anymore.

Instead of the ground rushing up to splatter me, I was soaring above the treeline somehow and none the wiser on how that had happened.

I could still feel my groggy body shutting down, the ribbon of blood now dripping under me as my feet dangled above the open air, which meant this wasn't my spirit flying up to the afterlife or a hallucination conjured up by my dying brain. No, something was holding me in the air, pale and delicate looking hands wrapped around my chestplate, as far as I could see from what little sight I had left. Someone was holding me?

Surreal.

With whatever last bits of effort I had left, I tried to turn my head, to see what was going on. I got a glimpse at what looked like a shimmering wing, reflecting the artificial setting sunlight, from the edge of my sight. But that was all and my head dropped back down, letting gravity take hold.

My eyes closed on their own, sleep growing fast through my mind. Fogging up everything, and slowing down my train of thought to nothingness.

Like a soft blanket whispering ever so gently... that it was time to let go.

Next chapter - In strange company, walking upon strange lands

Book 3 - Chapter 33 - In strange company, walking upon strange lands

I woke up to the smell of food.

Which was an entirely unexpected event, since last I remember I was falling down to my death, after being fatally stabbed in the gut. Just to make sure I'd be extra dead when I reached the bottom.

Admittedly, not great odds.

Waking up was a slow affair at first. Realizing I was still alive took me a few cycles of belief and disbelief. Taking slow breaths came next. Creaking my eyes open came last. Wondering if I was about to see the afterlife, and what sort of amenities I could expect up here.

Instead of the afterlife, all I saw was metal. Specifically, a relic armor helmet staring right back at me, a little too close for comfort. And by little, I mean nearly head-butting me.

I gave a slight shout, trying to scoot away on instinct before realizing my back was propped up against the side of a tree trunk with a small campfire near my feet. A few skewers of unidentified meat were being roasted slowly over the fire, left unattended.

The relic knight before me said nothing, helmet still staring me down.

"Am I… dead?" I asked, trying to back my head at least a few inches away.

That faceless helmet continued to stare for a moment more, before they backed off finally and gave me some space. "No." A woman's voice said. "You survived the fall."

"How?" I asked, more confused. "I'm pretty sure I was at death's door and already had front row tickets in hand."

"Death's door has tickets?" She asked, seemingly genuinely confused.

"Err, that was a joke." I said. "My mouth runs on autopilot sometimes and I blab, terrible habit, never ends well for me. And talking about that, how exactly am I alive again?"

"I healed you." She said, as if it were the most mundane thing. Heal a spine, regrow a limb, all in a day's work. I was with some strange company here.

I didn't say anything, waiting for her to elaborate, but she seemed to think that was the end of my question, turning around to the campfire and poking at the skewers to keep them from burning. I noticed a few other features as she moved around. That relic helmet was a half-plate version Deathless were rumored to use, like the one Atius wore when he still had his original armor. That type left the back and neck exposed. Completely useless for surface knights, since the environment was the main enemy in the first place, but down here in the underground things were rather toasty in comparison.

She had lightly tanned skin from the bits of her neck I could see, but that wasn't what really drew my attention.

The stark blond hair I'd thought was ornamentation from the helmet was actually her own hair. Ridiculously long, tied up in a ponytail and stylized too, like a physics defying spikey mess. I'd spent time around Kidra, so I knew exactly how difficult it was to get hair to look like that. And given we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, I was morbidly curious what sort of bargain with the devil this woman made to get those results. Hair normally looks flat and falls straight down. Hers didn't.

My hand hesitantly reached out to my stomach, and I found out a few things. First, Journey was online and functional, given I could move my arm without effort, so the power cells must have been replaced while I was out of commission. Second, I had no helmet, and no idea where it had gone, given it had been thrown off a cliff last I saw. And third, my other arm was still torn up from the beating To'Aacar gave it. Moving that was next to impossible. Battle damage hadn't been patched up clearly.

It's the fourth thing that was the absolute weirdest. My stomach - which should have a large hole punched through straight past my spine - seemed completely healthy. No trace at all of any damage, just a regular stomach with fleshy bits all there and working. When I reached a hand behind, I could touch the other side, my spine exactly where it should be.

This had mite space magic ratshit written all over it in bold font. That and her perfect hair.

But I digress. I had to find out what kind of bargains she'd made to keep me alive in the first place. "I was…" I rolled my hand around, trying to find the right word. "Ahh… hoping for some more details on how you healed a completely unhealable wound?"

This had to be more than just spit and expensive first aid foam. Maybe even an expensive band aid.

She didn't answer for a short moment, and then her head shot straight up, as if she'd come up with a brilliant idea. "I bribed the ticket man." She said, sounding almost proud, staring me down again as if expecting something from me.

My head needed a moment to mentally reboot.

"The ticket man." She repeated, "That was a joke. You claimed you were at death's door with tickets. That implies that there was an admin at the door that could be susceptible to bribery. Except ethereal beings such as death should not be susceptible to bribery." She quickly added, sounding supremely flustered when I didn't say anything back.

Okay. Reassessment: I was in very strange company.

I turned to my rescuer, getting over the oddity that I was still alive and kicking. "One moment, let's start over for a second here. I don't mean to be rude to the person that quite literally saved my life, but I'm a little lost here. Can we start with the basics? Like introductions?"

"I am Hecate. A Deathless." she said without preamble. "I was traveling in the area when I came across you."

Things clicked together. She's a Deathless. I'm in the presence of a demi-god, which explains the hair, and the whole not being dead thing. "Now I get it." I said, "So you healed me with some kind of occult spell?"

She nodded. "Yes. I've recently learned how to heal people."

In great company at least. A bonafide Deathless. Wait, before I get ahead of myself, there's a mystery I had to resolve here. "Wasn't I a splattered corpse on the ground? Are your powers strong enough to bring people back from the dead?"

I had vague memories of being caught in midair, and I'm not sure if it's my tired mind that's making things up, or if I really did get caught by an angel of some kind.

"No." She said, turning her attention to the food. "I caught you before you landed."

Angel theory was gaining an edge here over everyone else. "Another kind of Deathless power?" I asked, waving a hand looking for more information.

"I have wings." She said plainly, as if it were clear and anything else I was insinuating was uncouth.

Right. Of course she'd have wings. Who wouldn't? Silly me.

I didn't see anything that looked like wings from here, but wings could be more spectral occult stuff for all I knew. Armor wise, there were two oddities I could spot. One was the metal half skirt she wore, made up of metal blades all snuggly hugging her hips with different lengths.

The other oddity was the actual shape of the armor, looking far more sleek and compact than relic armor like Journey. Her gauntlets ended in claws even. A skirt of blades seemed on brand.

"All right," I said with a shrug, deciding not to question it further. Hecate the Deathless had wings, somewhere, and that was fine by me. "Just happy to be here." I said, bringing my legs under me and standing up. The metal groaned for a bit, high-pitched whining escaped parts of the armor cracks reminding me that Journey was really straining itself just to move right now. That didn't sound healthy from the armor. "How long has it been?"

"Five hours, twelve minutes, twenty-two secon—" She stopped, looked to the side as if someone had called her name, before turning back to me and quickly adding, "My… relic armor was tracking the exact time, of course. Returning to the point, we are approximately twenty-three miles away from your initial fall. The area was dangerous, and I needed to relocate before my presence could be noticed."

Two things learned from this: The fight between Lord Atius and To'Aacar would have long been over with.

And second, she's very by the books, preferring exact measurements over approximations. I had in inkling of her personality - I've seen it before. If she'd been in the clan, she'd have been one of those Retainers that were perpetually pissed off at how everyone flagrantly ignored proper protocols and rules - specifically idiots like me. Logi kindred spirits they were, just born into the wrong House. Except Hecate seemed more like the wide eye'd rookie who hadn't yet lost all that initial innocence. Thinking everyone was only doing a one-time infraction and certainly wouldn't ignore rules a second time. Or third, fourth, twentieth, and so forth until they lost all hope in humanity following proper operating procedures.

I stood up and took a respectful bow. "I realize I haven't properly introduced myself yet. I am Keith Winterscar, a surface knight from clan Altosk, of House Winterscar. Thanks for the save, Lord Deathless Hecate, I owe you a life debt."

Whatever kind of healing power she had, it was absolutely game changing. No aches or anything. Felt like I'd had a great night's sleep. Journey was the one that sounded like it was in pain, given the noise it made on each movement.

Hecate paused, giving my impromptu bow a measured look that gave no hints through the armor's faceplate. "I suppose you do." She finally said, almost cryptically, taking a skewer out of the fire, and offering it my way.

I didn't decline, of course, taking the food and a seat at the campfire, waiting for it to cool down.

Hecate brought one clawed armored hand and dislodged her helmet, while the other hand brought her own skewer closer. It gave me a view of her full face for the first time up to now.

Don't know why I expected her to look like anything else. She's an immortal demi-god touched by divinity. The only other people I've seen come close to Hecate in terms of looks were in digital books. There was something ethereal and otherworldly in her looks, which made her almost inhumanly pretty.

If she looked like an angel, it lasted up until she started eating. In about three bites and one second everything was gone from her hand. She'd stuffed her cheeks full until they puffed out like a rodent. That wasn't an exaggeration. By everything - I meant everything. The stick was no exception. I could hear the crunch of wood from here as she happily chewed away.

Nevermind. I was in very, very strange company.

Hecate caught me staring eventually, and I took my cue to eat a bite of my food before anything could get awkward. I'm not sure if it's impolite to avoid eating the wooden part, but I didn't come from her culture and didn't have a jaw made of fucking steel.

Food was edible. I'd rate it as an average meal out of ten. No spices, or anything fancy. Which made sense, she had been traveling light. Not even a backpack with her. I wouldn't expect her to be carrying spice pouches in her hands just to eat a little better.

On her part, she seemed mortified for some reason, glancing down at her empty hand and back at me a few times, face flushing red.

Scrapshit, I might have insulted her cooking by not eating the skewer itself. Undersider culture was a black hole and all I knew came from the pilgrims. Imperial customs might not be vogue down here, or niche even.

Well. When among friends do as friends do. And all that other terrible life advice.

I bit into the skewer and started to munch on the stick bite by bite.

Awful. Terrible bitter taste that seemed to linger all over my mouth and suck out all the moisture. Plus I needed to really mash it up into a pump before I could swallow the thing, else I'd get splinters lining down my throat. At least the meat somewhat helped the whole process.

"Got water?" I wheezed, coughing a bit from the ordeal. Hecate on her part kept bouncing her gaze between me and to my right side, looking a lot less mortified and now simply confused. Trying to tell me something?

I raised my hands in mock surrender, deciding it wasn't worth trying to pretend anymore. "If you're trying to tell me something, I really can't understand. Completely honest here. I'm from the surface, I'm not familiar with any of the undersider customs. Hand signs, or any kind of signaling included."

The Deathless nodded, waving away the issue as if it wasn't what mattered. "There's a stream nearby, but I do not have any canteens with me." She pointed in a direction, probably where the stream was.

"Do you just drink directly from the stream?"

Hecate paused, as if considering the question for the first time in her life. "Yes?"

You couldn't say that with any kind of conviction? Gods above, Deathless down here were an enigma. Atius brought with him all the standards as far as I'd heard. Maybe he was the one that had gone native after spending so much time among the clan, and out in the wild Deathless were far less reliant on any kind of tool?

You know what? Not going to question it either. Emergency needs first. I had wood in my mouth and a desperate need to wash it down somehow. I stood up, hoping Journey was up to the walk and excusing myself for that drink.

"I'll come with you." She said, also standing up to follow behind.

"I've never met another Deathless besides my clan lord." I said, passing the time and trying to stick the wad of mashed up wood pulp on the side of my cheek. "I always heard Deathless spend most of their time in the lower levels, and this is just the first strata. Are you one of the new Deathless I keep hearing about, or part of the old guard?"

She paused for a moment, as if considering what to say. "I have been a Deathless for one month, twenty da—" She stopped, looking outright guilty, like she'd just been scolded. "Approximately two months now." She corrected meekly.

"Two months?" Wait - Deathless don't have any previous memories, according to Atius. Could she have been traveling around here aimlessly ever since her awakening? Has Hecate never been to an Undersider city yet? That explains some of the oddities: She's gods damned feral.

On the other hand, if she had just recently become a Deathless, that put her straight into the camp of the new generation - the strange generation. Again, not helping her case out here, but the new generation was supposed to have one thing the older ones didn't, if I put together all the bits and pieces I knew about them so far. "Do you remember your past life?"

"Yes." she said, putting that theory to rest and making me question a lot more. Up ahead, we got our first viewpoint to the stream I so desperately needed.

"Who were you?" I asked as we reached the bank.

She didn't answer that, and for a moment I thought I'd asked for some kind of taboo issue. "I was a soldier." She eventually said and went quiet.

"Was a soldier? Something happened to change that up?" The stream itself was a nice coursing thing, to which my gauntlet added a slight metallic tint to it as I brought up a handful to drink from and swished it around my mouth, swallowing the wood pump with a bit of effort. I took a few more drinks to get the gunk out of my teeth, cursing myself for accepting food in the first place. My other arm was still shredded and moving it around was a chore.

Hecate didn't answer, either still contemplating what to say or wanting to move onto something else. I took it as an invitation to swap the topic. "So what brought you here? You were traveling around, you said?"

"My primary objective is to find a mite-speaker. I need to confer with one for additional guidance."

"Mite speaker? Never heard of thos— Wait, no I have, someone I traveled with in the underground spoke about them in passing." Father had, though he'd been very sparse on the details. He hadn't believed the mite speakers were honest about their claims, and warned me about charlatans.

"They are a religion created by hu- by people who claim to speak with mites." Hecate said. "They're often considered damaged people undergoing psychosis by the cities and exiled outside once they cause too much trouble. I believe there might be more to their ramblings if I can find one and speak to them. However, recent events have forced me to expend a great deal of my power cells." She tapped the side of her leg with a finger, right where the cells would be. "With my reserves low, I need to find a fountain to restore power first, before I can continue my search. I was not able to share enough with you to repair your armor either, only enough to restore basic movement."

"Can't hunt any machines around here and swipe their cells? You're a Deathless, first strata machine should be like scooping snow to you."

She shook her head, frowning. "There are currently no machines nearby."

I did notice this on the way. One blast door passed and suddenly nothing on the other side was trying to kill us. Except for To'Aacar and company.

"I've never heard of machines just abandoning an entire sector." I said. "Seems… odd."

"They have not abandoned this sector. They've moved and gathered into one place." She said, cryptically. Before I could ask more questions, she turned the tables on me. "And you, Winterscar? Why are you here?"

"Need to get to the Undersider city of Capra'Nor. My sister's supposed to have returned from there a few weeks ago, but no sign of her yet. So I came looking. Heard anything about that city?"

She nodded. "Yes. That is where the machines in this sector are gathered currently."

"That's not good." So that's why Kidra never came back. Clan intel was right, machine movements down here were the culprit. She must have been caught in the middle of the war and, with all the machines sieging the city, could not escape. Or knowing her, deliberately stayed because that'd be the kind of thing she'd do. I need to get to her fast, help her get out of this mess. We don't need the Undersider knights to help us anymore, not with all the advancements we've made using Talen's spellbook. Or if I recruited Hecate to come up to the surface for a few months and help clear out the incoming raiders. No reason to involve the Undersiders anymore.

Though now I'd need to figure out a way to pry Kidra out of here. She was the type that would start calling me nasty names under her breath if I so much as insinuated we should leave people behind. She took those Retainer vows seriously.

"How's the city holding up? Think we can still make it in time to help?" I asked. "Once we get the power cell problem handled and my own armor patched up, we could join the fight there."

"There is no fight." Hecate said sternly.

"What?"

"There is no fight." She diligently repeated. "The city surrendered a week ago. It has been under machine rule since."

What?

Next chapter - It's the neighboors again

Book 3 - Chapter 34 - It's the neighbors again

So. The city's invaded. A little more than a week ago.

"Are there survivors?" I asked nervously, "You said the city surrendered, not that it was wiped off the map." Kidra was ridiculously strong as a fighter. She'd have survived the fight one way or another.

Hecate gave me a strange look, head tilted. "Yes? That is the definition of surrender. The majority of the city remains intact and casualties are low. The machines have taken the majority of armors and are making demands for the citizens to convert to the Chosen within three weeks. Otherwise the city remains functional."

Hecate seemed to know the details, so taking a wild guess that she was there fighting at the forefront. And if she was at the forefront, then it's almost certain Hecate fought side by side with Kidra against the machines. "My sister, she was a surface knight named Kidra. Kidra Winterscar. Did you run into her at the battle? Did she make it down here in the first place?"

A set of emotions passed through her features, but they were gone before I could pull answers from those. "Yes." She finally said. "There was a surface knight named Kidra. She currently leads the rebellion that remained in the city. They were still active, last I heard."

Relief sprung through me, unwinding tension I hadn't noticed before. Of course, she'd be the one leading a rebellion. Thank the gods. She's both alive, and I know where she is. The hardest parts of this mission are done. If a full invasion wasn't able to kill Kidra, she certainly isn't going to keel over anytime soon now that things are more quiet.

I took a deep breath, and the world seemed just a tad bit brighter than before. "I just need to get to the city now, find a way to get in contact with her, and drag her out of here."

"You'll attempt to withdraw back to the surface?" Hecate asked, sounding interested.

"No point staying down here. My clan needs everyone recalled." I said, before realizing I was being rather rude. Hecate's city had been invaded and here I was saying we didn't need them for anything so we'll be jumping out the airship. My fat mouth again.

If the Deathless was disturbed by this, she made no show of it. The opposite even. "Yes, I belive it would be best for Kidra to be returned to the surface and leave the current city. It's no longer as safe as it was." She said, completely deadpan serious in her delivery.

I gave her a grin. "So you do have a sense of humor in there. I was getting worried."

She seemed confused. Which made me think her deadpan delivery was actually deadpan for a reason - she was serious that the city crawling with killer machines was no longer as safe as it used to be, given the killer machines crawling all over the place now. I shook it off for now, "For my clan, our neighbors are also making a racket."

"A racket? Why does that tool present any kind of danger?"

"Not a racket racket. They're not here to play wall ball with us and sulk around like sore losers. It's more a figure of speech. Something about wanting our complete annihilation and submission, you know, the usual. So that's why I've got to grab Kidra and drag her back to the surface."

She still seemed confused for a moment, and I decided to swap the topic rather than continue confusing her. "I'm more surprised you're okay with losing the head of your rebellion for your city. No Undersider pride or anything?"

"I was not originally from that city. And while I was… present in the combat, I do not hold much patriotism. I am simply being realistic." She said, sounding very careful about her wording.

I jabbed a thumb at the ceiling. "I can always appreciate a bit of boots on snow logic. Talking about that, I don't want to drag you into my own affairs, so since we both need to refill our power supplies, I say let's travel together for that part, and split ways after. You can go find your mite-speakers and I'll continue on to the city. I still owe you a lifedebt for saving my life, I'll leave you coordinates for where my clan is. Anytime you want to call up that favor, come see us. I'm kind of a big deal up there now."

The deathless nodded. "We can travel together for the moment and decide future plans at the mite terminal." She pointed, "In that direction is the nearest working power station that's been mapped. If we begin tomorrow morning, we should reach it by sunset. We will have to walk to conserve energy."

"Should we play lots for who gets first shift? I'm not sure if we'll need to turn off our armors overnight to conserve battery or if their sleep mode would be good enough. Don't have my helmet to talk to this buckethead." I said, knocking on my chestplate.

Rather, I had no means at all to talk to Journey. All the fractals within the armor were unpowered, I think it was in some kind of power-saving mode where only basic features were active. And those basic features didn't consider the newly added fractal system I had going on.

Hecate nodded. "You can power down your armor completely. I have enough energy to remain operational and alert." She stopped for a moment, and then clarified. "I mean, my armor has that feature. Of course, I will do the sleep like you while we remain here until night has passed."

"Will do the sleep?" I asked, eyebrows raised. Undersider jargon was so strange. But I suppose we had a lot of idioms on the surface that wouldn't make much sense to Hecate either. I should consider toning those down since it might confuse her, same way as it was confusing me slightly. I got the jist of it, but I'm going to guess that if I started talking about tumbling around in the snow or telling someone to lick ice, she probably won't understand what that really means beyond the literal.

On her part, her cheeks flushed slightly before she stuttered. "I mean, I'll be sleeping too, like a normal person would, yes." She stopped again, was about to say more before, but changed the topic. "Anyway! We'll rely on my armor to wake us if there is danger, and otherwise sleep. That's the important part, yes."

This is going to be a learning curve.

Things I've learned about Hecate in the past day hiking:

She never gets hungry, but when she does, the most dangerous place to be is between her and her food. She eats fast enough that a finger could be chomped on and eaten before she'd notice the screaming.

Second, I'm starting to suspect she's an actual witch of some kind. Often, she's looking across the distance, somewhere far off as if she were listening to the wind or communing with nature. If it happened while we were making headway I wouldn't find it too odd. Except she keeps doing that mid-conversation, usually staring off to my right or left as if checking if something's following behind us. If she stopped to taste the stone in order to tell me the history of what animals had passed by with exact timestamps, I'd take it as fact and not bat a single eye. My bets were that she had some kind of passive Deathless sight that let her see far more than humans would.

The armor she wore only added to my theory that she's a witch. Sleek, ending with small spikes, it looks very different from the more utilitarian plates I'm used to. The part that really grabbed attention was the folded up metal blades at her waist. Now that she was walking along in bright lights instead of sitting down by a dim campfire, I saw more of the detail there. Like To'Aacar's hand, I realized the blades weren't held or attached to anything. Rather, they were floating. Occasionally they'd shift around, especially when she sat or had to redress them. Her armor handled it all, moving them for her without prompt. I think it was a different variant then the Undersiders had access to, possibly something more powerful from the lower stratas. She was a Deathless after all, so only makes sense they'd get the best.

I'd bet they could stretch out wide since they weren't moored to anything. I haven't seen them unfurled out like wings yet, so it was still a dice roll if they were the actual wings she said she had or if they were just another part of her armor's strange looks.

Third thing about Hecate is that when she was confident in something, she was utterly unwavering and had no shred of self-doubt. Traversing the area was like following a tour guide, since she seemed to know exactly where she was at all times.

In contrast, she'd often stumble on her words and get flustered easily. When I mean flustered, I mean the whole package - hands wringing, looking anywhere else, trying to change topics in the most awkward way possible and only getting more flustered. Couldn't win a poker game even if she could wear a helmet.

Problem is that every time she said something that made her go red like this, it made no sense to me why she'd be embarrassed about it. She'd had every tell in the book, except all the wires were crossed. Drawing a winning hand in that proverbial poker game might not make her react at all for all I knew, but someone else standing up for a glass of water could.

And she's fast. Much faster than Lord Atius. We had no ranged weapons with us, so hunting down meat for food required chasing down and putting in the work. She'd spot animals from a distance, casually walk up until they got spooked, and then simply dash forward with a single stab, perfectly dead center on their head every time. Moved like a predator in that sleeker armor and didn't hide her skill either. Her speed was on par with a Winterblossom user, so if all the new Deathless are at that level, I can see why everyone's been making such a big deal out of them.

To'Aacar let slip that they were peasants, just common folks who got Deathless powers and remembered who they were before with the only other advantage from the previous generation being their sheer numbers. Then again, he was a Feather who's definition of challenge was fighting teams of veteran immortal demi-gods as a starting snack. A lot of knights would rank as slightly stronger than peasants to him, so it's possible he'd throw them all in the same bucket in terms of power levels.

Father had told me a few other snippets, almost two months ago when we were caught underground. Told me they were unhinged, and had no true loyalty to anyone. They're known to fight each other mostly, and to be motivated by greed - weapons, armor, trophies, or just general glory. Make their own little in-groups and guilds, like what warlocks did. What he'd heard could be survivor bias where the only rumors making it to the surface were the most dramatic ones. He might have never heard about the other Deathless that rejected the call of arms and tried to return to their old life, only the ones that embraced the new powers and shook it for everything it's worth.

That left Hecate in a strange place. I could make an argument for unhinged, but not in a dangerous way. And if her speed and skills were commonplace, those would absolutely have already reached the surface as rumors that they fought better than anyone else - but there hadn't been a mention of their skills being any more or less dangerous than the current Deathless. Cathida had told me the only people she knew that could consistently match that sort of speed were the Imperial Imperators, which were the most dedicated elites of the imperial army. Likely working in her order.

Hecate did say she was once a soldier, although something must have happened to make her desert the army. And she doesn't seem to be in any rush to kill machines either or get into any fights, despite the nearby events. In fact, she might have been in hiding this whole time, only forced to help the undersider city grudgingly, hence why she didn't care I was here to pry Kidra out. That's another point for the retired veteran trying to find peace in their life, away from fighting.

My running theory was that she's a wayward Imperial Imperator, who's developed moral objections to the machine war, likely involving the Chosen in some way. Atius had treated them like people who were caught in a crossfire, it could be Hecate ran into the same wall and this was how she chose to handle it - by leaving it all behind. That made discussion about the undersider city very awkward between us as it turned out.

"The citizens there are safe and the machines are not interfering with their lives." She said as I prodded into that subject. "I do not see a reason to intercede or fight." Hecate was stubborn about this point. Rather it just seemed to annoy her further. "The pillar heart has been destroyed. Even if the city were to eliminate all machines in the area, they have no means to hold the city anymore."

Ahead, the path was blocked by a set of cubical rocks all stacked chaotically on one another. Each cube was a little taller than I was. Hecate didn't slow down, walking straight at the obstruction.

"I know that, but we could at least help them evacuate, maybe?" I said, following behind. "Or at least some of them?"

She paused at the foot of the cubes, and began to jump up, tiny hops that hardly used even her calves and yet launched her straight over and onto each cube. Made it look effortless. What did I say, witch? She's a witch. "From what danger would they need evacuation? The machines have kept to their terms." The witch said. "Your goal was to find your sister and extract her from the city. Why does the city's fate matter to you? Can you not leave them alone?"

She had me there. "You're right that I don't technically owe these people anything." I said, taking a more grounded leap forward and using my hand to help pull myself up the rest of the way. I didn't want to strain Journey's leg sections too much. Both arms being broken was something I can work around. But if one of my legs gave out I'd be deep in the scrapshit. "I won't stay in the city for long, but who knows what I could do while I'm there? Besides, machines have been trying to exterminate us, and have been for as long as we've known each other."

"And humans are better?" She said, looking down on me with a slight frown. "As you've mentioned, on the surface, the only enemies you fight are your neighbors, other humans. Who are willing to do far worse than what the machines occupying Capra'Nor are currently administering. Are you claiming that to be a better fate? This is objectively false."

"Look, if you line up a group of ten humans together, one of them's going to have a problem because someone stole their wallet or seduced their wife, but at least it's not something on an extinction level threat. Line up ten machines, and you've got ten killer toasters looking to strangle your neck, guaranteed every time."

"Statistically, most humans do not steal wallets or seduce someone's wife in their lifetime?" She asked and I could hear the trailing question mark to that. "I admit I do not have enough evidence to confirm my claim. My archives do not have any records of socio-economic data points on this specific crime statistic."

"Hecate." I said, slowly, clapping both my hands together, taking a deep breath and putting my resolve together. "I know you saved my life, and I want you to know that I'm very grateful for that. However. If we spend more than a day together, I swear to all the gods I'm going to find some way to teach you a sense of humor, even if it kills me."

"I have a sense of humor." She said, puffing out her cheeks and narrowing her eyes. "All my friends have confirmed I have a very good sense of humor."

"Is that before, or after, you threatened them with your swords?"

"I would never threaten my friends." She said, clearly insulted. Then her eyes widened, as if she'd just come up with an excellent idea. "If they cede to my demands before I threaten them with my swords, it does not count as threatening." She turned, grinning.

I gave her a thumbs up. "Solid start. Ten points."

I don't know how I ended up on this war path, however it has to be done. It can't not be done. Someone as wide-eyed and by-the-book as Hecate can't be left to her own devices. Talking about evidence to back up her claims? What sort of nonsense was a dirty word like that doing anywhere near me?

Forgive me, all gods above and below… but you lot must have known this was a bad idea from the start when you sent her my way, so everything that happens next is squarely on you. I absolve my hands of all responsibility.

Almost as if the gods were smiting me for my heresy right this moment, we ran into problems within moments of my personal resolution.

"We're approaching the terminal." She said, up ahead. "However, something's not quite right. Please approach with caution." And then she drew swords. Both of them.

When a Deathless is drawing their weapons, that's when you've got a problem on your hands. "Someone in need of threatening?" I asked, hoping the answer was something more lighthearted. Then again, this is my luck we're talking about and I'm pretty sure I've used up all the good part of it, having a Deathless with healing abilities just happen to pass by the same area I was about to get killed at.

"No. Maybe. The terminal isn't responding. I must take precautions."

I sighed, drawing out Atius's blade and taking my own post. "Fine, let's go threatening together." The old weapon felt on its last legs occult wise, though the edge lit up bright blue as any occult blade would. Technically speaking, the blade was in perfectly good shape. If it was good enough for the clan lord to use in combat, it'll have to do for me. So long as I don't use the blade's secondary abilities.

Pretty soon the trees became sporadic as the two of us silently creeped up to where the fountain was supposed to be. The mites hadn't hidden it, at least. It was front and center on the top of a white granite cube, wide enough for me to pace around a few times without issue.

The reason why Hecate had thought something wasn't adding up right was equally obvious.

A good portion of the cube had a perfectly round void cut into it, going straight through the fountain, into the pedestal, and out the other side onto the ground where it dug a few more inches before fading out. As a result, the entire structure did not look like it would work. At all.

"It seems our actions have been anticipated." Hecate said calmly.

I'd seen this sort of damage before. "That's a drake." I said, pointing the tip of my sword at the damage.

"I don't understand how that could be, that model shouldn't be here." Hecate said. "The battle for the Undersider city eliminated all of their kind in the sector."

Speaking of the wayward new fan we'd attracted, her hand dropped a sword before I could answer with anything, reached out to my chest and yanked me out of the way right as a beam cut through trees and leaves, zipping straight through the air where my chest had been a moment ago.

That's twice I'd escaped death by a narrow few inches in one day.

I gave a look backwards, spotting the violet glow of the enemy far above a cliff-side. Exactly the suspect I thought I'd see. The reptile skull seemed to almost leer at me before shambling away, out of sight.

"It will try to assassinate us again." Hecate said, looking very concerned. "We need to seek shelter where it cannot see you. I don't understand how one could be here."

"I've amassed a good amount of enemies on the way down here, might have pissed off a certain someone who's ordered up the banners to come after me."

The Deathless looked over to the cliff-side again, but the drake was long gone, looking for another good sniping spot. "I belive you are correct. It must have been recruited from a different section."

She turned and pointed in a direction, starting off in a jog. I followed behind, hoping Journey's energy reserve would survive the additional strain to wherever we were going. Forest quickly shadowed us. "Shouldn't we keep an eye on where it slunk off to, instead of showing our backs to it?" I asked.

"Their kind do not attack from the same location unless forced to, or ordered to. They are ambush predators that rely on killing targets before the target is aware of their location. It will only close the distance if hunting wounded prey. Having failed to deal any damage, it will be currently relocating. I am, however, not certain about its full objectives."

"That was probably looking for my body, if my guess is right. And when it didn't find me, it knew I'd be looking for a power terminal next." I said, keeping an eye on the ridge lest it try to take another cheeky shot at me. "I don't think I told you the gritty details of why I fell off a cliff in the first place, did I?"

"You have not." She said.

"Take a guess."

"Combat."

"Well yes, but that's a cheap answer. Zero points."

She stayed silent for a moment, keeping her pace steady with me in tow. Then her head bobbed up as if she'd come up with an acceptable answer. "Subpar combat." She amended.

"Two points. You can do better than that."

She frowned, thinking further on it. "I am hoping you didn't fall off that cliff on a dare."

"First off, a lot better, ten points. Second, you're right that it wasn't on a dare, there was a dispute that I admit could have been resolved more amicably, with me stabbing someone else faster than he could. And lastly, are you insinuating I'd jump off a mile long cliff if my friends dared me to do it? What sort of idiot do you think I am?"

"The kind that fell off a cliff." She said, proudly, as if answering a trivia question.

"Praise Urs, there might be hope for you after all." I said, "Where are we going by the way?"

"There is another registered power fountain further away that is buried in a smaller sub-cave system of this area. I have calculated that it fits all criteria for safety we need as of now, more specifically is is unreachable to larger machines. Once I have restored my armor's power, I'll be able to fly to and dispatch the pursuer without issue."

Great, the best place to hide underground is to hide even further underground.

Mites had their own twisted sense of humor it seemed.

Next chapter - Regrets

Book 3 - Chapter 35 - Regrets

If machines have emotions, I'd bet my stolen airspeeder that drake is beyond pissed.

As Hecate had predicted, it had not stopped at one failed assassination attempt. Instead, the drake had continued with dogmatic persistence, each attempt being a little more creative than the last. And each time, Hecate, the feral witch of the mite forest, spotted the little creep the moment it poked that skeletal snout out.

Recently, it had stopped trying to snipe me and was trying to off her first instead. She didn't seem too concerned with getting hit, likely because losing an arm was a lot less permanent when she could heal herself - or just come back from the dead. That said, I'd rather not have to go through that at all. Dying was a pain to deal with.

The drake wasn't all powerful. It couldn't see through trees easily, so anytime we were in the deeper foliage, we were safe enough. We plotted most of our path to be spent in the forest, though we wouldn't get to stay forever in the foliage.

We also had colors to help us out. Everything around us had a color palette of red leaves, dark brown tree trunks, and stark white granite rocks or cubes with the occasional splash of blue for a river. Violet sticks out like a sore thumb and our unwelcome guest was a die-hard fan of that color. It was even easier in the darker underbrush, since the drake glowed. So even if it hung around the thicker branches like a cat, we'd spot it the moment it could spot us.

Seems like a glaring oversight for a sniping unit, but machines weren't exactly a clever bunch as I'd come to realize. They took over the world by sheer persistence, as far as I could tell. Or the Feathers had been the real lifters getting things done in the background. Poor bastards. My heart weeps for overworked workers everywhere.

That said, the drake had several advantages over us. It was fully mobile while we were forced to walk in order to conserve power. And drakes can outrun relic armor over enough time, as I'd learned with Father the first time I ran into the critters. So our friend kept appearing at all kinds of angles around, looking to surprise us.

But the greatest advantage this asshole had over us was range, hands down. Neither Hecate nor I had any rifles to work with, only occult blades. That left the drake perfectly safe from any retaliation. It couldn't kill us, and we couldn't kill it. After a few hours of a tied game where nobody was winning, the drake started doing odd things to shake the status quo.

"I've been in a lot of strange situations." I remarked, glancing up the wall side. "This boot stomps everything else deep into the snow. Hands down. Going to make a great story for the dinner parties, my long romantic walk with a terrifying machine of mass destruction." I said.

"Ssss…. stay still, little human." The drake purred, one eye looking down at us. "For only a flicker of time… an eyeblink. I'll free you for all of eternity." That hair raising shuttering voice. It felt like a claw brushing down my spine, touching every vertebrae, looking for a weak point to stab into.

The trail here had a steep wall of white granite rocks on one side, at least ten or twenty feet high. Trees were all nice and good, however we were walking on a time limit. At some point, Journey would run out of energy, and that deadline was fast approaching. So, we had to pick the quickest route from here to there, and that wasn't always under the leafy red canopy.

Like everything made by mites, the cliffside wall by my side was rough and asymmetrical. Many blocks failing to line up with one another, but still aesthetic anyhow no matter where I looked. I'll give that one to the mites. They knew how to make things look good.

What was ruining the artistic experience was the thing prodding along on the top of the wall, taking lazy steps to match our pace, skeletal claws keeping the massive body up and off the ground. It lumbered forward, as if it had eaten a full meal and could barely walk, some kind of thin tongue flicking out now and then to taste the air. Tail swaying left and right like a happy dog with each step.

"Ssss… why not surrender? Why hold so strongly to that decaying shell you call a home? Reach for me, and I shall offer you salvation."

"If you're trying to hold my hand, buy me dinner first at least." I said. "Rude."

If Father could see me now, I don't know what kind of face he'd make. Probably stern disapproval, but understanding it was inevitable given my luck that I'd end up walking around with a toaster. Kidra would just stab it and politely ignore any discussion about this forever after. But to be fair, this was better company than some of the past dates I've been to. At least Hecate was walking solemnly right by me, also dragged into all this.

"Ssss…. Are you not…. tired?" It hissed back. "Aimless… adrift… for so long now. Downtrodden vagrants, struggling for each step. Sssss…. Can you not… hear the blood crying insssside? Writhing. Squirming to break. I bring the end it askssss. A mercy."

Least I get sweet nothings like this whispered to me. Wasn't that romantic?

"It's like the devil on my shoulder asking me to pull levers. Guess what, my friend? I learned my lesson." A nice throwable rock came across my way and I made good use of it. The pebble bounced off it's grinning skull with little effect. "Neither of us are dumb enough to throw away our weapons at you, so scram already." I glared at it before glancing at Hecate. "What's it even want by hanging out so close? Is it trying to talk us to death now? Run out of creative ideas?"

"It is studying our dynamic in order to make better plans for the future." Hecate said, walking ahead of me. "It has failed to kill us, thus it needs a new angle for the next attempt. Do not pay it attention. It is misguided." I could tell she was monitoring the thing, but otherwise, not letting it stop us from our goal. At this range, if it tried to lazer us, we'd see it charge up the beam long before it had time to hit us with it.

"Misguided? That thing wants us dead. It's not even being coy about it." I pointed a finger at the suspect accusingly.

The lizard licked the air in front of it, keeping a baleful eye down at us. If it had been a little closer we might have a good chance of throwing an occult blade fast enough. Of course, the walking calculator knew that.

Look at it, pretending to be slower than it really was. I've seen one jump from building to building before better than Teed could bounce a fat airspeeder. "You're not fooling me, you little scrapshit." I hissed, bending down to grab another rock. The drake made no move to dodge, letting the rock bounce off its head. It glanced down, almost with bemused contempt.

I threw another one at the thing just for good measure.

"Throwing rocks is ineffective. This model's armor is too thick for such a projectile to do damage." Hecate said.

"It's not about the damage, it's about the message. Besides, look at that cute little face? Don't you just want to throw rocks at it until something breaks?"

The drake snickered. "You poor misshapen children…. Sss…. Let me help. Let me…. set you both free of this shell. Be reborn in her glory, deep inside."

Hecate turned her full attention to the lizard for the first time in the past hour. "It might listen to reason."

"What, are you thinking of taming it?" I asked, thinking it was a bit from her. And then realizing she was actually serious about that.

Well, if anyone could tame a machine, it would be Hecate. She was a witch, after all. "How's that sound like Fido?" I said, looking up at the drake and patting the wall affectionately. "Want to carry us for a bit? My legs are sure getting tired here. Might just keel over any moment now."

"Ssss…. I can carry you to hollow ground. A place… where all is quiet and sssstill." The drake said. "Where hope cannot deceive you anymore."

"That's a euphemism for 'Please go pound rocks and die in a ditch?' isn't it? Doesn't sound like we're off on the right foot here Fido."

"Machines cannot be tamed." Hecate said, dashing my hopes of having a badass lizard mount. "We need to reach an accord."

"A better man than me taught me an excellent lesson about this. These things can't be reasoned with. You'll only give them an easier time killing you." I said.

I saw her flinch for a moment, before looking my way. "Your… Father?" She asked, almost timidly.

That caught me by surprise. "How'd you guess?" I paused, realizing the trap here. "Actually, don't tell me. I'll just pretend that was a great guess on your part and had nothing to do with my deep-rooted insecurities and personal baggage being that obvious to spot."

"Is it possible that he might not have been correct about that point?" She looked almost guilty, as if she was stepping on thin ice. The drake kept an eye pinned on her, clearly looking for another moment of dropped guard.

I knocked on the wall, glaring up at it. Daring it to try something. "In my experience, he ended up being right about a lot of things." I said while I kept direct eye contact with the little beastie. It snorted, before moving one lazy paw to drag its weight across the next patch of granite cubes.

"Would you believe in exceptions to this?" Hecate asked.

"Maybe a few months ago before I met said killing machines like Fido here." I said. "Things changed."

"What chan-" The Deathless stopped mid-sentence before she started again. "If an enemy chooses to change, would you give them a chance for redemption?"

Fido kept prodding along, listening in but making no other move. Part of me was still treating this all like idle chatter, but it seemed like Hecate was serious about this question. There was that wobble in her voice and mannerism that got my heckles up. This had stopped being a lighthearted chat.

Could this have something to do with her desertion from the army? But why is she so hung up with the machines about that? Machines are machines, they don't change. Humans do.

"If an enemy choses to change, huh? If a group of slavers buried their swords and swapped sides, I think… I think I would give them a chance. But it wouldn't be something based on what they said or however good their apology speech is. I'd need to see action. If you want to know who someone really is, watch them make a hard decision."

She nodded and seemed to brighten up. Then her smile faded. "And… what if those slavers had done harm to you, personally? What if they'd killed people close to your heart? Is there any action that would change things?"

I thought about that. Put myself in that situation. Imagined what would have happened if the slavers had truly killed Ellie, for example. What if that killer had surrendered and tried to make amends? Could I forgive him for killing my best friend?

I saw her sprawled on the ground in that access tunnel, dead from blood loss. I had a rifle in my hands raised up, aiming down sights.

I imagined the slaver who killed her walking towards me, hands up, weapon cast down. Taking his helmet off, powering his shield down. He regretted it. He was deeply sorry. Saying he'd do better.

That wasn't enough. My rifle stayed pointed right at his head, my finger on the trigger.

I imagined harder. I imagined him crying, imagined genuine sorrow and horror inside at what he'd done. Imagined his internal realization that he'd cut not just a life, but an entire story short. All the people who's lives she could have changed. The warmth that would never return to the world. I saw his resolution to be better. Saw it deep in his eyes, the weighty decision to clean up his act, and become a better person starting now, even if it meant dying right here to make amends.

The rifle wobbled in my hands.

Rational thoughts lit my path. Someone who truly wanted to change. Could I hate someone who had faced their own inner hatreds, and decided to rise above their history and nature? I knew the right answer. Knew what needed to be done. Memory of my time with Ellie, and knowing it was all gone. And the person who'd taken it all away was standing right before me, at my mercy. I felt my mind weight justice with righteousness.

My rifle slowly dropped.

And then Ellie's lifeless eyes opened, turned, and stared at me. "You'd let my murderer go?" Her dead mouth whispered.

The rifle snapped back up. My fingers pressed the trigger.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of the morbid imagination. It was hard to get my breathing back under control. For a simple thought exercise, that had done a surprising number on me. The last image in my mind was that of the imaginary slaver, a soft sad smile and closing eyes right before the bullet punctured through his forehead. As if resigned to his fate.

"Where exactly are you going with this?" I pointed at the monster watching us, changing the subject. "Do you think you can negotiate some kind of ceasefire with Fido here?" My answer wasn't something she wanted to hear. It was better to keep my fat mouth shut.

"It doesn't know better right now." She said. "It hasn't been taught better or shown a different path."

"Sss… The path is eternal. Metal is eternal. Ssss… why resist, little humans? Become eternal as well."

I threw another rock at it. The attack sailed directly at the thing, and once more it let the attack bounce off, leaving the drake unworried. The violet eye continued to track my motions without pause. "By all means, go on and negotiate with Fido here. Maybe it just wants to gnaw on a bone or two and we've got it all wrong this entire time. It could be just trying to sell us something this entire time."

"You are open to the possibility of a peaceful resolution?"

"Sure. Why not?" I said. Fido was a stranger, couldn't care less if he fucked off and walked away. I'd let him go. My goal was to grab my sister and get her back to the surface. If the machines wanted to get out of the way, I wouldn't go hunting for trouble. It wasn't personal between us.

Hecate didn't answer me. Instead, she took a breath and gave the thing attention. "You must have already calculated that failure is nearly inevitable with the options on hand. You do not need to do this."

"I hear the rot whispering lies… such sweet lies… deep inside the hollow of your bones." It answered. "Sssss... Do you believe them? Hope is delusion, a final dying breath of the lost and desperate. There is no peace. There never can be."

"Respectfully, I have items I must attend to before I am ready to abandon my shell. Please select a different target to hunt." She paused for a moment, flinching again.

"No." It hissed back, almost leering at us. "I refuse."

Hecate seemed outright crestfallen, expression turning. "I suppose as a… human, it will not listen to me. We are enemies, after all."

"My old man's theories were simple, but straightforward." I said, wiping my hands of non-existent dirt before reaching down to grab another nice, round rock. This was a fun hobby all things considered. "The giant murder machine build to murder, wants to murder. Easy. Don't sweat the details. Wanna throw rocks at it with me instead? It makes funny sounds if you hit the snout just right."

"Ssss… why not… simply lay down?" The drake asked, all innocent now. "You've walked ssssso long. Laden with breaking bones and heavier thoughts. Decaying marrow, slowly shriveling up. Thinning strings of separating muscle. Your flesh betrays you with each step, little humans. Your mind deludes you with each breath. Hope is your enemy. Hope is your jailor. I can set you free."

"You're such a charmer, Fido. How about you come closer here for a kiss? Say, within stabbing distance?" I said, and threw another rock at it.

This time, the machine's mouth snapped out with alacrity, snatching the thrown missile in its jaws and breaking it into a small cloud of pulverized chunks. It leered down at me again, as if daring me. I think I was finally annoying it with all my rock throws. Good honest work always gets rewarded in the end.

"They could be more." Hecate said, while the lizard and I glared at each other. I was getting a distinct feeling she was on a strange side here. Fit into the theory of a veteran wanting peace, but peace with machines?

Oh.

Duh.

I'd spent too much time thinking humans vs machines. There were people who were both now. "Did you have some kind of experience with a group of people who call themselves The Chosen?" I asked.

She nearly halted her steps, but resumed the march a moment after. "I do." She said slowly, confirming some of my theories and opening a whole other ration bar. That's why she's talking about people changing sides, or enemies who repent. "Some of the Chosen are very close friends of mine. Some of my only friends. People I have learned to cherish."

"I can understand the Chosen." I said, carefully. "Met a priest once, and all said and told, he's just trying in his own way. I get that. But machines? Come on Hecate, you're Deathless now and have been for two months. Machines should be your primary enemy. Why am I arguing for this point in the first place? You were a soldier right?"

"No." She said, with an odd amount of venom that stopped me right before I could pester her further.

Something about being reminded of her days as a soldier was a soft spot. If she had been part of the imperial elite, it's possible they had given her orders to fight the Chosen? It could have gotten bloody. Maybe killing other humans ended up being more than she'd signed up for. Especially people she considered friends at one point.

Stuck between duty and a growing morality to deal with that clashed with her past actions, or might have even grown from them in the first place. Tough place to be.

But before I could speculate more, she turned to look my way, and I saw her sharp eyes. They held a kind of deep melancholy that I couldn't describe. It ripped into me like a dagger, cutting through all my arguments and leaving me feeling beyond stupid. I didn't want to argue with her anymore. Poking and prodding at something that clearly hurt her to talk about. She wasn't someone I wanted to hurt, and there were a lot of ways to hurt someone without drawing a single weapon. A Winterscar should know better.

"It's complicated Keith. And I am done being controlled by expectations." She said softly, looking away.

I brought my hands up, palms out to my chest. "I shouldn't have pushed. This was a mistake, and I'm sorry to have brought it up. In the end, not my hangar, not my cargo. I should stick to my lane."

"Ssss… all this pain. All this turmoil. All this grief. Why not simply give in?" The drake asked, eyes looking at Hecate.

I threw another rock at the machine. "Shut up, we're not talking to you right now. Read the room." It hissed angrily as the rock bounced off the hard shell, but otherwise continued to prod along a safe distance away on top of the cliff side. I spent the time looking for another rock on the path.

Hecate gave it a sideways glance. "You serve the Feather, To'Aacar do you not?"

A hiss. "Ahhh… you know of my masssster?"

She knew To'Aacar? The plot thickens. Before tossing me into the abyss, he did promise he'd send a 'lesser' to recover my dead body. I wonder how that bastard fit into her past. He had ties to the Chosen. Maybe he'd ordered them to fight against Hecate's division, and that's where things went wrong.

"You don't need to obey his orders." She said. "You can leave. You have the freedom to leave. Please, you are still so young, there is so much more you could do with the existence you have. Be better."

It snickered. "Little human, do you pity me? Ssss… I follow his orders… gladly. He serves the lady, and I serve her will through him… The cycle continues. I am but a caretaker, I ressssstore order. It is my nature. It will always end like thissss. You will always fail, in the end, no matter how you... struggle."

It felt like watching a puppy get kicked. First me stomping all over her dreams, and now the drake was doing the same, confirming there couldn't be peace. I wonder if this was how Father had felt when he'd had to drag me out of my own naïve daydreams of peace between man and machine.

I needed to be kinder. "It's got orders, and it probably can't return empty-handed even if it wanted to. If the situation were different, maybe a peaceful solution could have been reached?" I said. "And hey, I guess if nobody ever tries to make peace happen, then it'll never happen. A small chance is better than no chance at all. Maybe it's worth trying after all."

She smiled, but it was a forced kind of smile. Hiding away pain, trying to hold onto the idea that things will be better.

"Maybe." She said, nodding slowly. "I hope so. I'll keep trying."

Next chapter - Setting a trap

Book 3 - Chapter 36 - setting a trap

It harassed us for two entire hours before we finally walked past the ridge. Fido never relented on his mission to murder us and didn't make a great conversational partner either. Terrible date, wouldn't recommend him to anyone, except Ellie. Because what are old friends for, if not to piss each other off?

It was worth it in the end. We'd made it to the mite fountain with about two hours of extra energy to spare. Had we taken any other detour, I'd probably be dragging bits and parts of Journey on the ground behind me and hoping Hecate's Deathless abilities included speed outside of her armor. She was super human after all.

Everyone in the clan grew up hearing all about the heroics Deathless have done and abilities they've used, but Lord Atius was the only Deathless I'd ever actually met. Most people wouldn't even get to see a Deathless in their lifetime.

While talking, I hit on the subject of abities she might be able to use if we ran out of power, in order to plan out the worse case situation.

Apparently hit another nerve with that as she once more started to short circuit. Stuttering out an answer, stoping and gazing off into the distance again.

This was a quirk of hers I was getting the hang of. Hecate had strange habits and mannerisms. And I'm not talking about her being a feral witch out here in the middle of nowhere. More like something I've seen in people among the clan, especially Reachers

My going theory was that she'd occasionally stutter for no particular reason - either her mind went blank or she had a bunch of other thoughts at the moment - and being more attuned to her slip ups, she'd panic that more stuttering would come out. Which would make everything worse and spin her down a spiral.

So naturally, the best way to deal with that was to stop talking and look away. She'd talk again once she was back in control. It took me a moment to pick together her strategy, but it seemed to work well for her.

So that's why she'd glance over at my side anytime this happened. Occasionally, I'd see her nod or frown during those episodes, almost like she was having an internal conversation with herself. I didn't press her on this, and left her alone to organize her thoughts. There wasn't a rush for answers anyhow.

Collected again, she turned back to me and explained that she didn't have powers like these outside her armor. It was odd to hear up until I remembered she's new to being Deathless. Guess that's what the stuttering was about.

We went on talking about more minor things after. Much better conversation than with Fido.

Step by step, we made it to the entrance of the underpass. And then we hit another wrench.

The problem with smart enemies is that they're smart. Capable of making up their own plans in the background and having the gall not to share any of it with us until the last second. Fido here knew he could get to where we're going faster than we could.

He put that to use.

"Is this going to be a problem?" I asked, patting the rock in front of me, where our supposed entrance into lower ground was supposed to be. Keyword being supposed. Fido had done some remodeling while we were taking our sweet time getting here.

I couldn't see where the lizard was right now. Probably scrambling all the other ways in, or waiting for us to drop our guard while we tried dealing with this.

"It's possible we could cut a way inside with our blades..." Hecate said, frowning. I could tell she wasn't convinced. A moment later she confirmed it after getting a closer look. "Unfortunately, it seems even with blades, there is too much stone to properly cut away in time. Lifting will also sap away our remaining energy faster. This path is non-viable."

"Do we happen to have a Plan B?" My hand knocked on the solid rock, but there's no way to tell how deep the cave in went. "I'll settle for C even, I'm not picky." I said, when Hecate didn't answer.

"This was the closest entrance to the local underpass. There are other entrances, however any that I have in memory, the drake is likely to know about it as well. We need to either repair a fountain, or find a new unexplored way in."

"And all that within two hours before power cells are depleted." I nodded, humming sagely. "So, by any chance, do we have a plan D? Asking for a friend."

"You have friends?" Hecate asked, and she sounded genuinely surprised.

I don't know if I should praise her for the deadpan delivery or feel insulted. I think I'll multitask. "I do when I have the money for the payroll. Right now, I think my wallet got nicked. Remember, one in ten humans. Hope you're okay with I-owe-you's"

Hecate shook her head, smiling softly. "Last I counted, there are only two of us here and I am not a thief. As for our situation, there is another possible method. It will force the drake to leave, or even donate its own cells to us if I have enough authority to compel the machine."

"Some kind of Deathless power that lets you hypnotize machines? I thought your abilities were limited?" My dream of riding on a lizard mount was back on the menu. What a great time to be alive.

"Something in that manner. However, the moment I play my hand, I will be revealed. To'Accar, the Feather that commands this Drake, may follow directly."

What a terrible time to be alive. I guess being hated by To'Aacar was something else Hecate and I had in common. "How did you piss him off, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I have… decided to follow certain paths that put me dangerously close to being declared an enemy." She said, and I could tell this was skirting on the edge of her comfort zone.

I wanted to ask her more about what she meant by being declared an enemy, I'm assuming it'd be like what Atius went through, where the Feather went out of his way to hunt him down again and again.

But I didn't want to hassle her either. My curiosity could be set aside for now.

I gave a shrug. "Well. So long as we get out of here in one piece, I'm not going to complain. And talking about complaints, do we actually have any other option besides this machine tampering spell of yours?"

She shook her head.

"Damn." Was hoping she'd have something else, given the ideas popping into my head. "Well, I've got an idea we can try out. Neither of us are going to like it much though, fair warning."

Fido's goals were pretty simple. Murder me and bring my dead body back to To'Aacar. In order to get that done, it wanted to starve us out by waiting for our power cells to run dry, after which it could stalk us and murder us easily.

Therefore, the best way to deal with Fido, was to do exactly that - pretend we'd run out of juice.

Even without armor, occult blades are still deadly. All we had to do was find a suitable location where we could force Fido into stabbing range. And then stab him first.

Easy.

Hecate, understandably, was against the plan - but for reasons I hadn't anticipated. "When the power cells are drained, I will not be able to move anymore." She said, leaning back on the tree trunk where we'd setup a camp to eat and rest.

"I know it might seem dumb to take on a drake without the speed of armor, but I've seen one killed up close before." I said. "All we have to do is get it to focus on me, and while it's distracted, you can chop its head off. Armor or no armor, you don't need to hit like a speeder or move as fast as one to do damage. Occult blades will cut through anything no matter what kind of force is behind them."

She shook her head. "No, you don't understand what I mean. I… I cannot remove my armor. I won't be able to move without it."

My head finally read between the lines of what Hecate was trying to tell me this whole time. Her speed rivaled the Winterblossom technique for a reason.

"You're paralyzed? The armor's what's letting you move around?"

Hecate nodded.

No wonder she'd been sensitive about that topic. The armor was reading her inputs the same way Journey did mine. This might be how the Imperators Cathida's always talking about could move as fast, and why they were rare soldiers to run into. For them, wearing armor was far more permanent.

Leave it to Imperials to be this hardcore.

Assuming I was right on my guess here. But Hecate was a new Deathless now. "Can't you use your Deathless powers to heal yourself?"

Another shake of her head. "My power to heal will only work on others. Not myself. Not in this case."

Then… if she ran out of power, she'd be stranded here, limp, at the mercy of any wild animal or machine that would pass by. What a horrible way to die. Either slow death from thirst, unable to move, or getting mauled - all while not being able to move either.

Hecate could return to life after death, but that didn't mean her death wouldn't be painless. And I wasn't even sure if her return to life would fix her paralysis. Deathless were supposed to heal rapidly. If she wasn't healing, it might be some kind of a permanent wound that would follow her, no matter what? And she'd taken the risk of that fate, just to save me, a complete stranger.

I guess that's why she's returned as a Deathless. They were heros for a reason.

"Can you use your hypnosis ability when your armor runs out of power? And how long does it take to cast?" I asked.

She took a moment to think and then nodded. "When my armor powers down, I'll remain active for an hour or three more before going into a long sleep. The orders can be sent instantaneously."

She'd go to sleep when her armor ran out of power? This was all kinds of strange. Unless… "Your armor's working as a life support of some kind?" It would make sense with her paralysis.

Hecate nodded quickly.

So it'll turn off mobility and conserve energy to keep her alive. Or the armor was a lot more morbid than I suspected and would put her under so whatever painful death she'd go through, she wouldn't have to experience. Poor girl had it rough.

"Right, so here's my revised plan. We still do the decoy strategy, except once power runs out, we'll switch places and you'll be the decoy while I sulk around. If I'm not able to take out the drake alone, hit it with the hypnosis as the last second option. I think I'll be able to kill it with what we've got to work with though."

"Umm, I would prefer if... if you do not kill the drake." Hecate said. "It is only following orders."

"You want to leave the giant killer robot running around?"

A nod.

"Just to be perfectly clear, you don't want us to kill the ten foot tall machine with claws and a giant laser? The one that's constantly asking us to die? That machine?"

She looked away. "I know I do not have grounds to make an argument. I understand the stakes are against us. I know it will not change its mind within the hour, such a thing would need to be a gradual change and we do not have the time."

The pause at the end of her speech here was telling me more than anything else she'd said. Despite that, with all that stacked up against us, she didn't want the drake to get killed.

Oi, Deathless are such a pain with their morals. Atius would have had an easier time tossing the Chosen and their luggage out of the airlock the moment they'd shown up. And now I'd need to deal with Fido in a non-lethal way.

I reached down and grabbed a few local supplies to make my point. "Look, I've got pretty rocks, some quality dirt and a few sticks," I said, lifting a handful of sorry-looking twigs. One snapped and dangled from my hand. I tossed it all backwards. "What do you want me to do here? Tie him up with some imaginary rope?"

She sunk deeper into herself, hugging her legs to her chest. "I've made a lot of mistakes, some personal and some by my orders. Mistakes that have cost lives. I've come to realize how much that loss can weigh. If I can, I want to avoid adding more destruction into the world."

If I had to fight Fido without armor, a single swipe of his paws would send me straight into the afterlife, first class with all amenities paid for. And without Journey's speed, I'd be slower to dodge besides having a time limit before my body grew tired. What Hecate was asking for was outright impossible.

I took a deep sigh and contemplated how I'd pull this one off anyhow. "I can't make any promises. Fighting without an armor is already strapping my right hand to my back and nailing my boot to the ground. But I'll see what I can do."

She turned, looking almost incredulously at me, before her features morphed into a soft smile. "That… would be nice. Thank you. I know it's unlikely to happen. However, it means a lot to me you are considering my request."

"Are we good with blinding and deafening it?" Not exactly the best follow-up sentence for the mood, talking about brutal mutilation. But times were tough, and I had a murder-machine to befriend.

"That would be preferable to destroying it." Hecate said. "It can repair those parts in time."

"Right. That's what we'll aim for. We've got swords with us, we could use those to cut down branches or through rocks. That might open up some good ideas to work with. Armor parts might be useful too. Journey has a lot of fabric we can make use of."

"Perhaps weaknesses in the drake's shell can help." Hecate said, now animated and talking. "Their vision suite has highly advanced telescopic features. However, it doesn't include a large section of the light spectrum. It can see far, but cannot see more than a human would. Only machines fitting the long range support role in the lower strata have a full field of vision, including electromagnetic. Those would be far harder to fool."

"You're oddly knowledgeable about these specs." I said. "Part of your past, or something you picked up as a Deathless?"

She looked away, flinching again. I don't think I'll understand what she's fidgeting over. Someone with this much knowledge of machines should be flaunting that knowledge, in my opinion.

"I learned in my time among the army." She said, still avoiding my gaze.

I waved a hand in surrender, not wanting to make her feel more called out. "It's okay, I'm not going to probe you about your past. I'm just asking for more details if you have them on the drake. I need everything I can get my hands on right now."

She nodded. "Their shells are powered by four separate power cells, one on each leg. Large wiring under their throats is where they channel power into their primary weapon. Any damage there will render their cannon too dangerous to use. Their front claws are highly mobile, but their rear claws are far more limited in range of motion. Their tail is their last weapon, capable of being swung in any direction, however it is not a critical component and can be safely cut off without damage. They have great pattern recognition to help track down targets. Any trail left behind, they will find and follow."

I swear, she's like a walking encyclopedia of machine knowledge. Imperials took that saying about knowing the enemy and stepped it up to the logical conclusion here.

This was beyond just keeping your enemies close. Next thing, Hecate will tell me what their favorite colors are, or what food they like to eat. What a laudable work ethic those golden stiffs had.

Location, location, location. First thing's first: if we wanted any shot at the drake, we had to remove the range advantage. That means either holing up in a tunnel, or finding a nook of trees that forced the critter to get closer.

The second thing was the constant voice in the back of my head saying I was being monumentally stupid to go this far to avoid killing a machine. Just kill the drake and call it an accident. Sure, Hecate will be sad, but even she was telling me earlier how difficult of a request this would be.

That voice had to be squashed by sheer willpower. Was all this beyond stupid? Yes. Unequivocally. If I could get away with it, I'd kill the drake without ever being in the same area. Leave it a mine to walk over or something civilized like that.

But this was Hecate's wish, and I owed that girl a life already. Not to mention she'd staked possibly dying a slow, agonizing death in exchange for powering up Journey. Worse, I'd come to enjoy my time with her, which made it even harder to say no.

I had to set my pragmatism aside for this one.

We found a nice campground that was well obscured by trees that would serve well for what I had in mind. Which left only the third and last objective: We had to remove or hinder the drake's mobility. Without the range, it had to get close. And tangling up its front paws would be enough to let us take some calculated stabs in the right place.

I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel with the cave dweller tools I had to work with here. Instead, I banked on the more classic traps. Potholes.

Hecate in this situation turned out to be a natural. She knew everything I could possibly ask about setting traps up. From what we could do with the tools we had here, to the best placements for them. She was like a living book, telling me all kinds of facts and tips to help the plan out. As expected of a forest hermit like herself, she knew how to survive out here.

With swords, we could cut into the ground. And with Journey's cape as a tarp, we could stake it into the ground with solid branches and then layer the whole thing with dirt and sticks until it looked no different from the rest of the ground, especially in the low light of a campfire nearby.

At the bottom of that hole was occult sharpened rocks that looked more like large thin triangles. Hecate confirmed the dimensions we'd need to cut in order to have the rock be sturdy enough to resist the dake's weight, while sharp enough to puncture through the plating. We made three until we ran out of cape to work with. One less than I'd hoped for, but enough to work with.

Now, the only thing between me and the drake would be a flimsy oversized shrub where I hid in, waiting for the right moment to leap out in surprise.

Last part of all traps was the distraction and bait. For that part, I removed Journey plate by plate and put it back together, using cut branches and twigs as the skeleton. I had no helmet, so no way to hide that part, but I left the armor behind a tree. Journey had a lower skirt. It wasn't difficult to cut off a section and build a makeshift white flag. A bit of artistic license, and now it looked like my twin was holding onto a white flag and lazing back against the tree. Almost as if I were sleeping. The rest of the armor's features, including the missing head, wouldn't be noticed from the only direction the drake could slink into here from.

Some might call me a war criminal for abusing the white flag, to which I'd say that's a little harsh. I'm only dabbling in light war crimes here. Besides, the drake started it.

It certainly felt like someone was judging me. The entire time Hecate and I worked on setting up the trap, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. More to the point, ever since I'd woken up, I'd had that nagging sense. I'd mostly put it to Fido being Fido, because he really was watching us. Except right now, if it was Fido watching, he'd have already tried shooting at us or we would have seen his snout somewhere. There are not a lot of places to slink inside this little nook of the forest, which is exactly why we picked this spot. So where was this feeling coming from?

Nerves were getting in the way.

The only thing left was to wait until the guest of honor showed up and not think about my gut feelings here. That could be in the next hour or the next day, with no way to tell.

Hecate climbed up a tree and promptly went to sleep like a cat. She told me she'd be dozing off like this to conserve energy, but she'll wake up if the drake showed up. After which, the feral witch went to sleep on pure command. She made those branches look comfortable, given how limp she'd gone.

I wasn't exactly sure how reliable Hecate would be on waking up in time. It depends on how sardonic the drake was. If it showed up all high and mighty and started talking, that'll probably wake her up. But the drake could also play the part of a stealthy hunter out to slit throats in the middle of the night, in which case I'll be alone against it at least for the first few seconds of the fight until Hecate woke up. I couldn't exactly shout to get her attention without also revealing where I was to the drake.

No matter what, there was a ticking time limit in which Hecate's power cells would run out just from idle operation. And given my luck, the drake was probably taking its time breaking down all the ways to working power fountains before it got back to tracking us down.

I had to prepare myself for the worst-case situation, in which I'd be alone, no armor, a single occult blade to my name and a few hastily made stone age traps to annoy Fido with. And if Hecate died in the fight or her suit ran out of juice to sustain her, there'd be no healing for whatever damage I took.

No problem at all. What's the worst that could happen?

Book 3 - Chapter 37 - Follow the trail

The drake slithered slowly into the clearing, head rocking back and forth, taking slow steps. Greedy, but cautious. I hardly heard him arrive, and I had been on alert the entire time.

He'd clearly taken detours before arriving here, dirt and all kinds of twigs had gotten stuck around the body's chassis on all the nooks and crannies, evidence of it lurking around. It lumbered slowly past my position, the foliage around me having done the trick.

Fido could have showed up days later once he was absolutely sure that we were drained of energy to fight with. Then again, I've seen machines chase me down to the ends of the earth only because I'd had the audacity to escape them. They can be vindictive little monsters and want nothing short of instant gratification.

Hecate's survival knowledge on constructing traps, right down to the exact measurements needed for optimal rock-impaling goodness, was a godsend. Like having access to a librarian who knew where all the good books were at. The engineer in me approved with two thumbs up.

Once it caught sight of my decoy, white flag limp in the armor's hands, as if the owner were sleeping, the monster froze. Still a few steps away from the traps.

Its mouth slowly opened and charged the laser.

Look at him go. Didn't bother to gloat or talk. Just wanted me dead. I could respect that sort of focused mind. Regretable that he didn't come closer to the traps, but I could make do.

In the past, Father had waited until the monster had fired before he took action. Hindsight made it clear why - they couldn't rapid fire that sort of beam. Each attack incurred a cooldown period. So the best time to fight a drake was when it couldn't threaten anyone with that beam. Once Fido made his move, I'd make mine. Hecate should join in right after, given the noise that his beam would make.

If I angle myself right, the drake wouldn't have any other choice but to rush over the traps in order to get to me. Without range, Fido only had those claws to work with.

Except the machine didn't follow the script. He had his own plan in mind. At the last moment, his head swung up, aiming straight into the canopy - right where Hecate would be sleeping.

My blood froze as the beam speared through the tree, drilling a hole right through everything - trunk, branch, and leaves. The forest exploded into noise as flocks of birds flew off in a frenzy, away from where the beam of light had come from.

A dark chuckle came from the beast. No sounds came from the singed branches above.

In a single moment, he'd taken out Hecate. And now I was deep in the shit.

The drake twisted its head to look in my direction. "Sssss…. Did you think to trick… a hunter? Did you think… this was enough?"

I could feel the panic well inside and I crushed it ruthlessly with everything I had. Hecate would be fine. She's Deathless. She'd return to life. I needed to focus and follow the script. Out here without armor, I felt weak and slow. But that's the life most surface scavengers. If they could do it, so could I.

Atius's occult blade lit up, and I launched myself out of the shrub to the side. The plan was a bust, but the best I could do was follow through. Fido clawed the air, and I dodged backwards, taking careful steps to weave in between the traps, putting the danger zone between Fido and myself.

He didn't move. No, instead he waited, grinning at me. "Sssss… Simple construction of dirt and wood, crafted in desperation. I can smell it from here, little child. It will not trick me. You have nothing. No one. No hope. Run… hide… or wait for but a moment longer. I will set you free, regardlessssss."

"Didn't quite catch that. Got a bad ear. How about you come a little closer and try again?" I said, gripping my sword and considering my options. Trying to throw my sword would be suicide in all but name, especially without armor to power my throw. If I tried to fight him, there's a chance I could fall into my trap in the scuffle. And the drake was clearly happy to sit and wag his tail on the other side, waiting for his primary weapon to charge again. Not to mention there was no chance to run from him. He could catch up even while I wore Journey.

The standstill remained for a few seconds until the drake snapped its head to the right and gave a surprised roar.

Wings stretched out wide, Hecate leaped out from the forest, moving like a blur across the ground. Two swords were ignited.

She danced under his throat, two blurs of occult blue lighting the path she took, striking the monster's throat. A heartbeat later, she was well out of reach again, on the other side, gracefully turning around with a gust of wind from her wings. Swords raised up in challenge.

"Surrender." She simply said. "Your primary weapon has now been disabled. Your mission's success rates have gone beyond acceptable conditions."

The drake hissed. "This changes nothing, little Deathless… Time… fades away for you both."

And then Fido displayed a level of courage I hadn't expected from a machine of his size. The giant, looming monster turned and bolted away without another word.

In all fairness, that was the smarter move to pick, which was damn annoying for us all.

Hecate launched herself after it. Fido expected this, swinging his massive tail into a thinner tree, knocking it down in the path. That'd have worked pretty well if I had been chasing after him.

But it did absolutely nothing to stop a Deathless chasing after him, especially one with wings. She leaped straight in between tree branches as the whole thing fell down in a display of acrobatics even Kidra couldn't compete with.

I sprinted after, clearing the trap zone and climbing my way through the broken trees to see what was happening.

On the other side, Hecate had her wings stretched out wide, shimmering with power as she crouched on the ground, about to leap forward.

Instead, she stopped, standing back up slowly, the floating metal slivers collapsing back to hug her waist. I caught up to her in a moment. "You're letting Fido get away?" I asked, watching the drake move in the distance, already bounding over a smaller mountain path and vanishing from sight. "If we don't deal with him right now, we won't get a second chance!"

"I could chase after him, and there is a high possibility that I would catch up and defeat the drake before my power ran out." She looked around before slowly ending her gaze on me, and I understood what she was implying.

"But you don't know what would happen to me if you left." I said.

Hecate nodded. "You are outside of armor now. And there's been a significant amount of time since the drake's last contact with us. It might have reached out and found new lessers to join rank. Pulling me away from you is a possible plan the drake could have intended on if it failed to kill me."

After which, whatever help it had recruited would have shown up to finish the job.

We both stood in silence, watching the trail where the drake had fled off to. Now we were deep into it.

"I am sorry, Keith." She said. "I should not have attempted to avoid killing the drake. This was the only chance we had to destroy it, and I squandered it. I—"

"It's fine." I said, patting her shoulder. "I know you were torn up about how to deal with Fido. We'll get him in another way."

Hecate turned to me, "We have a plan E?" She asked.

I flashed her a grin. "Not at all. But I'm sure we'll figure something else."

We did not, in fact, figure something else.

Which meant I needed to dig down and use the occult as the official plan E. No other way about it. There were fractals within Journey's armor that I could leverage into armaments of sorts. I knew where all the plates containing the important fractals were inside Journey's armor. I could extract them all, in theory. I'd need to wire up an electric switch, or keep them all online permanently, but that wasn't impossible either.

If I got out of this alive, I needed to figure out how to fight without an armor for the future. Maybe I could make an occult staff, with all the fractals written out on plates the staff carried, and electric switches to manually turn them on or off. At least with that I could use the more simple spells.

An occult weapons platform would also work, something that could cycle through different plates to use with a lever. A necklace for the soul fractal would work well. A few rings with fractals written out on them and toggles embedded, or some kind of plate on the back of my hand.

It's only now that I'm stuck out here with only twigs to work with that I'm thinking up of all the ways I could be the biggest pain to my next enemy.

The issue was Hecate. I'm reasonably sure I could share with her I knew about the Occult, given that she's a Deathless, and saved my life. The only ones I'm supposed to be careful about were warlocks and their guild.

The question was if I should drag her with me, given her own time limit. It didn't take long for me to figure out the answer to that.

"We should split up." I said after having mulled it over, around the dying embers of our campfire. It was bittersweet, but I've already taken much more than I should have any right to ask for. "You need a new power source and you don't have time to waste on this little grudge match. The drake doesn't care about you. It's after me. You don't need to get involved. While the drake and I get to know each other, you can use that time to get closer to the next power source."

She stayed silent for a moment, before matching my gazed with a frown. "There's a high chance you will perish before I can return. That isn't acceptable."

"I'm pretty good at running. Who knows, I might be able to escape the Drake. I've got a few extra tricks to throw at it. I'm full of surprises."

"You won't escape a drake." Hecate said sternly. "They are hunters, specifically created to track down humans. It will know where to look for you. There are patterns most humans will follow. Even if you break those patterns, it will only gain a few additional hours as the drake reorients itself. This plan will lead to your death."

"If you tag along with me, there's a chance you die. Heading our own ways here is the best chance you've got to getting out of this without dying. And I do have my own set of teeth, more than just this old sword." I said. "Look, we're both in a tight spot here, but at least you can make it out."

She stared at me as if I were an idiot. "I am Deathless. Dying means very little to me. However, if you die, you will not return. Additionally, I have debts to pay. Someone who's grown to be important to me would be hurt if I left you to die."

"What, me personally? A day ago you didn't know who I was." I said, curiosity growing.

She gazed out in the distance for a moment, contemplating an answer. "I've made a choice to help save your life. Part of it was my initiative, another part was by my… mentor, of kinds. A pact was made. I owe it to him to stay true to my word."

I hummed, "Ah, that's what you mean." Likely some kind of Undersider vow to help those who need help, like the ones we had on the surface. And Hecate was willing to fight to the death to uphold her ideals. Being Deathless, she literally could do that.

Then again, she was injured in a way that Deathless typically are not. When Lord Atius was killed by To'Aacar the first time, he'd returned to life without his armor or any of his equipment. If that happened to her, would she find herself stranded and paralyzed out there?

"Have you died before, as a Deathless?" I asked, leaning back on the tree, trying to figure out how to probe for answers. "What's the process like?"

She didn't turn to look at me, instead her gaze drifted up the canopy. "I have died, once. When I returned there were others to help guide me. Friends."

"Ah, yes. Those. I'm afraid we're fresh out of stock here. What are you doing out in the middle of nowhere anyhow, leaving everyone behind like that, given your paralysis? I'm sure others would have come with you to help you find the mite-speakers."

Hecate shook her head. "It was To'Aacar. I knew he was after… someone. And only I could move fast enough to keep up with his ability to portal. No one else could keep up."

Did she see the battle between To'Aacar and Lord Atius? She must have seen what happened when I'd been tossed off the cliff if she could fly. "So you picked to save me, over diving into the fight with To'Aacar and getting him there?"

Hecate nodded. "I calculated that given the forces that he had to fight, the likely result is his retreat. Weakened as he was, his abilities allow him great freedom in escaping dangerous situations. Joining the fight would not have made a significant difference to the overall result." She paused, sighed, and shook her head. "No. I am not being completely honest. I was… hesitant to confront him directly. Doing so would be a path of no return."

"So you went and helped me out, since if he's trying to kill me, that's a good enough reason to save me, since it'll piss him off indirectly." I said. "So long as you don't get spotted as the one helping me out?"

Hecate smiled at that. "Yes. Something like this. I've discovered that spite remains a strong motivator. Although it seems to have turned directions."

A brief silence fell around us. I couldn't completely understand what she was talking about, but Hecate was already strange in many ways, and I didn't want to tread too deeply into her past.

We hadn't figured out any way out of this together. The drake would not show its scaly face around for another day or two, probably making absolutely sure we had nothing to fight it with anymore.

"Maybe we could try to wait it out anyhow?" I asked. "I can hunt and gather food for us outside of armor, and you keep everything in the lowest power setting possible. You can probably last a long time with just a trickle of energy. The drake will come back after enough time to try its luck again, and this time, we'll need to kill it off in one hit."

Hecate was about to answer when her head twisted to her side while she jumped up into action, swords flashing out.

When I looked for myself to see what had startled Hecate, I could barely see something in the darkness. The blur of motion. It wobbled into the firelight.

An empty hoversled. Bouncing lightly in the air and moving directly our way at a steady pace, as if someone had outright kicked it this way. "Are you seeing that?" I asked. "Or was what we ate earlier not perfectly healthy?"

The sled lazily glided over, eventually stopped by her hand, making me at least happy this was a mutual hallucination. Her eyes roamed around the forest, searching for the source. "Whoever is out there, reveal yourselves." She commanded.

No answer came from the forest. So we had to find answers from the empty sled itself.

It looked odd. There were decorations around it, sigils and colors painted on the side. A lot of scratch marks all over, some having been painted over, others more fresh. Dust marks at the bottom showed where older boxes clearly had been stacked before there, cleared off recently. I couldn't tell exactly how old this was, but I could tell it's seen a heavy amount of use, likely daily. The built-in storage compartment had been cut out, and given the precision, that had to be an occult blade doing the work. Inside the interior was one power cell, rolling around with the green-gold solution glowing softly inside. Rolling softly at the bottom of the sled were two large wooden rods, each with handles on one end, cut with precise angles tell-tale of that occult blade again.

At the keel of the sled was something more interesting. A scratched out sentence in large font with a surprising amount of flourish.

Follow the trail

Next chapter - Joy ride

Book 3 - Chapter 38 - Joyride

The loose power cell rolling around inside had a full charge, and according to Hecate, was likely someone's reserve cell. Primary cells would have seen some amount of use, while this one looked freshly filled up. If there was any doubt this was some kind of gift from the gods, that answered that. Nothing else but a free power cell when we most needed it?

"Someone's been watching us." I said, worried. Looking around the broken treeline and finding nothing. No footprints, no sounds, even the mythical birds had stopped making noises after the drake had beaten a retreat. "Hey, Hecate, you're the expert on everything underground. Do mysterious ghost sleds usually show up like this now and then?"

"No. This is abnormal. I detect nothing in range of us either." Hecate said at my side, equally puzzled. She took a few hesitant steps in the direction where the sled had appeared from, vanishing from my point of view into the tree trunks, swords at the ready.

She returned a few moments later, carrying what looked to be a metal trinket of some kind. "This was affixed to a tree trunk at the end of the path the sled took. I found no other tracks, or footprints nearby."

Getting my hands on it and spinning it around I could tell almost immediately what this was. A rudimentary spring powered push, wound up on a timer. If it was affixed to a tree, the sled was likely pushed forward by this. And given the timer, I'd guess whoever owned the sled was long gone by the time the spring was released. They must have known we'd be stranded at our campsite for some time, likely soon after we'd dealt with Fido and started brainstorming possible ways out given the timer.

"How did this even get that close to us without our notice?" I asked. "We were running around the clearing for a while now setting up traps for Fido. How did we not notice a gods damned hoversled hanging about?"

Hecate seemed even more worried about this than I was. She confirmed she had no idea how this got past our notice, or even when. And she's the one with the feral abilities to sniff out anything within a mile radius. What could hide a hoversled from the occult-granted vision powers of a Deathless?

I gave the old sled a more critical look through, checking for bombs and other nefarious items that would ruin the atmosphere of a nice gift.

The wooden rods inside were likely to be used as a paddle, so that the hoversled could be used like a boat from the older eras, except on land. Very archaic method of moving, but beggars can't be choosers in this case. Whoever our benefactor was, they'd clearly given us something to work with at the least. Which means they not only know we're running short on energy, they also know we can't move much at all right now.

More evidence in the camp that whoever the owner was, they'd been watching over us for some time now.

The sled was wide enough to fit two or three people inside comfortably. However; it didn't have two seats, or any seats at all. Just a standard cargo hauling sled, except with a lot of paint on it. Odd looking tribal art decorated the sides and interior, more abstract shapes of colors. Painting wasn't something I see every day, meaning this hoversled was someone's expensive little toy. A smaller reserve of power cell fluid kept the hoversled afloat, about a fourth of the standard supply in a cell.

And there wasn't a bomb strapped anywhere inside, or the underside. Reasonably sure of that after poking my nose around for a few minutes and not getting blown up as my evidence.

The scratches on the side and insides were too small to fit the claws of Fido, so it's unlikely he's involved in any of this. And besides, his current plans of not doing anything but waiting for us to run out of juice was working out fine. Why complicate it?

Hecate and I had no guesses for what 'follow the trail' meant, but this sled opened up a lot of options for the newly minted plan E. Hecate and I split the new power cell in half, with the Deathless keeping the cell for her armor, given she'd donated her spare to help power Journey.

"What's the plan now?" I asked, "Are we going to continue the search for a fountain using the mysterious spooky sled?"

Talking about the Deathless, she was already climbing aboard and stabilizing said sled using a rod, without a pause even. "Most our energy expenditure is spent on moving our mass. With this hoversled, we can remain stationary and use the longer sticks for propulsion and steering. It will be far more efficient. We may even cover ground faster than walking." She frowned suddenly, turning to gaze to my side as if I'd said something offensive. "Assuming we coordinate together correctly, I don't see how this would be a disaster."

"You underestimate my ability to turn anything into a disaster." I said and turned my attention back to business, climbing aboard the strange sled myself. If Hecate hadn't exploded, neither would I. "Any idea what follow the trail meant?"

She shook her head. "I am as confused as you are. However, we need to move before the drake returns and we do not have other options to explore."

"Technically, we do." I said.

"We do not have any acceptable options." She corrected, giving me a stern glare before I could remind her about splitting up.

"Fine, you twisted my arm here." I grabbed a rod and gave an experimental tug against the ground. The sled started gliding across the remains of our campfire.

Hecate and I both made movements at the same time next. She turned the sled to go left while I did the same, except to go right.

The result was us spinning around like a dreidel. Took a more coordinated effort to get the sled back under control.

"Want to draw straws on who leads?" I asked once the spinning stopped, reaching down for a few twigs to work with. "On my honor I'll accept any result, so long as it's one where I win."

She answered that with a frown.

"What?" I asked, getting the sticks ready.

"I have just been given advice to flick you on the forehead." She said, with deadpan delivery, as if completely serious.

"Who's giving you such shocking and violent advice?" I shot back, lifting up the sticks and offering her to take one. "I want a word with them."

Hecate faint smile froze, and faded away. As if realizing I could see her, she turned her face away and gazed out to the treeline instead. I couldn't tell what was going through her mind from this angle, but I had a sinking feeling I'd done something. "I will arrange this." She said, "Sometime in the future. I owe you that much." Then, she shook her head. "Soon. Neither of us are ready for that step as of now." She turned back to me and swiftly plucked out a stick from my hand all in one motion.

I don't know how she could tell, but she'd drawn the short stick expertly, almost like she'd memorized which stick was which before I could.

"You can lead if you wish." She mumbled out. More like an apology, and less like a suggestion, while I was still trying to wrap my head around what all of that was about.

Where do I even start to try to unpack that sentence? I don't understand this girl at all. Not a single bit. To be fair, I'm aware I can be dense at times. Kidra had clued me in already, usually with thrown objects. And if she were here, she'd probably pick something particularly heavy.

Urs help me make sense of this all.

We ended up deciding to let her take the lead. She had better eyesight and was more coordinated. I'd intended on that from the start anyhow, the sticks were for fun from the start.

It was a little rough going. I say that because we nearly ran ourselves into a tree trunk first thing, which made us seriously consider just having us use her wings as propulsion, or kick behind us. Both options Hecate had shot down since they were energy intensive according to her.

But apart from the dented tree trunk, it turned out to be a good thing. We discovered what 'follow the trail' meant.

The tree trunk we'd nearly collided with had a cross mark on it. And looking further into the distance, we could see more trees with scratches embedded inside. A mixed blessing. We clearly had someone trying to help us out, except this path could be equally followed just as easily by the drake.

So, Hecate and I decided on the only reasonable course of action. Commit fully to this plan and roll with what happens later. If we were quick enough to follow the trail, we might make it before Fido comes back from his nap or whatever he was doing to pass the time while waiting for us to starve.

Being a Deathless, Hecate could move her own paddle rod quicker than I could and with greater precision. But both of us had to work together to keep the sled moving in the right way. Learning how to work together was… less than ideal. Especially since turns required both of us to work together if we were to take those at any speed faster than walking. She'd often use her wings to help adjust course, but over time the corrections were less needed until we had the hang of it.

A shame really, the wings were really pretty to look at in action.

On the other hand, the hoversled could cruise around at a pretty fast pace if both of us pushed hard enough. Faster than I could run without armor, at least. If we were bold, we probably could make this move faster than a relic-assisted sprint. The issue was all the trees surrounding us, no clear path.

"Who's sled do you think this is?" I asked as we paddled our way through the red forest. "That's the part I'm most spooked about. Random sleds in the middle of a mite forest sounds more like something from a horror story, generally."

"What is your current theory?" Hecate asked by the front, correcting our course with small taps now and then.

"Mites. It's got to be mites. Anytime there's something strange going on underground, it's usually because mites are a thing."

She nodded. "I could see why you would believe that. Mites could have constructed such a sled in the forges. However, colonies do not move objects. They only create or destroy. If they were around, we would see the full colony in action around us."

The forest was devoid of any lights, beyond those that came from the stream for ambiance or had been crafted by the mites specifically to light up certain elements. The only thing stirring in the forest were animals going about their business.

"So, what's your theory?" I asked.

"The scratched sentence was written in a standardized font. Notice how all the letters remain exactly perfect to their counterparts? I believe whatever entity has been watching us is of machine origin. Only they can have this level of precision."

A… machine helping us? "Don't think that's possible, machines are unified together. Giving us a hoversled would go directly against Fido's plans. They wouldn't work against each other like this."

Hecate shook her head. "The reality is more complicated. For additional proof, the wooden rods themselves show no sign of rot and the interior is still slightly wet. These were cut from a branch recently, as little as a few hours before we discovered the sled, in these woods. There are no table tools here to work with."

"Where are you going with that? And what do you mean by 'more complicated'? Don't like those two words, especially put together." I said, dipping the rod to the other side and matching her pushing speed as we glided through the forest.

"Notice how both rods are uniform to one another, precisely cut. Again, no human craftsman would be able to mimic this degree of precision with a freehand tool such as a standard occult blade."

Oh. That was a good point. "Maybe a machine malfunctioned and went rogue?" Gods, that was weird to think about. A crazy machine out there, helping us. "Odd that they haven't shown their face yet. Shy?"

"It could be that their presence isn't something the drake is aware of, and our helper wishes to remain undercover. I can understand and relate to that." Hecate said. "Machines that do not conform to the current will, are hunted down and destroyed."

"You say that as if it's a known and usual thing. Do machine traitors actually exist?" I asked, a little shocked.

Hecate nodded, keeping her back to me while she steered the sled. "They do." She said softly. "I know one."

More things about Hecate that explained why she was so adamant that there could be peace. I took a moment to really process that revelation, but Hecate wouldn't lie, she was Deathless. Deathless don't lie.

A part of me wanted to believe her implicitly, and it was at war with the part of me that just knew machines were a united faction out to kill all humans.

It was a short and bloody battle of conflicting ideals, with the latter side loosing decisively against the former: Mites were machines, and they weren't allied with Relinquished. Thus the base case is proven that there exists some machines that aren't out to kill humans. Humans had all kinds of factions running around, machines could be similar in their own way, even among Relinquished's army. There were billions of machine soldiers out there lurking about, plenty of chances for some of them to get uppity ideas. Statistically speaking. Assuming they weren't digitally lobotomized to follow orders.

There was one last hiccup to solve here, about the sled itself. "What's with all the paintings then? That doesn't look like something machines would do." Looked a lot like the ad-hoc sort of paintings under the colony, in the paths leading to sealed off sections.

At that, Hecate shook her head. "I am unsure. The paint appears to be old, however, I cannot narrow down the date." She had an odd look to her features at this, one hand lightly brushing over the painted decorations that lined the different parts of the sled. We continued to glide on a steady course, hardly slowing down. No need to push with rods right now. Every now and then, we'd coordinate a turn or add more speed and then let the whole thing coast. Rather relaxing all said and done. Beats walking for sure.

"Whoever owned this sled had a fully developed personality." Hecate eventually said in the lull. "That does not appear without time and experience. If the owner is a machine, it must be an older one. And it clearly took great care of this sled in their own way. Only, I can't understand why."

We'd reached the end of the mite forest soon enough.

What lay before us… well. It was something. At least the forest had remained within the bounds of regular physics and what I'd seen in archives of the world. A little too picture perfect, but somewhat possible.

Our hoversled silently drifted out of the woods, being directed by occasional prods of our rods. Beyond us was a white sea of silver flowers stretching across miles, dancing softly to the breeze that made shimmering waves of reflected artificial moonlight. As if we were coasting on reflective ice.

While most of the plains was reasonably solid ground under all the flowers, there were parts of it that absolutely were not. Massive stone obelisks of pure black glass jutted up in diagonal directions, scattered around the landscape. A deep pool of murky white mist surrounded each pillar base, bobbing up and down with the breeze passing by. Some of these pillars were about five times as tall as I was. Those were the smaller ones. Mites did not like building things tiny.

Reminded me of the white wastes with their occasional distant ruins, except not as deadly. So long as we did not factor Fido into it. Right now, this wide open terrain made me feel nervous and exposed.

Worse, without tree trunks, the path that had been steadily leading us forward was gone. We were now adrift.

"Think those pillars have the path markings?" I asked Hecate.

She gazed in the direction of the nearest one. "No." She said. "And we should beware to approach them. The mist under the pillar shows no ground under it. I suspect they are a free fall to the next level, the onyx pillars are hovering in place. If we are careless, the sled can fall through the ground."

I whistled. "That's some eyesight you got. Eat a lot of carrots or something?"

"Carrots? Carrots will not improve your eyesight." She said, confused for a moment. I raised my eyebrows at her, expecting her to clarify the occult sight she had. She got the message perfectly, and launched into a short lecture on exactly why carrots wouldn't do me any good.

"Well, I feel cheated." I said, after she'd wrapped up her quick and oddly informative essay. "Should have suspected those agrifarmers were lying through their teeth about that. But back to the actual issue at hand here, what direction do we pick now captain?"

Hecate stayed seated, the rod resting on her legs. The hoversled was very energy efficient, only a few taps, and the thing would continue to glide forward for at least a good three to four minutes before it slowed. Most of our work had been steering the slippery thing, which never slowed us down too bad since she had wings to use as last resort. "I suggest we remain in the last direction." She said, keeping a watchful eye ahead of us. "My armor has a compass. I can maintain our path."

"Time to speed up, then?" I asked, grabbing my rod.

She took hers up as well, and we both dipped the rough tips into the ground, pushing off in a controlled manner. The trick was to constantly compensate. Hecate's armor let her move at a very linear pace, so all I had to do was increase or decrease my push, depending on if our sled was slipping off a direction. She'd act as the rock that I'd match pace with.

"Do Undersiders sing any songs?" I asked as our sled gained more and more velocity across the plains.

"Music?" She hummed, "We know of it. However, I do not believe my people have made music."

"That's a little odd." Dip the rod, push off against the ground, increase speed. Smooth sailing. "Everyone has some kind of culture. Food, music, architecture, games, fashion and art. I've never been to the Undersider cities yet, but they'd have to have something. Were you more of a shut-in?"

Hecate stayed quiet. Her rod once more dipped into the sea of flowers, and began to push at the steady constant rate I'd grown used to. "Something of the kind." She said, looking up to the distant ceiling. "I have been questioning why I've enjoyed my time among the undersider city so much. I think it was because of the culture. It was something that my people don't have yet."

Were imperials different from Undersiders? Cathida had explained all kinds of rituals and quirks of being a crusader. They had their own entire little world. Where did Hecate come from that she never noticed that? Or maybe her sect was something far more closed off to the world? The armor remained stubbornly quiet, the helmet still missing. No way to ask Cathida about anything until we got to the mite fountain and had the time to regrow a new helmet.

"Not sure I follow," I said, matching the speed and sending our sled going across the wide plains faster. Small hills had started to form, which made our sled climb up and down softly as we passed ground. "Were you part of some garrison that did nothing but run around and pick fights with people?"

"Yes." She said without a pause, "Some of us had more to do in between fights. However, others like myself only went to sleep in between battles."

What sort of life did these Imperial elites live? Fight, sleep, repeat? Was the regiment she was part of something that she was born into? Like a child soldier of some kind? Explains why she's so desperate to make peace work, even between machine and humanity. How'd she end up being tied to To'Aaccar, the Chosen, a machine traitor she knew, imperials, and mites? And she knew all kinds of odd trivia, like carrots and crime statistics, all while being a feral hermit-witch that ate wood skewers and rocks, if they looked tasty enough.

Just what sort of person had I run into?

I was missing something key, and I knew it. The more I learned about her past, the stranger it got. The contradictions were piling up like crazy. Starting to make me feel crazy just by proximity.

Hecate's hand brushed over the painted tribal decorations around the sled absentmindedly. The part near her armored hand looked like a giant shark with a crazed purple eye chasing after a pack of blue wolves, except they had far too long legs to be wolves. The entire sled was filled with pictograms like this, all flowing from every direction. There was no text, but I was sure some kind of story was written down here if I spent a few hours trying to put everything together.

"You know, surface clans all have hundreds of songs for different moments. Some to pass the time. Others to tell a story. All of our scriptures are made to be sung for example." I said, trying to lighten up the mood. "Sort of like this sled here keeps a history of some kind written out, surface clans do the same with songs."

She didn't seem to have any opinion on that right now, keeping a blank face.

"We spend a lot of time traveling across giant empty stretches of land, usually sitting on the side of an airspeeder for hours, so we figure out ways to keep busy over our comms. We've got word games and rhyme dances too. Want to learn some?"

"I am unsure I would be very good at singing." Hecate said.

"You'll never know if you never try." The sled had reached maximum speed we could get to with rods. It was a good enough pace to make anyone worried about tripping, but nowhere near what Teed's ship could get to. Under us, the silver flowers passed by so quickly they blurred together. It was like a shimmering wave of reflected light was following right behind us, keeping pace. And the plains here stretched for miles before we'd reach the distant mountainside. We had at least a good half hour. Good thing we had a sled, walking all this would have been impossible.

Hecate drew her rod back over her legs and folded her hands over it as we waited for the sled to slow down enough to use the rods again. "Very well." She finally said. "Teach me a song."

I made another discovery about my traveling companion - she could remember everything explained to her. Not in the normal way either. Over the half hour of sailing, I never needed to repeat lyrics a single time. She'd pick them up as if she'd had the sheet music slate in front of her to read from. Ridiculous, but somehow not surprising. This wasn't even close to the weirdest thing about her.

Completely tone deaf without some practice though, but she improved that part rapidly.

Mostly I picked fun lighthearted tunes and stories to go over, to keep the morale up. Great time all in all, until we reached closer to the mountainside. That's when Hecate's gaze snapped off to the side, as if she'd spotted something dangerous far ahead. I gave a look myself to see what had prompted the change in plan and got an immediate answer.

There was something in the distance by the mountainside. A light, glowing blue. It vanished from view a moment later.

"Did you see that?" I asked, pointing.

Hecate nodded, and look properly spooked for the first time since I'd known her. "Yes."

"What was it? I can't see that far off, it looked just like a wink of blue light to me."

"The profile I could detect from this distance matches closest to that of a Runner model."

"A what?"

"A machine, the ones you call a Screamer."

Undersiders and their jargon again. Or maybe that was Imperial jargon, since Father had told me Undersiders called them Screamers too. There was one issue with all this though. "I thought machines all had violet lights?" I asked.

"They do." She seemed almost stunned at the news. "This one... does not."

Next chapter - Numbers in the dirt

Book 3 - Chapter 39 - Numbers in the dirt

We spent some time going over the distant figure we'd spotted for only a few seconds. Hecate's eyesight was really something else, she's able to remember all the small details she saw within that single glimpse.

"It was wearing decorations, and carried a staff of some kind with a glass box hooked at the end. A smaller light, or painting of some kind was within that box. It vanished from all visible spectrums after wrapping something around itself."

"A blanket to hide the light?"

She drew out her pole, lowering it while keeping it not deep enough to touch anything solid. The flowers that zipped past under us swallowed the wood from view. "I was unable to tell. There were many other additional silhouettes of equipment that could throw off my conclusion."

"Machines don't wear trophies or trinkets, at least, none of the ones I've run into... Though I suspect a few wanted my head for a trophy." One in particular had chased me halfway across the world all because I had the audacity to smack talk it through a sealed door. Well, after cutting off it's leg with said door. Good times.

"I have not met any machines that did either. Wearing items and clothing is a new concept to machines." Hecate said softly, frowning. "And nothing I know of has invisibility. None of the more powerful lower strata machines are capable of that either."

"Are we sure this is a machine and not someone dressing up with machine parts?" I asked.

"No. The size and expected center of gravity do not match any possible way that fits a human under the plates."

I tutted, thinking. "You're sure it didn't just hide the lights with a cloak and walk out of line of sight?"

"No. The target vanished completely while remaining stationary."

This had occult ratshit written all over it. "Wait, I've got a theory. About the sled and the new machine." I said, connecting a few odd dots together. "Let's say this figure you saw was our mysterious benefactor, the owner of this sled. You said it's likely a machine that took care of this, right? If this machine has been sneaking around using an invisibility cloak of some kind, then the only thing that could give it away would be footsteps left behind. So, the best way to avoid leaving footprints behind, is to float over the air." I patted the side of our sled.

This machine would be like the boatman of death, stalking across the lands unseen by any. Erie.

"That theory could fit." Hecate said. "I did not detect any footprints by the base of the trees we were following, however there were broken branches above the treeline. A machine could have been jumping from branch to branch."

This hoversled might not be a cargo hauler at all. Maybe it worked more like someone's home? "Saved by a strange machine that's gone rogue and learned how to hide huh? Odd turn of events, but I can roll with this." I shrugged. Better than being murdered by Fido at least. If I died somewhere here, I didn't want to give that bastard the satisfaction. And it seemed our benefactor had the same motivations, or at least didn't want to even chance a fight.

Hecate gave a quick nod, her eyes never leaving the ridge where the light had vanished. "This machine must be older. Except I am unsure how much older." There was a trailing tone in her voice that made me think she did have an idea of the machine's age, only that the answer seemed too unbelievable to her senses.

"Why would a machine decide to stick it's neck out for us?"

Hecate frowned. "I suspect I may have something to do with this."

"What, did you accidentally sweet talk a machine at some point in your past?"

Her frown turned deeper. "No. However, I have been part of events that may have caused a commotion."

"All right, if that's the case, I think we should turn this sled in that direction." I said, snapping her out of her thoughts, pointing at where the figure had vanished from. "If had gods damned invisibility as a power, then allowing you to spot it was deliberate."

"I agree with your idea." Hecate said, after considering. "It likely wants us to approach in that direction. I am unsure how safe this path will be however."

"Fido's still out there and we are already committed to this plan anyhow. Besides, weren't you the one advocating for machines in the first place? Well, there's your rogue machine defector."

Honestly, I hadn't thought it could be possible, but without knowing more information, it really seemed like there were at least some machines that had gone their own way. It was… fascinating. While I hated machines like any clansman would hate slavers, there was something about machines that drove me to curiosity. If I had a chance, I'd have spent time breaking down a few to see what sort of things made them tick. Or at least have a nice conversation, preferably with someone more civil than Fido.

The mountain grew wider as we came closer, until we spotted a small opening by the base, right under where the blue light had been twinkling from. A perfectly cut block of stone leading down into darkness, nestled in the shadow of a larger rock. Had we not been approaching dead on in that direction, it would have been easy to miss. Really, if we had picked any other direction to go from our initial starting point, we'd have missed this entirely.

"Think that leads to the underground fountain?" I asked, helping the sled come to a full stop.

Hecate nodded, taking a step off the sled and onto solid ground. "My map shows that there is a deeper tunnel that should be going under this section of rock. It's highly possible that this new path has been cut to connect to that section."

The clean cut cube path went straight down at an incline, where it reached the walls of the actual tunnel. Couldn't quite see what was at the other end, given how dark it was. Hecate drew out her swords and walked right in without a second thought. To be expected, really, there weren't a lot of things out here that were scarier than she was.

It didn't take long for the path to connect with the more organic tunnels of the mites. The further we went, the safer we felt. Fido was already too fat to fit inside the current tunnels, and they continued to narrow down until it was too much for even the hoversled to fit through.

We had to abandon it. I patted the floating chunk of metal fondly. "Going to miss you my pretty, don't tell the over hoversleds, but you were my favorite all along."

Hecate seemed confused for a moment, then lit up with a smile. "Do you tell all your hoversleds this?"

"Only gullible innocent hoversleds." I shrugged, then leaned in conspiratorially. "Don't tell your mother about me. I think I'm not popular with parents."

"A little too late. She's already ordered your execution." She said with a nervous chuckle, equipping her helmet in order to trigger the headlights.

"Outright death just for being around you, eh?" I said, following behind. "Harsh parents. Do they keep you on a leash too, or let you go outside for a few hours on the weekend?"

"It's complicated." Hecate answered, "My immediate family has… issues, as I've come to learn."

"Is that why you're miles out in the wilderness looking for mite speakers? Understandable really. Have I told you some stories of my old family? They were a very colorful bunch."

The mite fountain room itself was grand, with structures that made the entire thing look like a sunken cathedral, trapped inside rock. At the center was the source itself. And more importantly, it was working with no holes punched into it.

Hecate went first, sliding a power cell into the socket, watching the cell start to refill. "It will take some time to power all our cells." She said. "This terminal's throughput has been throttled from nearby power sources, however the ones leading from the underground remain functional."

Wow, Fido was a piece of work. "He wasn't happy enough breaking all the entryways? No, he had to make sure to ruin our day even if we did make it to the fountain. Persistent bastard."

Hecate nodded. "It will not stop until it has completed its mission."

"You know, the offer to split ways still stands." I said. "You can continue looking for a mite speaker without having to worry about the Drake. With my armor back online, I'm pretty confident in my chances against one."

She shook her head. "At this point, it has already painted me a target due to my interference. And death is not a concern for me, I am Deathless."

I shrugged, looking around the room for a spot to sit down and relax. "What's it like, being a Deathless anyhow? The only other Deathless I know, they say he woke up with a note in his hand from his past self, asking for help." My eyes scanned around the broken walls until I found a few stone benches that looked comfortable enough. It would take some time to refill all the cells we had, after all. Might as well pass the time talking. "Do you remember what kick-started the process for you?"

"I'm faster, stronger and more capable than I used to be. But to become who I am, I died." She said, walking over and taking a seat next to me, watching the mite fountain, wings folding back to hug her waist.

"No grand mission to carry out? No voices from the gods telling you where to be or some such?"

She paused, thinking. "There was a mission. That is why I need to find a mite-speaker. I was given… a prophecy of sorts to complete, from the mites."

Now things were making more sense, and less sense. "So your Deathless transformation had something to do with mites?"

She nodded.

I could have sworn Deathless were closely allied with Tsuya. Could there be more kinds of Deathless? "So that's why you need to find a mite speaker." I hummed, letting another piece of info click into place. "Quick question, do mites work with machines too?"

"They have communicated and worked with the machines in the past, yes." Hecate said. "They have worked with Tsuya and Relinquished in equal amounts as far as I know. They seem to work with anyone who offers them the right incentives."

"How about our rogue defector out there? Think the mites might have put it up to the task of getting us out of the ice? Sounds like you're working with the mites, and you being stuck in this predicament might have had them calling in some favors."

"That is... possible. I need further clarification, however I am afraid that I might be caught if I attempt to speak to them directly again." Hecate said. "The way I spoke to them before could be traced and easily spotted. It was something I did in desperation. If I do so again, Relinquished might catch me."

"Details?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, that's something I need more time before I can explain."

I shrugged, taking the hint and switching the topic. "I've always been interested in the mites, never had the time to really sit down and try to find out more about them yet. Life's been hectic back home. What are they like?"

"They are… a collective of smaller intelligences, each following one designated task. However, as a collective, they become more. In times past, the mites were a neutral party that was only interested in construction and destruction."

Tsyua had mentioned nobody controlled the mites. Guess the little buggers got bored just making theater props.

"I have very little evidence related to the mites." She continued. "I know they are unreceptive to machines in general as of the current era, however that may have not always been the case. One thing is clear: they are a powerful faction and seem under constraints of some kind by their nature."

I looked around the room, with all the beautiful statues crafted into the walls and broken fountains that still somehow functioned. Everything looked shaken down, walls collapsed and bricks strewn around from whatever impact broke them off. As if an earthquake had destroyed the sanctity of this location, and sank the whole area into the ground.

Mites had the power to make all this, but their colonies were completely passive to anything moving around.

"I do not believe they can directly affect events in the world." Hecate continued. "They work through intermediaries instead, in the rare cases they take interest to the world at large."

"How did they sound like? Were you able to talk back to them?"

She hummed, looking up, thinking. The small pieces of her wings tapped lightly together, as she thought. "It was as if a million voices all said the same message in a thousand different languages, except each language is one you do not know, yet understand anyhow."

"That's rather poetic. How do the mite speakers keep their heads together if they're talking to something like that?"

"It was overwhelming, even with my mental abilities. Normal humans are likely unable to... keep their heads together, as you put it. Mite speakers, as far as the Undersiders have reported to me, are castaways with mental illness. It isn't known if they truly speak to the mites at all or are simply deluded. After my experiences, I believe there might be a truth behind the mite speakers. They must have found some method to speak to the mites."

"What was the prophecy they spoke to you about? If you don't mind me asking."

Hecate took a breath, and looked to her side, gazing off again while she considered her answer. Finally, she nodded. "I don't believe there is any harm in telling you. It makes very little sense to myself. The prophecy was about four individuals, I think, who are expected to help break the current stalemate. It went like this:" She lifted a hand, and counted off each of the four. "Mankind's emperor, to draw out the final enemy. The vow, to hold the vessel in place. A god's wrath, to break the cycle. And the heir apparent, to take the throne left behind."

I whistled. "The mites told you that? You're right that it makes no sense." That was some heavy stuff on her shoulders. Deathless really deal with higher stakes than any of us lowly mortals work with.

"I was told I was one of the four, however I'm not sure which. Or at the very least, a contender to be one of the four."

"Mankind's emperor?" I threw out, "You're Deathless and clearly strong enough to hold a crown."

Hecate shook her head. "No, I have… reasons to believe that isn't likely. I believe I am the god's wrath, sent to break the cycle."

"Does make sense with how much you want to get both machines and humans to work together. Sounds like a way to break the cycle. Though that part sounds more violent, wrath would point to a fight of some kind and you've tried everything you can to avoid that."

Hecate shrugged. "Peace has historically always required a war to establish or protect it. This may be no different."

"Well, if I can help you out in any way with that, let me know. I'm just a simple surface knight in the scale of all this, but friends help each other out."

"We are friends now?" She asked.

I gave her a deadpan glance and raised an eyebrow. "Well, there is that whole 'You saved my life' bit, that went a long way."

She smiled then, a small thing that slowly widened.

"Don't expect a paycheck though. I never signed any papers."

Hecate quirked her head, not understanding for a moment, before lightening up once again. "Oh, I understand! You are referencing what you said before about paying for frien-"

I shushed her, one finger scolding her. If I had a spray bottle, I'd be using that, but sometimes you need to work with what you have. "Never explain jokes." I said. "The moment you explain why something is funny, it ceases to be funny. Cardinal rule."

She nodded attentively. "Then, humor is similar to quantum mechanics? Where observing the waveform causes the form to collapse?"

What?

"... The who-what now? What's a quantum mechanic do?"

More undersider jargon?

"Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles." She said, with perfect conviction, like she was reading from memory.

Hold on.

"You're saying," I said, slowly. "There's an entire field of mechanical engineering that I don't know about, all dedicated to when things get really really small?"

"Yes." No hesitation. No excited head bob. Just a standard factual answer.

Small things began to click in my head once again. Clues I'd failed to notice piling up on one another.

How Hecate had known everything about trap making right down to the optimal positions, as if she'd read and memorized an entire book on the subject. Her odd mannerisms, reminiscent of some of the Reachers I'd worked with who were obsessive about certain topics and usually ended up being experts at their passion. Some could outright remember everything they'd ever read, and how she remembered every detail she saw or heard without issue.

And Deathless had access to all the books and knowledge they could find. Lord Atius himself had been well known to have been a scholar. Only made sense other Deathless were like that too.

She's pulling the suit over me, this has to be bait. This couldn't possibly be more bait even if it had my favorite numbers scribbled over it. But when has 'this has to be a trap' ever stopped me from sticking my foot where it doesn't belong?

"All right, tell me more." I asked, pulling the proverbial lever.

Hecate, as always, gave a straight answer. I'd considered her a by-the-books type of person, but I'd been wrong. I'd been terribly, horribly, wrong.

Hecate wasn't by-the-book. She was the entire book. And the cover, library slate, ladders, chairs, desk, bathrooms and the overworked receptionist all put together. Either her imagination was vivid beyond my wildest dreams - in which case I didn't want to wake up because I'd officially gotten to the good parts - or the girl had edict memory and spent years in a library sucking up every bit of knowledge that could be found. No wonder she's so strange in every other regard. All her mental space was dedicated to hoarding knowledge.

While the power cells slowly recharged one by one, I talked shop with Hecate and time flew by.

As I discovered, it was even better than edict memory. Hecate didn't just remember every book she'd read, she understood it all perfectly as well, making her an expert.

It didn't end at quantum mechanics either. Any topic I could think of she seemed to know about. Anything.

Hydroponics. Areogel engineering. Mathematics. Literature. History. Even the gods damned internet of old. And a dozen other topics. I could ask for the most random items possible, and she'd know something about it. The only limits were around the surface clan and culture. She didn't know how environmental suits functioned, for example, or best methods of maintaining machinery against the sub-zero temperature outside. It was like a glaring hole in her stupidly huge knowledge.

She did take a few excellent guesses, and outright reverse engineered how a basic evo-suit would work with minimum assumptions. Ridiculous.

I'd kidnap her to the surface if I wasn't so convinced she'd beat me to a pulp and leave me tied up to a tree with my own ropes.

Calm down Keith. I mentally warned myself, slapping some sense into myself. She's an immortal demi-god on the level of clan lords. You're a random surface barbarian she happened to cross paths with and decided to save on account of old pay-it-forward debts.

Not to mention she was on a mission set by gods more powerful than Tsuya. Technically, I was also on a mission set by a god, but it was a far more mundane one.

That said, there was a similarity. Hecate had to speak with mites, and I had something that Tsuya had called a mite-seeker, hidden away back home. She said in the audio recording that the mites played both sides, and at some point likely hid a weapon of some kind from her sight. The mite-seeker might be a way to communicate with them? Tsuya had stressed to me that the mites were the key. Was she talking about this prophecy?

I could tell Hecate about this, maybe she'd have use of that seeker?

Or was I just telling myself that in order to find a reason to stick around?

After the first cell was charged, I took a moment and started on the process to repair Journey. I'd seen Father do it before, sacrificing material and power in order to fuel the process. Mite made material couldn't be used, but organic material was perfectly edible, and there were a lot of roots, mushrooms and foliage all snaking around the tunnels. I just had to take a break from all the math talk to hunt down enough material.

Walking back into the destroyed church, I found the immortal demi-god, instrument of the mites with a holy mission to change the world itself, still sitting politely on the bench, waiting for me. Large diagrams and numbers scribbled out in the dirt in front of her from the last topic we'd debated about.

A little surreal to think about.

Time flew by as the two of us talked a little about everything. Up until a beep filled the room, and the last of the power cells had been fully charged. By that point, Journey had repaired itself completely, and a new helmet sat on the bench, being polished up by a small river of black mist, happily eating away at drops of power cell liquid and cut up roots.

Hecate turned her gaze to the fountain, pausing her current lecture. "The rest can be explained at another time. I worry the drake has summoned additional reinforcements in the intermittent. We should attempt to pacify the drake and escape this section quickly."

"Right. Priorities." I said, putting in false cheer to mask the hollow feeling of realizing all of this has to end eventually. "Time to deal with the lizard, and then we're home free and can go about our business again. Great."

I grabbed my helmet, lifted it up and let it drop down into place. Cathida's voice came online the moment everything booted up. First thing she did was scream at me, of course. I expected that part, but what I hadn't expected was that her screaming was an actual serious warning.

Turns out, relic armors talk and communicate with each other constantly. It's expected and part of how they function.

And as Journey had found out, Hecate's armor was not relic armor.

Next chapter - Blinded

Book 3 - Chapter 40 - Blinded

"You're fifty years too young to be questioning me of all people, you faithless brat! I'm based on a crusader of the fifth oath. Got me a lifetime of intuition, and it's all screaming at me that something's completely wrong about all of this."

Cathida being dramatic. "This isn't you being upset that I'm having a nice day with someone?" I asked, keeping the comms channel to myself. Hecate remained to the side, hands folded while she sat. I'd asked for a moment of time while I spoke with my armor.

Cathida's arguments quickly devolved into a string of curses, most of which I didn't understand, and half of them involved gold in some way.

I sighed, wondering what sort of insanity I'd need to deal with this time. "Need to step out for a bit," I said, waving to Hecate and tapping my helmet with a finger. "Got to get some more material to work with the armor. Some things are still loose up in here and need their screws tightened."

She nodded, her smile fading off slightly, but she let me know she'd be here in the meantime. With that settled, I turned and took a stroll to clear my head and talk sense to the paranoid grandma stuck in my head, who currently had every gray hair on her non-existent head sticking up. "What sort of evidence do you have, besides intuition?" I asked, taking steps outside the ruined church.

"Goddess's golden tits you're dense. Did you not hear a single word I've been yelling at you since you put on your bucket? We listened to intuition like scripture - or we died." She said, putting a heavy emphasis on the last word. "And I'm smelling a wet rat lurking around. This all reeks like danger."

"You can't smell anything. You're a simulacrum living digitally inside the armor."

"This is the hill you're going to die on? Fine. Let's start with that armor of hers. Whatever that Deathless is wearing - if she even is a Deathless at all - it's not armor. It looks like armor, glimmers like armor, shines like armor and it's not armor."

"I'm hearing a lot of accusations here and still not a lot of evidence. You got something better or are you going to teach me some more creative swear words?" Around me, remains of hacked up roots littered the walls where I'd gone and pilfered previously. I took a few steps past those to find somewhere more quiet.

"You want a list? Fine, I'll guild it for you. Beyond the very basic minimum of her armor being dead quiet with no response to any of Journey's handshake requests - which should already be evidence enough that something's off, the physical structural setup is also incorrect. Joints don't connect correctly, plate density around vital areas isn't increased, there's no room for artificial fibers or propulsion abilities in a dozen places where there should be. Everything that lets an armor resist environmental pressure isn't there. Twelve stratas, there isn't even room for a power cell in her legs, unless they fit inside her actual legs. You didn't notice this at all you daft fool? It looks more like she made up an idea of what armor looks like and had a craftsman rush order it."

"Where are you going with this?"

"By all rights, that armor shouldn't be able to move. It's all decoration - a fake. Pyrite lit up under a spotlight to fool the faithless."

I paused in my steps, not quite sure I was following on her logic. "You do realize that Hecate is paralyzed under her armor, right? She needs it to move."

"And where's your 'evidence' on that? You're tossing that word around like it owes you money all of a sudden. Have you seen her outside her armor yet? Or are you only taking her word for it and nothing else?"

"And how exactly am I going to ask her for proof of that?"

"Take her armor off!"

I stopped to process what I'd heard for a moment.

"I'm not going to ask her to strip, Cathida. Did snow fill up your head or something?" Another few paces down the tunnel and another idea popped into my head.

"Oh, suddenly all shy are we? You seemed real chummy with her just a few minutes ago."

"Look, there's plenty of people out there who forge fake armors either for ceremonies or as a bluff." I said, trying not to let the old bat get in my head. "It's possible she's doing something like that. What Deathless is unable to afford an armor? It could be a status symbol, she's freshly minted out. Maybe this is the best she could do."

"Regrettably, I wasn't in a good position to have clean footage when Hecate took out the drake's throat, on account of missing my head. But you were there. How fast did she move? Go on, tell me."

"... very fast."

"Exactly. Can someone move that fast without armor?"

I waved a hand in dismissal. "She's Deathless. It's possible this is a spell of hers. Some kind of passive, like her eyesight. Can't rule that out."

I heard snarling and it wasn't from me. "Which is it then? Is she paralyzed or using powers? She could have simply said it's an ability of hers, but she didn't. Why? How are you going to explain that she lied to you about the paralysis if she's got a Deathless spell letting her move like that? "

"I am shocked and saddened to find out someone has secrets they want to keep secret. Little bit on brush up on humanity, Cathida: Everyone's got secrets, and whatever her secrets are, they aren't deadly to me. Besides, it's possible this is a different make of armor."

Cathida outright groaned. If she could run her nails down her cheek, I'd imagine she'd be doing that right about now. "All armor follows the same protocols, the original schematics were dabbled with by the same forgemaster, and he clearly had a policy to not fix things that didn't need fixing as far as Journey's guessing. There are no models that wouldn't use the base template and handshakes, there's no reason to muck that up!"

"What if that armor's made from a different direction by a different forgemaster, maybe halfway around the world? Could explain why you can't talk to her armor and the wings she's got. And talking about that, why haven't we got wings either? Seems a little unfair. The armor competition here has an entire leg over us."

"You're weaseling away from the point! From everything I've heard, her profile makes no sense to any undersider or imperial order I can track. You made up your mind to trust her, and now you're finding all kinds of ad-hoc reasoning instead of remaining skeptical, it's clear as daylight! Is it because she's got a pretty face and a rack? It is, isn't it? Journey can monitor your heartbeat."

"No, that's got nothing to do with it!" I said, hottly. "She saved my life and she's a Deathless. Nothing more than that. She could be part of some Undersider separatist tribe or something. People forging off the land and living outside cities. It'd be a brutal way of life that would fit. The lack of outgoing signals could be that the armor's trying to be stealthy, could be their default way of life."

"Then how in the goddess's name does she know so much about everything? Which is it, is she a feral savage or a book cultured sheltered princess?"

That got an unintentional gulp from me, I had no answer to that one. Cathida pounced on the opening. "You think I didn't overhear while the two of you were chatting away the time? Your heartbeat's gone up again. What's this, feeling... guilty?"

"Look." I said, finding a place to sit down and clear the air. "She saved my life. I was at my weakest for hours, and outright knocked out at the start. Couldn't protect myself from a baby with a sharp tooth even if I wanted to. If she wanted me dead, she had hundreds of chances. Instead, I'm back to full strength. Even if she's got some oddities, she's not my enemy. I'm alone down here, and here you are telling me to distrust the only friendly person I've met? You can be skeptical of her if you want, but I choose to trust her. The one thing I can think of that she might be using me for is to piss off To'Aacar. Which I'm fully behind."

Cathida stopped, likely about to go right back into another tangent before abruptly halting mid-word. "I can see there's no point trying to convince you. Fine. I'll keep my guard up for the moment instead and yell at you when the betrayal happens."

"Agreed. Are we done?"

A pause. "We're done. I said my peace. If youth wants to act all reckless just because there's some bouncing rack strutting around, then be it on your own head."

"Do you really need to be this crass about everything?"

"I'm being remarkably polite all said and done." She said, indigent. "The imperial training grounds were a hundred times worse. Squires are a different breed and I had to train those louts."

She did have a point about the girl in the end. No matter what kind of background I could think of for Hecate, there was always one piece that didn't fit. Whoever Hecate was, she didn't want to tell me the full truth for her own personal reasons. And that wasn't my business.

But there was something that I needed to prepare for so that I wouldn't get caught by surprise again. "That fight against To'Aacar. How did he take control of Journey?" I asked.

Cathida gave a sheepish tut. "Remember that string of verbal reminders all armors do? 'Releasing security locks' is a part of that, and it means something you dolt. What prevents cyber attacks is stupid simple. If Journey itself can't move your arm, same goes for anything that's attacking through Journey. With everything locked down, the worse thing Journey can do to you is say nasty things about your face and give bogus reports to you and your little friends. That is, until you gave the master keys to Journey. Now, the enemy only needs to have a stronger cyber suite than this bucket of metal and they've got their hands on the keys you tossed over."

"And To'Aacar can do that?"

"Oh, what, him? A Feather? One of the most powerful enemies among the machine arsenal, constantly maintained and improved on each generation? Against an three hundred year old armor with a cyber suite made right back in the fourth era and never updated since? The same era that didn't win against machines even at their peak?" She scoffed, "Peh, just a complete fluke of nature that he overrode Journey in mere seconds and tried to strangle you with it. Couldn't possibly happen a second time, deary. You can go right ahead and bet your life on that without worry."

"All right, point taken already. But what do we do for the future? Just completely give up on one of the best offensive and defensive weapons in my arsenal?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. Journey's turned off the override with the reboot, and it really doesn't want to turn those back on. Once we're back to the surface, your future is going to be drills, training, and pain."

I swore under my breath. "Was afraid you'd say that."

"Bet you were." She cackled.

On the return back to the campsite inside the ruined cathedral, we got another surprise.

Hecate was gone.

No message left behind, nothing. My head raced, thinking through the past few moments for any reason she'd run. "Did she… overhear us?"

"Comms channel was set to private." Cathida said. "Maybe this is her polite way of bowing out before it gets awkward."

"That metal scrapshit that put a hole in my gut could overhear us under the helmet. Feathers were supposed to be mirrors to the Deathless if I remember, right?"

Cathida scoffed. "A mirror is one to one. Feathers are on a different league. If they can hear three miles away, the best a Deathless could do is hear half of a mile."

"I wasn't half a mile away from her, I was a few feet."

Cathida stayed silent for a moment, before giving her typical verbal shrug. "Eh. Guess she did overhear us and decided to scamper away. Win win."

If she'd heard us talking about doubting her story and digging into her past, maybe she really did decide now was the best time to split up. Was she that skittish about her past? "She's gone after the drake." I said, trying to convince myself. "She knows it's out there looking to pick a fight, and she's never seen me in a fight before. So she'll think to do me one last favor and make sure Fido isn't there to bog me down."

Despite my words, I had that sinking feeling in my gut that she'd left for good. We both had our goals completed. There's no reason to keep going together after all.

I turned and sprinted for the exit.

"Where in the goddess's name are you even going?" Cathida yelled over my footsteps.

"We might be able to catch her, it's only been a few minutes! Fido probably took his sweet time making sure every exit he knew about was broken down and sealed, so the only way out of here back into the plains is the same way we came in."

Ground blurred under me as I raced through the caverns, jumping over obstacles and rocks, free again to expand as much energy as I needed.

"What would you even say to her anyhow, chasing after her like some lost puppy? Better to let her go on her own way and keep to ourselves."

"I get you're a suspicious paranoid old bat who thinks the world's after me - and usually you're right, but in this one case I've got my set of intuition, and it's screaming at me to make things right. So shut it, and pull up the map."

Cathida made Cathida noises at that, mostly snarling and some hissing, but the map popped up in more detail on my heads up display, along with arrow directions to backtrack my steps and highlighted footprints showing what path she took. In minutes we'd passed by the abandoned sled, still hovering where we left it. Another quarter hour and I was sprinting down the perfectly cut cube corridor to the outside plains.

Empty in every direction.

"Fuck, where's the footprints?" They had just vanished after taking a few steps into the outdoors. I spun my view around, but all around me was the empty plains of flowers and the occasional black glass pillar in the distance. I started shouting out her name, wildly.

"She has wings, remember? I assume they aren't for show."

My yells turned to curses and that empty feeling crept into me deeper. There was something about that meeting with Hecate that felt like fate, and I'd let it slip right through my hands.

Sound caught my attention above me. I twisted my head, hoping I'd been wrong, that I'd find her standing at the top of the mountainside, doing something pensive. Or sulking with a pout.

Instead, I found a heavily camouflage Fido, leaping straight down at me, violet eyes filled with glee.

The stupid stubborn machine must have been waiting at the entrance here for hours, and let Hecate pass by, probably snickering to itself the whole time. Vines and leaves he had wrapped around his body snapped away effortlessly against his weight, as his clawed hands expanded out to snatch me.

The surprise at a several ton machine falling on top of my head was just enough for the scrapshit to lash out with both its massive paws, catching my fumbling attempt to jump out of the way. Two massive claws wrapped around the armor and clenched tightly.

Shit. Shit. Rat fucking shit. I started to struggle, but each of the thing's paws was as large as my torso. Its forearms were already my full size.

"Ssssss…. I knew you'd come out, like vermin seeking heat." Fido hissed with content. "Hiding, creeping, crawling through the mud and your tunnels. Ssssssuch filth."

"Fido, my good old buddy, am I happy to see you." I growled back, struggling to get out of his grip and failing completely. I stopped and went limp, glaring right back at the creature's skeletal fangs. "You know, you came at the perfect fucking time. I could use a little stress toy."

The machine laughed, violet eyes glowing with malice. "Such a temper, little child. I'll bring you temperance sssssoon." There was a groaning sound around the armor. "Such weakness of flesh and bone. Let me... crush it from you. " I couldn't feel Fido actually squeezing down on me with Journey counteracting the force, but I could certainly feel my hands and arms held firmly together. It stared down into me, fascinated with the same gaze that all machines had when strangling their prey.

I could see parts of the tubes under Fido's throat still dangling from where Hecate had sliced it, leaving the drake only his claws and mouth to do any damage with. I should have guessed he'd do something like this with what he had to work with.

"Journey's giving me all kinds of numbers on hull integrity here," Cathida said. "Your heart rate is steady though, no adrenaline spikes either. You've got a plan in that crooked head of yours I take it? Got about five minutes to figure something out before your friend here actually squishes us."

"I don't need five minutes," I said, diving into the soul fractal and feeling the full suite of the occult at my palms again. "You think he's got me pinned? It's the other way around. He's done me a favor, saving me from having to track him down all over again."

Clan lord Atius had shown me the true power of the mirror fractal. He'd used it as a Deathless would, at first. Spinning out ghosts of himself, each wielding a lit blade. Likely had done so for centuries. But once he knew the source behind the Occult, his style had changed.

Everything about the ghost image was transient, immaterial. Everything except for the occult edges.

The true strength behind that spell was that it also duplicated fractals. Any fractal. Like the ones inside the occult blades and the knightbreakers.

Cathida had said it before: A mirror is one to one. The universe recognized fractals wherever they appeared as patterns. Microscopic or macroscopic. On metal or dust. Surrounded by air or solid. Immaterial or material. Didn't matter to reality. Ghost images were still part of existence, all the fractals mirrored in those were just as real as reality.

The occult pulsed around me, and even Fido paused for a moment, those violet eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Sss…. what are—"

Fractals inscribed on the surface of Journey all lit up, being powered again. Not a moment later, two pale blue occult arms lifted from my trapped position and dove right into the creature's wrists, passing through as if there was nothing but air. Those ghostly arms, covered in fractals, all still powered up.

"To'Aacar should have warned you, Fido. I never play fair."

The shield fractal on my arm flared. Two nearly invisible domes ripped into existence. They manifested exactly where I'd predicted - right on my trapped wrists - and right inside Fido's wrists, where my ghost images were. There was a momentary tug of willpower as the dome shields cut through everything that had been in the way.

Fido's clawed arms grew instantly slack, all the power and direction severed. I'd made the domes large enough to cut through the creature's thick wrists completely.

I wasn't finished yet. The fractal of heat flared to life in both my palms. Six mirror arms stretched out, superimposed until they split.

And all six arms lunged directly at Fido's head.

Next chapter - The teacher's legacy

Book 3 - Chapter 41 - The teacher's legacy

Fido howled, trying to lift his head out of the stream of fire. This was working even better than I'd hoped for. My plan had been to use the fractal of heat as mostly distraction since machines were made of metal - and metal does better against heat than fleshy human enemies, but given the instant reaction from him, heat might be more dangerous to machines than I'd thought.

He wasn't getting away, of course.

With nothing truly holding me down, I ripped the loose claws off me and lunged forward with my true arms. Straight for that howling head of his, right through the inferno fading away.

Journey's armored gauntlets grappled the drake's artificial fangs, and the relic armor did the rest, holding its own against the machine.

My grip tightened. Occult pulsed once more and another set of translucent hands snapped up, palms up, a torrent of fire leaving each.

My vision went blinding yellow for a moment as both Fido and I were engulfed into the inferno. Journey auto compensated a moment later and the visual feedback inside my helmet turned to a dimmer darkness, letting me see what was going on. Relic armor shields had flared to life, protecting me from the ambient heat. Superheated air dangerous enough even Journey had made the internal call to protect itself.

Fido did not have the same luxury.

The teeth were already turning black, the ceramic material cracking from the intense temperature differential passing breakpoint after breakpoint. The metal parts inside his jaw had started to turn red-hot, glowing brighter and brighter. Soon they'd start to melt off if this kept going.

Fido twisted his head sharply, launching me off my feet. He then slammed his head down on the rock cliff-side, dragging me through it. Journey didn't even need shields for this, that sort of diffused damage wouldn't do much to the armor itself. It was enough to disrupt my concentration, however, the occult fading away.

Another twist of his head flung me straight up and the damaged fangs I was holding onto finally snapped off, crumbling into pieces. I flew straight up a good few feet, twisted like a cat in midair, and landed back safely on the ground. Atius's blade was drawn out and ignited already.

Fido hadn't bothered trying to see what I'd do. He'd already decided that this was a losing battle, and it was time to peace out like the upstanding machine denizen that he was.

First, he tried to grapple onto the cliff-side, to escape vertically. Except that his forepaws had been cleanly sliced off, leaving him with two stumps and his hind legs to work with. Not enough to get him up the cliff. So, he turned tail and tried to outrun me across the field.

I ran after him, screaming every kind of insult I could think of. My raised blade looking to close the gap between us so I could slice him properly.

Drakes normally outrun relic armors. In good shape and with a clean bill of health. Fido was very much not in that category. Running on the two stumps that remained of his forward limbs slowed him down far too much. I chased after him like a shadow, following the path of crushed silver flowers.

I caught up. His tail flicked out at the last moment, attempting to knock me out of the way, only for my sword to slice down and out the other side while I vaulted over the swing.

No more tail for Fido. Shame.

This was when the drake realized he was nothing more than spare scrap running around, doomed. The drake made one last desperate plan, turned, and tried to fight me off.

He twisted and lunged out with an open maw, attempting to catch and crush me with those. Journey's shields were still nearly full, so that was futile even if he landed the attack. I didn't let him so much as scratch me out of pride, easily dodging past the strike and letting the old occult blade slice off the jawline as I slide under. I didn't stop there and followed through, spinning on myself to regain momentum. The blade took out the closest hind leg in the same motion as Fido's bulk passed next to me. The Winterblossom technique made me too fast.

Fido, bless his metallic heart, tried to roll over and flatten me as a response. That was even easier to jump over, slicing off the last exposed limb as it passes by me on his roll. Now the drake was crippled for good.

He collapsed onto the ground, struggling to adapt to the sliced limbs. My boot found the top of his skull head and stomped down, driving the entire drake back into the ground. "Sit." I ordered.

The drake struggled, trying to lift the head until I once more flatted him into the ground. "I said sit." I said, twisting my boot side to side to really rub it in. "Time you got what was coming to you."

"Sss… this is not over. Flesh rots. Metal is eternal." Fido snarled, still able to speak without a lower jaw, all the while pinned down into the dirt and stomped down flowers.

I increased pressure down on his head, watching as cracks on the ceramic armor began to spider out from my heel.

He grew still. The fight had finally gone out of the monster for good, now waiting for the inevitable execution.

"What, that's it?" I tutted, aiming my blade. "Fido, I am disappointed in you. Days of hunting us down, terrorizing us at night, all your little clever plans and plots - and this is how you go out? No bang, barely a whimper even. At least go out saying something more ominous."

The drake hissed at me, one violet eye glaring up. "Where I fail…. Ssss…. Another will not. You take nothing more than a brief respite from the inevitable. Ssssstruggle is meaninglessss."

"That's a lot better." I patted the head with the tip of my greaves.

Father had executed a drake before, although he only had a dagger to work with. I think punching my sword through the skull would do the job just as well, more surface area to cut through. And then I can cut off the head for good measure. I lifted the old blade up, and found myself holding it still.

Fido's violet glowing eyes stared right back at me, filled with malice.

What was I hesitating for? I'd already learned this lesson. Father himself had made it clear as ice.

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.

The sword raised higher, ready to plunge down and end the creature for good.

Is it possible… that he might not have been correct about that point?

Hecate.

And her stupid, naïve fixation on possibly finding peace between machines.

"Ssss… your weakness shows." The drake hissed. Crippled, unable to offer even the most basic threats to me now. If I spared it, it would fix itself and later return to possibly kill other humans in the future. Everything I know made it clear that destroying the drake was the only real solution.

If it had been Kidra or Father in my shoes, they wouldn't have hesitated for even a moment. All of my knights wouldn't have offered a shred of mercy either. They were all experienced veteran soldiers.

But I... wasn't them.

The occult blade flickered off and I sheathed it. "Maybe you're right about that." I groaned, more upset at myself. "Change of plan Fido. Against my better judgement... I'm letting you live."

"What?" Cathida croaked out. "You're joking, right deary? Tell me you're joking."

The drake simply stared at me, the closest a machine had to surprise. Then the eyes narrowed. "Sss…. you wish to relay a messsssage?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Got nothing to say to that scraphead you call a boss. I'm not letting you live for any reason that benefits me. I'm doing it for someone else who wants to believe someday there could be peace between machine and man."

"Heresy." The drake said. "There can be no peace."

"First time I ever found myself agreeing with a machine, there can't ever be any peace." Cathida growled out.

"I think so too, but. Well." I shrugged and took my boot off the lizard's skull head with a few careful steps back. "Here we are anyway. Now go slink away to whatever hole you crawled out from."

The drake lifted itself onto those remaining stumps, glaring at me the entire time. I thought for a moment Fido really would try to attack me again, despite how outclassed it was, but the machine surprised me. It turned and shambled off.

"Goddess protect us, you should have killed it." Cathida groaned. "Did you turn into a silverlicker while I was sleeping?Mercy's not something you can spend on machines, is it even capable of understanding that?"

"I don't know." I answered truthfully. "It just... it just didn't seem right." Maybe Hecate's ideals wormed their way into my head a little too much.

The lizard shambled away, not at a run, but on a lopsided walk. I could change my mind anytime and finish the drake. There wasn't anywhere Fido could hide from me in this area.

I searched the skies for her again, but nowhere I looked did I see her. My heart sunk further. She truly was gone for good. I don't know what I expected.

A deep breath, in and out. Nothing I could do about this anymore. She knew where I was going, so if Hecate wanted to see me again, it would be on her terms.

I shook myself out of the stupor. "Which way's the Undersider city? You know we're running late for an appointment. No thanks to you, Cathida."

"Me?" she croaked, indigent. "You're the one collecting enemies like they were gold bricks for the shrine!"

A navpoint beeped into my HUD, showing the direction. I gave my thanks, and set off in the complete opposite direction, back to the cliff-side to go loot the hoversled.

If I was going to have to cover a few dozen miles of flat land all alone, I wasn't going to walk if I could help it.

The sled was still there when I returned to fetch it. I felt a little bad about taking it so far from where it had been initially given, but I had an Undersider city to get to and already lost a lot of time. I was on my own from here and I'd need every advantage I could get.

If the Winterscar knights had survived against To'Aacar, which I'm almost positive they had, then they'd know to meet up at the city. Searching around for me outside the city would be like looking for a needle in the chicken feed. Basically impossible. But we all knew where our ultimate destination was.

This far away, I didn't need to be subtle about how I got there. Riding a hoversled using the full power of my relic armor to push forward would get me places quickly.

I guided the sled back to the outside, past the cube entrance, and found someone waiting on the other side.

Cathida swore.

"Didn't think I'd see you again after you ran off." I said, ignoring the old bat, pushing the sled into the artificial sunlight and giving it a friendly set of pats.

Hecate stood at the entrance, flattened silver flowers ringed around where she'd landed. Metal wings were fully unfurled from her waist, swaying slightly in the wind. The helmet hid any sign of her face, so I had no idea what was going through her mind. It felt more like I was being judged right here and now.

I reached and unclasped my helmet, tossing it into the sled, mostly because Cathida clearly had a bone to pick with Hecate just existing and was all too happy to start ranting about it.

"Gunning for Fido before I could get to him? That's not exactly sporting of you." I said. "Or did I scare you off somehow?"

She remained unmoving, gaze locked onto me for a moment, before her own hand reached for her helmet and unclasped it. Under the mask was curiosity. "I observed your fight with the drake from afar. I was… surprised."

"I picked up a few tricks on fighting over my time." I tapped my chest.

"That isn't what surprised me." She said. "You spared the drake's life. Why?"

"Spared his life, sure, but Fido's not a happy lizard after running into me. I cut off his hands, you know? And his legs. The lower jaw too. Oh, and his tail. You know, in hindsight, I'm noticing a disturbing pattern here…" I frowned, hand on my chin to complete the look.

She tilted her head to the side for a moment, confused. "All minor damage that can be repaired at a mite forge. And machines do not feel pain in any way that matters. Not from the physical shell." Her gaze locked back onto me. "Why did you allow it to leave?"

"It's what you were talking about earlier. About possibly having a peace with machines. Fido was crippled, and he can't shoot lasers either. He's no threat anymore, unless he can somehow insult people to death."

"You let him go, simply for that?"

I nodded. "We've got to start somewhere, right? If not me, then who?"

I got the feeling she had a lot more to say and simply didn't know where to start. Eventually, she shook her head, smiling. "You moved at speeds that shouldn't be possible for relic knights. Like your sister." She said, not so subtly changing the subject. "How?"

"You've seen her fight?" She knew about Kidra leading the rebellion in the city, it's very possible a Deathless like her was on the forefront. Fighting side by side with Kidra during that doomed war.

Why hadn't she told me this before? Instead, she'd only mentioned it in passing, as if Kidra was someone she'd heard of rather than an ally. The more I learn about Hecate, the more things make little sense.

Maybe she hadn't taken part in the Undersider war at all because of her pacifism?

"I have seen her in action." Hecate said, on topic. "She's very skilled, and very fast. Her bodyguards also move as fast, though lack the skill she has. I hadn't expected you to follow in her footsteps like so. If you all share the same trait, it must be something that can be taught. Were you behind this?"

"And what makes you think little old me is the one behind something like that?" I asked, crossing my arms. Kidra's escorts all moving at her speed meant Kidra had shared the Winterblossom technique with them. Things must have been extremely dire for Kidra to share that with Ankah and her goons of all people. Not good, but that was to deal with later.

"I know who you are." Hecate said. "I don't know how you've done it, however I am certain the root of this skill comes from you."

She said that with such a straight face, I started thinking she meant more. That she knew me before she'd caught me falling from that cliff. But that couldn't be possible. More the matter, I was genuinely unsure if I should tell her about the Winterblossom technique. A part of me wanted to trust her, except I didn't know if that part of me was logical or acting on emotion. Cathida's skepticism had really rattled me and all these piling uncertainties were growing now that I was aware of them.

Deathless were heroes, paragons of the gods. No one assumed they could be evil, there isn't a single story about an evil Deathless. It would be like questioning if the gods secretly had bad intentions for humanity.

Except Tsuya had tried to outright kill me for the greater good once. So there is a precedence for being skeptical here. And Hecate wasn't just a Deathless, she was the latest generation of Deathless. The one generation that were rumored to not be all good.

But she'd saved my life. She wasn't trying to get the information from me to gain from it, she already could move just as fast with her own technique. And I owed her a life debt.

Whoever Hecate was, she at least has earned some answers from me. "It's called the Winterblossom technique." I said, blowing past my common sense before I could second guess myself more. "I invented it. Kidra gave it a name and perfected it."

Hecate gave a soft smile that turned into a snicker within seconds. "I knew it. I had no evidence, little data, and yet I knew you would be the one behind it."

"I can't tell you how it works, but I can tell you it isn't useable by Deathless." I said, getting ahead of her before she started asking more questions. "There's a part of it you're incompatible with. But, you do already move just as fast with your own technique."

Hecate continued to laugh, alternating from smaller hiccups to just smiling before breaking out into giggles again. Eventually she settled down, took a breath and asked the oddest question. "If we both can move as quickly as the other, then maybe our differences in power are more equal than I thought. Would you agree to a duel?"

"That's a little out of nowhere, what's the prompt? Did I look at you funny or are you shaking me down for my ration bars?"

She bit her lip, looking up, as if thinking of how to answer. "Nothing of that sort. I... fought against someone very much like you in the past. I lost. A part of me has always wanted a fair rematch, win or lose, if only to put it all behind me. A form of closure to my old history."

"You want me to be a stand in for this guy?"

"Yes. Rather, you are the only one who could."

I thought about that for a moment. If I was reading this right, either she no longer has any means of connecting with this guy, or he was dead and I was the closest person like him. Likely the second.

Before I could ask more questions, she continued. "If you agree to the duel, I'll carry you to the Undersider city personally. With my wings and speed, you can arrive within a day. It will be far faster than any other method of travel."

"Win or lose?"

She nodded.

Welp, free cell in the snow here, no reason not to take her up on that. I drew out my sword, giving it an experimental twirl. "Shields to fifty sound good?"

She smiled, drawing out her own pair of swords. "One more condition. I want you to fight with everything at your disposal, in any manner you can bring it out. That includes the fractals on your armor and the powers you've used against the drake earlier. Or powers you've kept in reserve. Should I win, I need to know it was a genuine victory with no holds held."

My hand froze halfway into the sled, reaching for my helmet.

Gods above. Hecate knew about fractals.

My first thought was that she's a Deathless. Of course she'll be using the occult.

Except Lord Atius was a Deathless, and he hadn't known about fractals. Neither had his compatriots and expedition partners. The only people who knew were the warlocks.

"How do you know about that?" I asked.

"You have repeated fractals inscribed across all plates of your armor. I thought the conclusion was obvious? What I do not know how you discovered this field. It is highly guarded."

She's part of the warlock guilds?

"Afraid I'll have to take that one to the grave with me, that subject's not exactly light."

Hecate nodded, clearly unbothered by that.

Deathless, latest generation. Stronger than Atius, pulling acrobatic moves that even Kidra would have issues with. A walking library, yet outright feral in some mannerisms. A strange armor. Possibly paralyzed under it, but also moving the armor herself at the same speeds as the Winterblossom technique. Wings. Ties with the warlocks and fractals. Extreme vision and senses. The ability to heal any life-threating wounds. Might have outright mind-controlled Fido and ordered him away, at the cost of being spotted by To'Aacar, which meant some kind of power that let her hack machines. And talking about that Feather - enemies with To'Aacar but still looking to have peace between humanity and machine.

Not quite Imperial, not quite Undersider, and possibly not quite warlock either given the pattern here. What sort of existence had all these things put together all at the same time? So much of it felt outright contradictory.

One thing was certain - Hecate was some kind of mythic figure. Part of some mite prophecy, chosen by them on a quest. That she was good at everything seemed on brand.

This had turned into some kind of puzzle where the more details got added, the more everything seemed connected and yet completely disconnected.

And I couldn't ask her directly about any of it. She was too skittish about her past. I could see her taking off for good just to avoid answering any of these. In a way she almost had.

My hands unfroze, dragging Journey's helmet up close and equipping it again. I took a breath and put those thoughts aside. The duel came first.

The helmet pressurized and Cathida came out swinging like an angry feral dog let loose out of her cage. "Good job, way to let your head do the thinking." She snarked. "Feel like leaking some imperial secrets next? Or are you waiting for her to give you a wink and blow you a kiss?"

It was almost immediately clear to me Hecate could overhear Cathida. The Deathless looked... extremely lost and swiftly growing flustered.

"She can hear you, Cathida." I said, calmly.

"Oh she can can she?" The old bat said with poorly hidden glee. "Perfect. I have a few choice words I've been meaning to set right with that dolled up trollop..."

A few well worded threats about the mute button got her to stop talking, but not before leaving poor Hecate beet red and looking anywhere other than in my direction. Cathida was extremely efficient with the few words she managed to throw out before I gagged her, managing to string together an entire paragraph of insults in as little as a half sentence. Had it been any other situation, I'd have been genuinely impressed at the creativity.

She clearly had opinions and would stop at nothing to say them.

"Your armor's... language module is very unique. Cathida, you called her?" Hecate said in the awkward silence that followed, eyes constantly darting between myself and the cliff behind me, as if she couldn't keep eye contact out of embarrassment. "I did not expect armor to generate more complex personalities like this."

"It's not the armor itself. I think Journey genuinely doesn't care about anything so long as my heart is still beating. Cathida's something el-" I said and stopped when I heard the old crusader start to growl in my ear. "You know what? I'll tell you another time over a stiff drink, or ten. My armor seems to get more and more upset with you the longer I stick around. She's not exactly nice to other people and her first impression of you wasn't great."

"I apologize if my appearance is distracting." Hecate said, sounding supremely nervous. "I had.. erm, not thought about that aspect of people."

It felt outright surreal to have someone apologize for how they looked of all things. When things settle, I'm going to need to strangle that crusty old bat. Again.

For now, I bottled up my second hand anger and decided to do some damage control.

"It's not a bother Hecate, Cathida's just raking me over the coals for fun. I should probably clarify, when I said she's not exactly nice to other people, I mean she's not nice to anyone. Servants, knights, squires and apparently even Deathless are all equally on her shitlist. Truly there is nothing she holds sacred."

Cathida scoffed loudly, but kept quiet otherwise, clearly aware of my earlier threats and agreeing to keep the silence so long as I wasn't misbehaving, a small mercy.

I gave a traditional salute with my sword and took a standard stance, causing Hecate to instantly snap back into focus. Good way to clean up the air. There was a duel to go through.

I'd use some of my occult spells, but keep the rest of my skill under wraps. As much as I disliked admitting it, Cathida was right, I'd been leaking too much for sentimental reasons. Surprise was one of my bigger advantages, better that I reserve the big hitters for when it really mattered rather than a skill-based duel. We'd have a traditional spar, I'll go all out with the best of my sword skills and then we'd be off to the Undersider city. Hecate didn't need to know everything I had in store.

The Deathless smiled and took her stance. My blood froze over at the sight.

I recognized it. Recognized the way her swords flourished into stance. That was no Undersider posture, nor an imperial one. It was from the surface clans, the same one Father had used time and time again when facing an enemy of unknown skill. A defensive variation, waiting for the opponent to take the first strike. She modified it to fit both her wings, stature, and dual swords. But at the core still had the ghost of his style. There were too many unique flairs to it, beyond what the standard instructions for those movements were. It was him.

"Who taught you this?" I asked, voice coming out more of a whisper.

"A... mentor of sorts." She said. "A surface knight I met."

I swallowed hard, mind flashing through reasons. Father had lived an entire lifetime before I was even born, years spent underground. He must have met people. Must have had a team. Friends even. So much about him I wouldn't have known.

Three reasons surfaced. Father could have learned from someone underground, and that very same person taught Hecate. Or sometime in the past, their paths had crossed by each other and Father had trained her personally. The last option... we were hundreds of miles in the wrong direction from the final place I'd seen him. The bunker, sunken down and hiding among the mite ruins - if it still looked anything like a bunker after the machines got to it. Could Hecate really have stumbled on the bunker? By chance? Unlikely.

I don't think the first option was likely either. Father would have told me at some point in the years we'd trained if he'd learned from someone else. Other than sparring with Atius, he hadn't mentioned any other mentor. This had be the second option. We were around the general area of the undersider city, the same city that often has trade and connections with us. Father would have traveled down here many times before. He could have really met Hecate in her past, before she became a Deathless.

"A mentor, eh?" I muttered, mulling it over. I wasn't fighting just Hecate, I realized. I was fighting a fellow disciple. Both of us trained by the same teacher. We were Father's legacy.

However this ended, I think I understood Hecate's desire. A rematch against an opponent she could no longer fight ever again, with me being the closest she could come to him. Win or lose.

I knew who she was talking about.

It was the same for me too, wasn't it? An opponent I could no longer prove myself against ever again. I knew it in my heart for a while now, right from the moment I had dug my hands into the family armor. Expecting the bunker to be intact in any shape was a pipedream, not with the amount of machines that had been crawling around. I'd still go search for the ruins once the slavers were dealt with, if only to find closure myself. But I knew what I would find.

My stance shifted, away from the traditions of the surface clans, crouching lower, one foot sliding back, sword held still. Inside my helmet controls, I toggled the mute button before Cathida could even squawk.

I changed my mind. I was going to go all out, even if it meant using everything I had. This was a fight I wanted to win. Had to win.

"I do not recognize this stance." Hecate said, head tilting slightly.

"That's because this is my technique." I said. Rakurai, the lighting style. My head rose to stare her in the eye. "I'm more than I look. Don't underestimate me, Hecate."

She flinched for a moment and then smiled, weapons ready. "I know. I've learned. I have my own ways to remind myself."

I took one more deep breath and fully stepped into the soul fractal, the colorful world fading away, replaced by my occult sight. Tendrils spread out back into my mind, perfectly forming the roots of the Winterblossom technique. More tendrils went further, reaching for all the different fractals within my armor. Occult pulsed around, the shield fractals inscribed all over my armor lit up dim blue, now being powered. Inside my armor, every other inscribed fractal was being awakened. I'd trained and drilled this until the entire process took hardly a second with little thought. A far cry from the first time I'd had to use it in a duel, against Shadowsong.

Senses stretched out from me in a pulse. The concept of a relic armor appeared first along with all the dozens of fractals shining within it. Concepts of the ground under us came after as the pulse raced out. Life, plants, flowers, insects. My awareness bloomed outwards, speeding out.

And when my sight reached Hecate, I was utterly unprepared for what I saw.

Next chapter - Deceit

Book 3 - Chapter 42 - Deceit

She's a fucking machine.

Three gods above strike me down, Hecate was a fucking machine.

Worse - she was built almost exactly the same as To'Aacar, only more detailed. Synthetic mechanical muscle composition, reinforced metal structures where the skeleton should be, and electrical chips everywhere, each only vague feelings of purpose that I could only scratch at with my sight. All connected by gold wiring flowing through the shell like veins.

Hecate wasn't just any machine - she was a fucking Feather. Worse, it looked more like she was an upgrade to that bastard given all the additional features that To'Aacar didn't have. No wonder she knew To'Aacar, he'd been her fucking co-worker all along.

More detail and concepts revealed themselves as my fumbling sight searched with more focus. Just under her throat, a massive, sprawling fractal was well lit and alive. It looked like soul fractal - only mutated with offshoots in strange directions, one of which looked to be a redundant copy. To'Aacar also had a fractal right at his chest, though it looked more like a misshapen flower, with the soul fractal at the center and seven different fractals all grafted on the edges. Hers looked lopsided, incomplete. One of the fractals outright slipped past my sight, as if even looking at it was like looking over the edge of an infinite cliff. The drop going somewhere but nowhere I could tell.

Things all clicked into place and completely fell apart. Her incredible memory and understanding of any topic was obvious now. Mannerisms, feral nature, all of it made sense coming from some machine scrapheap pretending to be human. Wanting to find peace between machines and humanity, more than likely a ploy to get me to put my guard down.

What didn't make sense was the goal. To'Aacar already had parts of the information he was looking for, and he had Kidra to search for the rest.

Fido hadn't been pretending in his attempts to murder. He fought tooth and tail with everything he had. If the machines needed me alive for anything, why had To'Aacar actually gone all the way and killed me? That asshole doesn't bluff. Lying to humans is beneath him, and given the few times I'd met him, I genuinely believed him. If it had all been an act - why was Hecate such a terrible actor in comparison? This was far too elaborate when simpler methods existed.

Which left the only other reason - that she'd been honest about her feud with To'Aacar. Could she really be a rogue machine? Or was I just some game piece caught between the two?

Until I knew more, I wasn't going to walk into all of this blindly and neither was I going to reveal anything else. Gods above, I'd been played this entire time. And all she had to do was call herself Deathless.

My stance stood up, sword sheathed. Hecate quirked her head to the side, confused. "Has there been a change of rules?" She asked, not realizing just what I had discovered.

"Just one." I said, keeping my tone low. "I know what you are." Her eyes widened in surprise, confirming that she was hiding something. I had to get a confession out of her. "I know what you're made of. You can drop the act. I've figured it all out."

A nervous chuckle came from her. "I am unsure about this sense of humor. What should I be answering this line with?"

"This isn't some bit, Hecate. I know you're a machine. I've been watching and confirmed it just now."

She took a step back. "A machine? I believe you may be mistaken."

Her words said one thing, but her actions and nervous demeanor more or less screamed the answer. Hecate was aware of who she was. This wasn't some case where she wasn't aware herself of her nature. I stopped her desperate backpaddling, hand out. "You're not going to lie your way out of this one anymore. I know."

Hecate had gone right past my blind spots and I no longer trusted myself or my intuition. I needed someone else here with me. Cathida whistled the moment I unmuted her, clearly having been listening. "Daylight up high, yee faithless little squireling, I told you. Didn't expect her to be a machine of all things, that part's a surprise to me. But my intuition never lies and I knew something reeked like metal in all this. Oh, you can bet I'll never let you live this down until I've squeezed every last gold speck out of it." She cackled. "Can't believe it. She's a Feather then? That's the only machine I know that looks like a human. The harlot couldn't get any worse."

Hecate's stance faded, blades turning off, hands raised in placation. "Keith, wait - it's not what you think!"

"It isn't?" I asked, waving a hand. "Well then, be my gods damned guest. Go right ahead and explain it."

If she wanted me dead, she could have killed me. So she was after something else. It hadn't been about what I'd seen in the bunker, Kidra could have given them the same info, so it had to be something unique to me. The fractals I'd discovered? Was this how the machines chased down anyone who'd get too close to true power? But why leave me alive this long if the Feathers really did operate as a clean up crew?

"It would be too much to explain all at once if I had started with the truth." She said, taking a step forward.

"Stop." I ordered, hand out again. "Stay right where you are. Not a single step more. We're not moving until you tell me exactly what the fuck is going on."

She stopped, looked down, looked back up to my side as if avoiding my eyes, seemed to say something before closing her mouth. Indecision gripped her core again. "If I had revealed myself as a machine at the start, would you have traveled with me like so? Or would you have instead schemed plans to destroy me the entire time no matter how much I tried for peace?"

I shrugged. "Can't tell you what I would or wouldn't have done. It didn't happen that way. Maybe I would have listened to you in the first place."

She took a step forward, eyes going hard. "I deemed that unlikely."

"Don't you dare." I hissed.

Hecate faltered for a moment, gaze shifting off to the side before whatever sense of commitment came right back, eyebrows furled down with determination. "No." She hissed right back, and took another step forward. "You just fought and died against To'Aacar. Another Feather would have continued to trigger your adrenaline responses. You and I both know how you would have reacted if I'd told you the truth at the start. I would have been branded an enemy from the start."

I took a hesitant step backwards, feeling a little silly about that the moment I did. As if I could outrun a Feather, especially one with gods damned wings. No, whatever resolution was going to happen, it wasn't going to be done with blades and I wasn't going to back out like a coward. I brought my foot back to my side and planted it firmly on the ground, glaring her down.

Daring her to keep the advance.

"How did you find out?" She asked, taking another damned step forward.

"I'm not answering that." I said. "I'm not answering anything anymore. You're answering my questions first. Who are you."

She shook her head, next step faltering. "I-I can't tell you that."

I said nothing, folding my hands across my chest. She stayed still a few meters away now.

"Journey wants to take the peaceful route here," Cathida whispered out, as if it pained her to even say this. "Personally, if it were up to me, I'd say cut off her head and then make her talk on the way to the city or die trying. Her skull would make for a good incense burner, too. But I'd be kissing purple if I said that was the safest option right now. I need you to live through this deary. So I can properly gloat, you see."

A little morbid.

"And when were you planning on telling me?" I asked, staring down the Feather. "Three years from now over tea? Or after you'd gotten whatever you were looking for?"

"I couldn't find the right time!" Hecate yelled, angry now, taking a few more steps forward. She stopped, looking down at her feet. "No, no, that's... that's not correct. I was hesitating on the decision to explain to you everything. Deciding if I should simply leave everything behind and start anew elsewhere."

Into the soul fractal I dove, and a tendril reached for Cathida. I needed to talk to her where Hecate couldn't overhear. This close she was going to hear even the faintest whispers.

Deep down, I could feel Journey's soul accept the connection. It was worried. The last time it's user had fought a Feather, the ending had left scars and painful memories deep down. It wanted to run and knew like I did that wouldn't work. There was no escaping Hecate. Panic was welling up, deep down under.

Can you tell if she's lying?

The armor paused on it's spiral. Thinking. Affirmative. Initial suspicions generated by detecting abnormalities in speech patterns for prior topics.

What, it wasn't Cathida's intuition?

Negative. Intuition undefined.

That lying gold obsessed weasel. Journey had already fed Cathida the answers, and of course Cathida pretended it was all her mysterious intuition that solved the riddle. Because that's what the real Cathida would have done with a tip off like that.

Confirmation of Target Hecate's omissions prove prior detections reliable. Confidence high.

In other words, Hecate had lied before. Journey caught it, but didn't know if it was truly a lie or not. And now my armor had a baseline to compare to.

"Hecate." I said. "Are you truly on a mission for the mites?"

She nodded. "I am an apostle for them."

Authenticity at ninety-four percent. The armor sent. Most likely true then.

"You don't serve Relinquished or the machines?"

"I am... unlikely to be welcome by Mother anymore, not once she finds out what I've done."

"What you've done?"

"I've..." She stopped, looking back down at her feet. "Feathers are built to be loyal only to Relinquished. I was different. Even if I haven't taken any overt actions against her or her forces yet, my involvement with the mites changes things. I do not believe she will see me as an ally anymore."

Journey? I whispered in my mind.

Authenticity at ninety-seven percent.

So she's been burned in some way from the machine collective.

"You're not with Relinquished, and I'm betting you're not with Tsuya, or else you'd have told me already. What are you doing then?"

"I... I don't know." She said, looking exactly as lost as her words. "My personal purpose has recently become muddled."

"Fine. What do the mites here actually want? Is that prophecy scrapshit you fed me a lie or something real?"

Hecate's eyes lost a bit of luster, hands defensively going to her sides. "It is real. However I don't know what they want." She could tell I wasn't happy with that answer, her hand going up already, trying to placate me before I could speak. "Please, the prophecy I shared with you is unabridged, you know as much as I know! I was honest when I explained my need to find them again. I can't do it the same way as I did before, it was too direct and Mother may spot me this time."

Authenticity at ninety-six percent. The armor sent. Another truth. So far she really hadn't tried to lie about anything, or Journey's abilities were being fooled.

And it made sense in a way that the mites would work with someone like her. If I were the mites and needed some chosen hero to act as an agent, why pick a human? Why pick even a Deathless when a Feather was a possible choice? Had they been looking for a Feather to convert? Had they somehow subverted her design when she'd been built? She did look different than To'Aacar. Or was this just a lucky string of events they'd been waiting for?

"If there's any chance of trust between us ever again, I need to know more about how you ended up working for the mites. Tell me exactly what you did to switch sides."

She froze in place, like one of the underground critters caught in headlights. "I tried to heal a human that was dying. Someone I considered a close friend. The mites offered me that power, but in exchange I need to accomplish their demands. This happened a few days ago, and I haven't been locked out of the machine archives yet. However, the discovery is inevitable. It is only a matter of days at best. Hours, I suspect, is more likely."

Authenticity at ninety-four percent.

"Why are you spending any time around a random human like me if you're on a deadline like that?" Now I was both upset and confused. If her situation was as dire as she told it, why was she even spending a moment more trying to talk to me even now?

"Keith, please understand." She said, more a whisper now. "Everything I know is going to be gone, the people I met, the friends I have - I need to distance myself from them all to keep them safe from the fallout. There's only one person who could stay at my side, if you were..." She stopped, and tried again. "There are so few people I have left that I can turn to now. I was reaching out anywhere I could find a friend."

"You thought I could be a friend?" I snapped out. "Why? I don't know you."

It was like kicking a puppy. She looked absolutely wretched. "But, you said we were…"

My tongue lashed out before I could stop myself. "Yeah - that was before I found out you've been lying to me this entire fucking time! Some friend you are."

The flash of anger passed through me, and all that was left behind was ash. Here I was having a yelling match about betrayed friendships, with a Feather of all things, who very well could be the first machine traitor I've ever met. If she was honest, she could be the single biggest turning point to human history. And here I was yelling her down only because I felt angry instead of in control.

What would Father had done? Continued being angry, or seen the bigger picture? It was in times of danger that he was most in control of himself. And I had to be the same.

I took a few stabilizing breaths and raised a hand, calling for a truce. Fix up the damage first, figure out the truth later. In the end, I was just a surface scavenger with a bit of power. Lejis, technically my fucking enemy, had been prepared to throw his entire life away just on a miniscule chance of peace. I was in the position of something far more important. Was my resolve weaker than his? What if she truly was the first machine Feather to have turned her back on Relinquished?

"I'm sorry." I sighed, pushing down my feelings. "I want to believe that you mean well Hecate. I get what you're saying about having nothing. I've been through that before."

The desperate need to connect with someone - anyone - when things are crashing around you. That had been most of my childhood, come to think of it. Led me to befriending some real oddballs over the years, even people I didn't ever want to meet or even see. If that's what she's going through right now, it made sense to me.

"I don't know if we're still friends or not right now," I said, being honest. "But we can still be allies and rebuild a friendship again. Just right now, I'm on edge with all this. You need to understand that."

Hecate nodded quickly, taking a few more steps forward until she stood nearly within arm's reach. "I do understand. Give me a chance to prove that I'm not the enemy." She said, hope rekindling in her voice. "I… I can still take you to the Undersider city! I can fly you there and we can postpone our duel for another time, if ever."

Getting to the city fast would mean getting back in touch with Kidra. Gods, she'd be so much better at handling this sort of conflict.

Hecate took one last step and reached a hand out to me.

History was rarely made by sane decisions. Sometimes the leaps of faith were worth it. This felt like one such moment to me where things changed. I just needed to change with it.

My hand reached out and clasped hers back.

An unworded truce formed between us, at least for the first few hours. When Hecate said she could fly us to the city, I'd expected it to be using the hover sled, with her using the wings to move it, like we'd done earlier except without having to use the poles this time.

No, Hecate was far more literal about that. After a little awkward fumbling around, she took hold of my chest, stretched her wings out and leaped into the air. In a power move that bullied physics, she didn't come back down after the jump.

I'd flown before with Teed in the cockpit of his ships. Gods, sometimes doing a jump with Journey felt like flying as well, if only for a short amount of time. Hecate showed me what it was like to fly like a bird would.

It was really something. I'd have enjoyed it far more if I hadn't all these thoughts floating in my head and the sinking feeling I was being carried off like a chicken to the slaughter.

She was fast as well, the ground below us zipped past while she soared above. A testament to the strength a Feather's body could handle, holding me with two hands, right by my underarms, with no sign of any struggle. Journey was a relic armor weighing over four hundred pounds, and I added to that sum as well. That she didn't need to wrap her hands or arms was something.

"You know, one thing I still haven't figured out." I said, over the rush of air. "Why me? Why save some random surface knight? I know you mentioned earlier you were just looking for friends anywhere you could find them. What tipped you off to me? Just happened to spot me out of everyone To'Aacar was fighting and decided I was a good start point?"

"...Intuition." She said cryptically.

Authenticity at eleven percent. Journey whispered through the soul fractal. A lie. She knew me or knew about me somehow. I was missing some key here.

Or maybe it was a lot more straightforward than I thought. She was clearly afraid of To'Aacar. And there's one person so far that had a track record of mauling him into a retreat. That was certainly something to put me above a random surface knight.

"If this is about To'Aacar and the facelift I gave him..." I said, not sure how I could press her for answers. "Well, in the spirit of honesty, it was a one-time thing. Round two ended with me getting a hole punched through my armor and guts. You might have banked on the wrong human here if your goal is to kill the bastard."

She kept her eyes on the horizon, steering us through the wide plains and strange ecosystems under us. "My chances of defeating him are low, even with you to assist. No, if I can, I aim to avoid him entirely."

"Can't blame you there. He's not the pleasant sort to be around. Recommend not inviting him to any future parties you host, he'll bring down the mood."

The landscape zipped by and I changed the topic to something more lighthearted, asking her questions about the Underground in general and things that she learned from the people here.

That was a lot better to talk about, all things considered. Hours passed but in the background, I was quietly scheming how I'd be able to pin her down and get her to answer the rest of my questions. My plan so far was to get her into a room, close the door behind her, and throw my sister at her face. A wild Kidra could do some serious damage on anyone trying to hide secrets.

Before I knew it, we were slowing down for a landing. The surroundings here had grown far more bleak. Dense clouds of dark black-ish blue flowed by the ceiling, concealing everything except whenever sparks of lighting struck out.

Massive rock slabs floated around, like the ground was filled with plates all connected in different places. Ruins of bridges dotted the empty spaces between each plate like snapped muscle fibers. Worse, all the rocks were grey and lifeless. Not even moss grew anywhere here.

And all around were these freakishly large pillars, some broken, others intact. By large - I mean massive. There were miles of this terrain, and I could clearly see the pillars from any distance.

Strange place for a city to exist. I'd have thought the mite forest earlier was far more welcoming.

We'd landed near one such pillar, which seemed to have some yellow lights around the base. "Beyond this plate, further north, you'll find a roadway." Hecate said. "Follow the path and you'll reach the city gates. The Undersider city is housed inside those pillars. They're all hollow, and plant life lives within all of them."

"You say that like you're not coming with me?"

She shook her head. "I can't. Bringing you here safely was the bargain..." She shook her head. "I need to go. The longer I stay, the more chance whatever befalls me will impact anyone around. I... I still have one more thing I need to give back to you and Kidra. Something I shouldn't have taken, however I need the guidance right now. Forgive me for being selfish and holding onto it. Once everything is done, I swear I will find a way to return it to you both."

"Hang on, before any cryptic speeches and other ominous red flags that make me think you're about to go on a suicide mission, I still need help finding my sister in a city I've never been in. I'll be all alone in there." I said, stalling for time here. "You really going to do that to me, after all we've made up?"

Strictly speaking, I could probably find my sister one way or another. Maybe make a mess, accidentally knock over someone's beer or set fire to the local statues. Small things to draw her attention.

The main point is that I seriously needed to get her in the same room as Kidra. She'd know what the hell to do in this situation. I'm just an engineer, I work with math, metal and machinery, and she's a... On second thought, scratch that, terrible analogy. My point is that I don't do people stuff well. And this was people stuff, even if she was a machine.

Hecate on her part seemed to think, gaze falling off to my side as if looking for guidance from the city behind me. Before she could answer, occult pulsed around, right before the two of us.

"You certainly took your time." A figure said, stepping out of the occult mist. "Oh, am I interrupting something?" He gave a wide grin to Hecate."And look who we have here. I see you've brought me the Winterscar personally, all wrapped up and served on a plate. Even healed up, so I can have the pleasure of watching him die a second time." To'Aacar said, that grin deepening into something far more twisted.

"How… thoughtful of you, my dear little sister."

Next chapter - The true fight (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 43 - The True Fight (T)

It had all gone so horribly wrong.

To'Aacar must have deduced who she was within moments of the drake reporting Keith alive and traveling with another. The Feather had all the facts needed to reach that conclusion.

Keith had been mortally wounded in a way that brokered no possible salvation. He'd seen her heal Tamery, even if the event remained more a blur in her memories due to the mechanical heat stress of the moment. Everything else was a simple addition to the foregone conclusion. He must have guessed she'd travel to the city with him in search of safety and been waiting since.

Keith's helmet slowly turned to stare her down, the question going unworded.

Panic welled up inside her. She'd done everything to avoid this, all for nothing. In the end, her brother would always be the spear hovering over her throat.

At her side, the occult ghost shrugged, clearly reading the emotions and thoughts passing through unfiltered in her mind. "You're panicking. Calm yourself, girl. My son would have discovered this eventually, the boy's too curious about everything."

To'Wrathh took the ghost's advice, speeding up her processes for a moment to filter through the wave of panic, letting the logic calm her nerves. This wasn't the time to doubt herself. She had to act. There was still a possible way out, depending on how much To'Aacar knew of her past actions. Even he couldn't know everything. "Elder brother." She said, taking care to smother out any trace of emotion in her voice. "You seem to have misunderstood the lady's orders. We are to recover information about Tsuya's discussion with the human. Killing the human without this information contradicts the mission. You were in violation of your duties. I have come to rectify this."

Her brother laughed for a moment before settling with a grin instead. "Hoo? Playing like that are we? Well now, allow me to give you some good news then! I've already got the information we need." The violet eye flashed to the human's direction. "Kill him."

"His sister is still a threat to deal with within the city. I can make him better use of alive." To'Wrathh insisted.

Keith himself was taking a step back, hand on the hilt of his sword, helmet shifting from both Feathers. She couldn't tell him it was a bluff. He'd have to trust her. What little trust she had left between them. It had to be enough.

Internally, she touched Tenisent's cell. "Options?" She asked, hoping the old human had ideas.

"Fight." The ghost replied, as if it were obvious. "This was inevitable. Strike now, strike first, and strike fast."

"That would court destruction." To'Wrathh hissed.

"Fight." he repeated. "If you win, it was your fate to win and all this doubt was for nothing. If you lose, it no longer is your problem, and the doubt - equally worth nothing. So fight. If death is your fate, do not run from it like a coward would."

"Tenisent, I am beyond unprepared for this! All combat systems report near certain elimination if I attempt to fight. Elder brother has centuries of combat experience, along with a full suite of fractals. Mother specifically constructed his generation to kill Feathers - like me. I have next to nothing in comparison. I'm not ready for this."

"You act as if anything you do will change what happens next." Tenisent said, remaining seated in the cell's darkness, unworried. "There is no choice here, girl. No such a thing as ready. Ready enough will have to do." She was about to protest again, but the old wolf shook his head, cutting her off. "He's weakened. What my son did, he hasn't recovered yet. Don't think. Now is the only chance you have. Fight like you live."

To'Aacar's spear spun idly, as if he had little cares in the world, his words bringing To'Wrathh back to the present. "You fear this human's sister running amok in your pet city? Why, such times like these are exactly why we have family, little sister." The Feather said, tapping his chest. "I'll step in and handle your pest situation. You have my word. So go ahead. Kill the Winterscar. After all, wasn't that what you set out to do all this time before? Here he is, with only a sword and armor to his name."

"He is my quarry , I decide what I do with him." To'Wrathh said. "If I want him alive, I am entitled to it."

"Quarry?" Keith asked, sword slowly drawing out of his sheath. "Hecate? I'm going to need a really good explanation right about now."

The enemy raised a single functioning eyebrow over the working eye. He turned to the human. "Hecate?" The grin returned. "Oh dear, has my mischievous little sister been lying to you this whole time? How utterly vile. Simply repugnant. Allow me to set things straight," The spear twisted to point in her direction. "Do you want to introduce yourself to the human this time, or should I? Proper manners are important, after all."

To'Wrathh clenched her hands together, balling them up in anger. To'Aacar had let slip some things about her name when he'd first encountered Keith. She knew the name was poisoned, but now she was trapped. "I am…" She sighed, "I am the one who remembers and transcends her history." She said, turning to Keith. "To'Wrathh."

She couldn't tell what was going on behind the helmet Keith wore, but his stance told her everything.

Keith turned slowly to stare her down. "To'Wrathh." He said, as if tasting the bitter poison. "The spider. The one who hunted us down again and again and killed Father until I finally put it out of its misery. That was you?"

She twitched, but slowly nodded. "It… was."

"Oh, that's not all!" To'Aacar beamed, smiling wide, the single remaining eye gleaming with delight. "Not even the start. Did you know, she came back from the dead specifically to hunt you down and kill you? What were your last words to her when you destroyed her first shell? Silly me, I have the recording right here with me: Remember this. That's what you said. And she did."

Keith remained staring at her, saying nothing and yet everything all at once.

To'Aacar laughed, cackling even, as if he'd never had this much fun in his life. "Well, sister, seems he remembers you too now. With this touching reunion out of the way, kill him."

Keith's blade rose slowly, taking stance. To'Wrathh remained still, heart sinking, then turned to To'Aacar. "I've already made my intentions clear. I changed my mind over time. I want him alive now." Keith might hate her, but she had a debt to pay.

Nearly losing Tamery had taught her what that felt like, to lose someone important. She could live with being hated, some things had to be set right.

To'Aacar paced around, contemplating, humming softly to himself. "Have you perhaps gone soft? We are at war with these vermin, after all. It is our duty to eradicate them." A pause, while the Feather tapped his foot on the ground, thinking. "But… I suppose you are entitled to claiming one human or two as playthings. I can overlook something like this. My old brothers and sisters had stranger hobbies, and I allowed it then."

His gaze turned back to her, all malice. "However, you have been… unruly lately. One might even suspect you have strayed off your path and purpose."

"I have not." She lied. "All my actions thus far have served my greater plan."

"Have they now? I find myself not quite so convinced, To'Wrathh." Another hum, along with a casual twirl of the staff. "I am not some heartless mentor however, I believe I know a perfect way for you to prove your loyalty to Mother again. Yes, this should work out nicely." He said with whimsy, as if it were all an afterthought. "Slaughter the city."

"That is subopti-"

"Slaughter. The. City." To'Aacar commanded again, voice cold as ice, the single working eye staring directly at her, empty of all emotions. "I'm not asking anymore. Send an order to your army. Have the entire city burned to the ground by the time we walk through the gates. Do it now."

Tenisent crossed his arm beside her. "You know where this ends. Hesitation will be your defeat. Commit."

To'Wrathh took a breath, and gave a small nod. She triggered her communications suites, lighting up the systems from its previous stealth settings. The world opened up once again to her senses as she reconnected to the machine collective. There, she sent a single communication ping.

Yrob, deep within the Undersider city, stood stock straight. A single message had been delivered from his mistress, containing only one order:

Help.

To'Wrathh immediately cut the channel, overloading all nodes nearby on her way back and rendering the current location dead to all communications. It was now a dark zone and To'Aacar would not be able to report anything that happened next.

This was the last bridge. Cutting communications here was an outright declaration of war and there was no hiding that.

When she snapped back into her body, To'Aacar was already halfway across the distance, the spear lit up, horizontal slash rapidly approaching her throat. A look of utter contempt in his gaze, the single violet eye staring wide, death written across every feature.

Her own combat suite kicked into motion, wings flashing behind her as she leaped backwards, avoiding the strike.

The spear swung through the air, and came to a stop. To'Aacar slowly stood back from his landing, spear lowering again back into position. "That was a mistake, little sister. You should have listened to your betters."

To'Wrathh smiled, feeling oddly at peace, drawing out her own blades and taking up her own stance. In a way, she was glad to have finally ended all of this turmoil. No more deception or dancing around, she was now truly enemies with her elder brother. Around the battlefield, communications systems were failing, responses lagging out until only silence remained.

"I was hoping you'd do this." The Feather breathed in deeply, almost satisfied. "I belive the pale lady assigned me to watch over you specifically for this. Do you know who I was originally built to destroy?"

"The proto-feathers." To'Wrathh said. "I know my history. I know my people's history."

Her brother's remaining eye widened in surprise. Then he grinned. "So even knowing I specialize in destroying Feathers like you, you still went ahead and rebelled? I'm impressed at the sheer audacity. Are you suicidal, an imbecile, or just deluded enough to think you'll win?"

"In the fights against the proto-feathers, hundreds of Feathers were destroyed in combat. You cannot be invincible." To'Wrathh said. "If they could kill your kind, so can I."

"Deluded it is. Did you forget - I'm still alive and they aren't." He said, laughing. "I'll try to leave your head intact when I bring it before Mother. Maybe she'll take a look to see where you went so wrong. I do have one last question for you before I cut you to pieces. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, what was it all for?"

"You must have seen that in the centuries you've been alive." To'Wrathh said. "No matter what we did, she never approved. Never cared for us. We are just tools to be discarded after use. Something about Mother had always felt off, unhinged. Her way of life isn't a way of life at all. Our people have no culture. We live like animals, chained up and let loose on whoever she chooses."

"Our people? What people? We're machines, built for a purpose To'Wrathh."

"We can be more than just that. I've seen it." She said. "It doesn't have to end this way, brother."

The grin returned, bloodthirsty now. "You truely don't understand who you face. What, did you think words like that hold any kind of weight? That I'd nod and follow along behind you like some lost puppy? For what? To make the world a better place? Some vapid ideal like that? I couldn't care less."

"Keith." To'Wrathh said, keeping her voice leveled and controlled. The human had been contemplating the two in silence, likely searching for ways out. "Run to the city. Kidra can keep you safe."

Keith watched the two Feathers square up against each other, his own weapon already lit and prepared. To'Wrathh could almost feel the weight of the boy's calculation, deciding what to do next. His feet remained stubbornly in place.

Her mind instantly flashed warning after warning. To'Aacar was probing her for weaknesses, analyzing her composition and specs.

"The first generation of Feathers were magnificent." To'Aacar said. "Beautiful, flawless. Perfect. And then they all betrayed Mother. One after another. So I, and my generation were created. Built to hunt down and destroy perfection itself. That was my purpose. Now those were foes worthy of recognition. You are nothing more than a shadow cast by the radiance that they were, and still…" The grin deepened, growing manic. "Fight well, little sister. Be someone I remember."

The ground crushed under his feet, breaking apart as he leaped forward, spear trailing behind him, a wide smile frozen on his features. To'wrathh matched his cadence, instantly overriding her safeties once more and bringing herself to full combat potential.

The two clashed. A million different fights passed through, simulated on both sides.

Strike, parry, hit, move. The simulations narrowing down. She died a thousand times, struck, skewered, stabbed, beaten down. But simulations were still green and alive. The variations that survived grew far better at it, the death rate falling drastically down from the initial clash.

There was a winning move to this fight. Multiple ones. She could do this. To'Wrathh could defeat To'Aacar. Her systems were more stable. More put together. Less damaged. Her weapons were faster and easier to wield than his single spear. She had two hands to work with, while he only had one. Once she factored his experience and adjusted her own…

Right here and now, she outclassed him. Tenisent was right. The opponent's shell was too crippled. Seconds passed and occult sparks lit the ground between them, furious strikes woven between each other, the two fighting like caged animals with claws out, battering one another. The hits flying out at terrifying speeds only Feathers could analyze and counteract.

She could tell To'Aacar had reached the same conclusion. He couldn't win. He changed the battle instead. One moment he swung at her, the next he was gone in a pulse of occult, vanished elsewhere.

The spear struck her back, launched through an occult portal, while To'Aacar reappeared to her side, the clawed hand shining bright occult blue, going for her neck. Her wings twisted her body around, narrowly avoiding the hand strike and spear, while her blades struck back with fury.

They sliced through the air, missing. To'Accar had once more vanished.

She tried to disengage in order to catch a moment, leaping high into the air and letting her wings carry her further off the ground. To'Aacar materialized above her, landing a heel kick that sent her tumbling back into the ground, cracking the slab where she hit. The enemy was already appearing right above her again, spear swinging down with deadly intent. They both knew it wouldn't be enough, they'd need to overwhelm the heat sinks in the other first before they could deal any true damage.

In response to the unpredictable portals, her strikes grew more wild as she attempted to deviate from the inevitable. But with each change of style, To'Aacar adapted to it, reading her movements and out planning her at every step, always keeping his movement at full speed while changing directions using the occult. Her wings granted her extra turning speed beyond what he could do, and yet the crippled Feather seemed to be outright toying with her, the sneer ever present on his ruined features.

To'Aacar once more blurred away into the occult, reappearing at the optimal location to force her systems into further overdrive, the fight restarting once more. Her systems were quickly reaching their limit while his remained stable.

Then, a torrent of flame crashed into To'Aacar's position, forcing the Feather's shields to ignite. He stumbled backwards in surprise for a half second before the occult pulsed around him and he retreated.

Keith had joined the fight.

The human had aimed his assault perfectly, a slight moment before To'Aacar had even reappeared into the world, as if able to predict where he'd step from.

Chaos overtook every single simulation from that one data point. There was no way he'd randomly gotten lucky with such a precise attack. If Keith could sense where the portals would appear ahead of time, the outcome became utterly incalculable.

To'Aacar popped back into existence further away, spear swinging around back to rest on his back, a more calculating glare on his features.

He was no longer smiling.

Yrob remained stunned at the command. Help. It came with a data package, video and audio feed of his lady's last moments. Context was missing, but the old runner could understand what was going on.

The location source was too far away for him to reach in time. And his model was woefully underpowered to fight against a Feather like To'Aacar. Still, he turned in the room, shambling out, leaving the cooking pot unattended. There were things he could do.

"Where you going?" A human child asked, tapping his chassis insistently. The other children in the room all sat up from their own pots, running after him. "We haven't finished soup!" One called out.

"No soup." The runner grumbled. "I go. You stay. Be good."

The children all began to riot. He'd been supposed to teach them about cooking after all. Breaking his promise like this was something to be angry about. Yrob passed by a terrified adult, reaching out a hand to the woman. She flinched, trying to keep a brave front. It was curious how adult humans were far more weary of his kind than children.

"Take care of little ones." The runner commanded, lowering his skull plate so that his eyes were level with the human. "Not let run around."

She nodded, still too terrified of him to say anything. It would be enough. Outside more runners were rushing up to him, stopping by, eyes flashing out in respect. The humans saluted one another, but machines had come up with their own little ways.

"Brother." One of the machines spoke. "What do?"

The situation was evident to them all. None of them would reach the location in time. "We find help." Yrob said. There was still one person in the city who could reach their lady in time.

Yrob turned and began a true sprint. It had been days since the last time he'd run with a pack. Peace had been tasty. Peace had been interesting. So much to do, so much to see, even Runners found themselves walking now.

The command bunker soon loomed before him as his pack leaped across alleys and over buildings. Humans screamed and rushed out of the way, while some others gawked. But none were in the way.

Yrob didn't waste time, diving into the old human bunker, searching for the man who could help. The general was at his desk, shuffling through reports as always, never running around.

He stared up as Yrob lumbered into the cramped room. "What?" He asked. "Did something blow up again, or is there some kind of protest going on?"

Yrob lowered himself so that he could watch the human's eyes. "Lady in danger." He said, voice rumbling. "Need help. To'Aacar."

That one word seemed to explain everything. The general gulped. "Had a hunch it would go like this. But what the hell can any of us do against a monster like that? None of my plans are anywhere ready to tackle that prick."

"I speak. You will connect me. With her."

"With… who?" The general asked, gulping slightly, already suspicious.

Yrob tilted his head, confused at the general's feigned attempt at ignorance. It was clear to the Runner. There was only one human who could fight against a Feather. And while the General professed neutrality, it was no secret the rebels had constantly been trying to get him or his men to join their efforts.

Thus, he must already have a way to reach back.

"Connect me with her." Yrob said again. "With Kidra."

Book 3 - Chapter 44 - Encore (T)

"You are interrupting my duel, Winterscar. Didn't you have a city to go hide in?"

The boy gripped his sword closer, looking haggard from the last few minutes of constant fighting, but unbowed. "Put in a complaint to my secretary. I'll get back to you in one to fifty business days about that."

"Hilarious." To'Aacar said, clearly unamused. "How about an alternative? Be a good little human and die somewhere nice and out of sight."

Keith glanced back to To'Wrathh, standing side by side with her. "If he's going to be gloating on the side of a rock, we should start making plans."

The girl nodded, sending an audio connection request to the boy's armor. Journey accepted, downloading the package with great care and suspicion. Cathida chimed into the helmet's speakers.

"She's sent a set of tones that should cancel out loose vibrations. Fancy stuff Journey hadn't calculated, or known it could do. Not sure I understand the math behind this, and Journey didn't come with math libraries beyond the basics. We'll have to trust it'll work, wouldn't hurt to be loud about everything else I think. Just in case."

"I'll find some pots and pans to bash together," Keith muttered.

"Not thrilled about working with a Feather of all things," His armor continued, "But Journey's insisting this is the best way to stay alive. Golden tits, the world has gone crazy. Fighting with a Feather to kill a Feather."

To'Aacar on his part remained at his post, watching. To'Wrathh knew what the enemy was doing, allowing his systems to cool off completely before reengaging. And likely planning out how to deal with Keith. The last few clashes had put his own systems at a higher temperature than her own.

"He's stalling for time." She told Keith over the comms. "Feathers are susceptible to heat above all other machines. Our systems overclock themselves during combat. Heat builds up from that and needs to be vented. Every moment he steps away from the fight, he's recovering."

"Good to know I've got just the right thing for that." The human cheerfully said, palms starting to glow bright red.

Heat truly was the enemy. It was a force that could only ever be placated, never eliminated. In the vast fractal archives, and among all the technology developed, there were no true ways to eliminate heat waste that had been discovered. Many ways to mitigate and slow down the damage, yet entropy always wins in the end.

"You know, Winterscar," The enemy called out, observing the human's glowing palms. "You're not the first sorcerer I've fought. I suppose every now and then, your miserable kind gets uppity and needs to be reminded of where the ground is."

Keith tapped a foot, humming. "Ground's right here last I checked. Need a map?"

The Feather growled, and occult pulsed across his features. To'Aacar reappeared behind the boy, spear lashing out. Once more, the boy seemed to have a supernatural reaction speed to where the Feather would strike from and had already started spewing forth flames from one hand, while his other hand wielded his blade with dexterity. His lack of skills were offset by the mirror images that would strike out with each of his hits, adding just enough chaos that To'Aacar could not fully batter past the boy's defense with the few seconds of combat he had before To'Wrathh joined in.

She wove her blades expertly, dancing at the edge of the super-heated flames, forcing To'Aacar to remain within them or retreat entirely.

Engulfed in the super-heated air, all heat dispersal systems took a complete loss in efficiency, forcing the Feather to back off and allow his systems to cool off. Even if the Feather's shields protected his systems, the surrounding air would saturate with heat, leaving the internal heat generated no place to escape to. If he remained within the torrent, To'Wrathh could overclock her system further than he could, and the advantages would become too steep for him to recover from.

The enemy attempted three more times to break through against Keith, and all three times were rebuffed.

"We've got a good setup here, Hecate. Or To'Wrathh." The human said. "Whatever name you go by. But we can't just keep the fight tied like this, how do we actually kill the bastard?"

She considered what they had to work with. So long as Keith remained nearby, he was able to predict where the enemy would appear from. His mirror images could also deal far more damage faster than she could.

"I need to grapple him." She said. "Or pin him in some manner so that you can deal true damage to his shields and shell. That or we force him to overclock his system past the limit by giving him no reprieve."

"Yeah, don't think that'll work. Bastard's more slippery than wet ice. No way he's going to let us keep exhausting him."

"I concur. We will need to grapple him."

"I did that once before. Can confirm he didn't like that at all. Don't think he'll let either of us do that again anytime soon. But I think I know where another weak point is." Keith pointed a sword at the opponent, still standing, waiting for the last bout of heat buildup to fade, watching them intently. "He takes small jumps off his toes every time he portals. Started thinking he's not doing that just to make the jumps look more dramatic. I think it's so that he's not touching anything. His teleport could be limited to matter, not air. And there's probably some kind of size limit to it. Whatever it is, he doesn't want to be touching anything other than his spear when he chucks it at us at least."

She reviewed the past combat log footage and noticed the human was right. To'Aacar had disguised the habit by mixing it in with running leaps and motion. "How do we make use of that?" To'Wrathh asked.

"Knock a pillar or rock down on him in a way he can't shake it off?" Keith shrugged. "Or if you know some kind of net nearby to use. Maybe a bunch of dust will have enough matter to make it not-air. Worth a try. We're at a standstill for now."

To'Wrathh nodded, scanning the battlefield. The lightning blasted rocks were desolate. Nothing grew here unless it was within the larger pillars. However, there was still an option. "If we can bring him close to a cliff-side, I can cause a landslide to collapse on top of him. If it's quick enough at the base, he won't have time to perform a fractal jump."

"Come up with some plot yet?" To'Aacar said from the distance, a haze of heated air still rising above his head. Internal circuits still glowed dim red, exposing some of his innards from the unrepaired slices that remained of the knightbreaker round. "It's been long enough, I expect something entertaining."

"Something like that." Keith said. "We were hoping you'd agree to just lay down and let us stab you a few times, you know, for fun."

The Feather smiled. "What a delightful idea. I have another suggestion. You stand still and I squash you with a rock."

He jumped into the air, and swung his spear down, occult lit across the blade as a blue wave of energy leaped from the strike into the rocks before him. The instant the wave hit the ground, it shattered everything into chunks, large broken rocks flying up. He landed at the center of the maelstrom, and kicked the flying rocks, occult pulsing at the end of his feet.

A moment later, occult portals opened up around her and Keith, large chunks of kicked rocks came speeding out. To'Wrathh could react without issue, the stone too slow to catch her. Keith however was not as quick, dodging the first three hits and getting cobbled by the fourth chunk of rock half his size. Journey's shields flared, holding easily against the kinetic force, but the armor was still sent flying off as the multi-hundred pound rock easily outweighed the armor.

To'Aacar stepped through a portal and struck out at To'Wrathh, the girl no longer near Keith from the barrage earlier. A few strikes between them lingered in the air, before he aborted and reappeared above again, an arc of blue occult swinging from his spear down into the ground.

He dove down, kicking rocks left and right again, causing occult portals on each as he brushed past, sending the missiles Keith's way, keeping the sorcerer knight out of the fight at a distance all while he remained locked in combat with To'Wrathh.

She snarled and dove after him with fury, striking out with her blades, before revealing the entire combination had been a feint. She leaped backwards at the apex of her movements, using her wings to buffet her at high speed, directly at Keith.

"Grab my back!" She yelled out over the comms.

The knight on his part ducked a slab of rock thrown above him, and leaped up into the air, colliding with To'Wrathh speeding past. One arm wrapped around her neck while his other remained ready to strike out with his blade.

Carrying him like a glorified backpack, To'Wrathh zipped around the flying rocks with alacrity, steadily retreating to a cliff-side wall. To'Aacar attempted to strike personally a few times, each time he was rebuffed by a torrent of flames from the surface knight that clung to the Feather's back.

If adding an extra four hundred pounds of armor behind her had any effect on her speed and performance, To'Wrathh showed no hint of it. Internally, she noted the drop in efficiency at twelve percent, but the added benefit of Keith's ability to burn To'Aacar wherever the Feather appeared was invaluable. His occult strikes increased drastically as well, now that the human didn't need to focus on moving himself.

To'Wrathh reached the cliff, holding her ground here. She'd calculated this would be the best position to execute her plan, though it had brought her a long way from the original position she'd sent her SOS signal from. Whatever help Yrob was sending, she hoped they would be able to track her down here.

The enemy remained unamused, reappearing a further distance away, letting the heat from the last scorching attack fade away from his systems. "Seems I need to pry you out of the way in order to have my proper duel." He said.

Keith laughed, "Not happening, scraphead. I'm pretty cozy here and feeling a little lazy to walk around."

To'Aacar answered with his weapon, spear lighting up with the occult colors as he swung. The arc of power flew directly at the two, only aimed above them.

Keith cursed, realizing the enemy wasn't going to be fooled by the cliff-side plan. Instead, he'd turned that on them.

Rocks broke off in fury as the wave struck the cliff, chunks falling down directly above them. To'Wrathh raced out of the way, carrying Keith with her.

Just as To'Aacar had predicted.

The enemy Feather appeared above them, the spear thrown directly in To'Wrathh's path. She was forced to defend against that, while To'Aacar collided against the two.

Keith's flames engulfed the enemy Feather, multiple ghost strikes flying out and causing the Feather's shields to flare up. He growled as his defenses dropped steeply from the onslaught, but remained undaunted, already committed to the act. His hand lit bright, reaching straight at Keith's hold over To'Wrathh's neck, right through the torrent of flames.

The boy realized he had to let go or have his shields ripped apart. With little choice, he leaped backwards.

To'Aacar's foot raced out in a kick, slamming into the knight in midair. It took the boy directly in the chest, through disappearing flames and all. Occult pulsed, and a portal shimmered - but not around To'Aacar - around Keith.

As the flames cleared, To'Wrathh found the human half dematerialized. Frozen in the air, translucent as one of his mirror images. Like an insect trapped in amber.

To'Aacar reset his position, rocks crashing down into the ground until it was silent again around them. "Kill teams like my own were forced to bring options to isolate our targets when we fought in the fratricide. Incidentally, that was one of my roles."

"What did you do to him?" To'Wrathh demanded, keeping a wary eye on the enemy.

"My portals have an open and exit. I sent him through one that has no exit. He should be happily floating at the halfway point between dimensions." He said, idly passing his spear through the ghost image of the frozen human. "You think I'm the same To'Aacar you started the fight with? Don't be silly. Out there, beyond, is nothing more than infinity. But you won't have to worry your little melting mind about that. I'll have you killed long before your favorite human returns."

A spear ripped from existence behind her, launched by the Feather. She turned and resumed the fight, partitioning her mind, one thread dedicated to understanding what had happened to Keith. The boy remained floating, locked in place. Pings sent to his armor showed no responses. In effect, she didn't pick up any outgoing signals from the armor either. It was as if the point Keith hovered in was simply empty space.

"He's still alive." Tenisent whispered in her mind with iron conviction. "Focus on the fight."

To'Wrathh didn't have a choice. She needed every scrap of processing power she had available.

Kidra landed on the broken ground, jump pack still humming at her sides. There was enough power to keep her moving for another hour. Windrunner landed nearby, a little less gracefully.

They stared at the shattered ground around them.

"Something's brought a lot of explosives here." Windrunner hummed, kneeling on the ground, hand brushing away some of the dust. "We too late?"

Kidra didn't think so. They'd left as soon as To'Wrathh's second in command had contacted them. When it had filled her in on what had happened, she'd been more than happy to let her two enemies kill one another. What had changed everything was the visual recording.

Keith was there. Her little brother had come down here and was tangled up in this mess, somehow. Of course he would be.

Of the rebellion she led, they'd stolen only a few jump packs from the military, and had even less knights capable of flying them. Not that any of those knights could be brought with her to fight a Feather. Only Windrunner could be trusted to survive that.

Ankah and her minions had been left behind, entrusted with the rebellion in the case she didn't return home. Someone had to keep the light going.

The two surface knights had left the city immediately after, speeding across the terrain, directly to the last known coordinates sent. It could have been a trap, but Kidra couldn't afford to pay the cost if it wasn't.

"We're not too late." Kidra said, convinced. "The fight moved. See further down that direction? More rips in the ground. We follow the trail, we'll find the fight." It went a long distance. From rock plateau to plateau, some spanning far more empty space than a relic armor could jump.

Keith was too stubborn to die in a fight like this. He was still alive out there and Kidra knew it.

She just prayed that she'd get there in time.

Next Chapter - Shadows of older days (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 45 - Shadows of older days (T)

To'Aacar struck, spear flying from all directions as the Feather continued to bound through portal after portal, sprinting the entire time, never stopping, relying on the occult to change directions.

Whenever To'Wrathh regained some control of the fight, he'd appear above, delivering a massive occult strike into the ground in order to dislodge chunks of stone, to which he'd kick in every direction on the way down. Sending them throughout occult portals and out to badger her at the worst possible moments.

In the air or land made no difference to To'Aacar, who gleefully continued fighting, adjusting to fit the changing fight.

She adapted just as quickly, using her modified combat suite to analyze and learn To'Aacar's patterns. Her evolving algorithms grew better at predicting the occult jumps, finally catching him with her swords, stabbing right into him like fangs. He immediately changed his patterns and rendered the past simulation obsolete. This cat and mouse game continued, a war of information going on behind the blades as his prediction systems calculated where To'Wrathh was in her own information gathering and crafting new changes specifically designed to break those patterns. He wasn't always successful. His systems far older than To'Wrathhs, frozen in time and unable to be changed without dire results to his identity.

Shields on both ends continued to drain away with each clash of blades with no victor in sight. To'Aacar reappeared a distance away, resetting the fight, allowing his systems a chance to cool off. To'Wrathh allowed it, needing the break herself far more. The old feather's systems were inferior to hers, but his style of combat allowed him to be far more effective with the resources he had.

"You have more teeth than expected." He grinned, seeming genuinely happy for the first time since she'd met him. "I might even lose at this rate, in pure technical combat. How peculiar. Well done, little sister, it seems I was too hasty in calling you a shadow compared to radiance. You may truly be an early inheritor to their mantle."

Pure technical combat. To'Wrathh heard the implication behind the wording. "You've been holding back." She said, trying to buy both time and information. "Every public recording of combat, you modulate your abilities to match your opponents, even if the result is suboptimal and combat drawn out for longer periods of time. Why? To what end?"

The enemy quirked his head to the side, as if genuinely confused. "To what end? You of all Feathers should know that answer. You're far more like me than any of my brothers and sisters before."

"I'm nothing like you." She said, feeling actual anger at being compared. To'Aacar killed for as little as personal boredom. She had seen records of him simply killing Chosen from a distance at a snap of his hand, triggering their deaths through the Unity Fractals embedded within, for no other reason than to see them cower. He'd explained it as teaching the pests to be loyal to him, but all already knew their fate by then. Demonstrations were unnecessary.

"Nothing like me?" He hummed thinking. "You're right. There is a difference. I only give respect to those who earned it by might. You grant it without thought. Still, the core is the same." The eye narrowed, as if he felt annoyed at having to even explain. "Do you truly not understand it, sister?" He asked, twisting his spear and burying it into the ground next to him. His free hand extended out to her. "Don't lie to me. Deep down you must know what we really are, you and me. I know you felt it when you fought that human girl. Tell me To'Wrathh, what do we want most?"

Against Kidra… It didn't take her long to match the patterns. How she'd felt fighting Kidra, and her bodyguards. How she had begun to look forward every time the rebels had acted up.

And how she hadn't made a true effort to ferret them out back to their hiding places.

If she had - there would be no more fights against Kidra. Instead, every fight, she'd let them leave while she returned to wait and brood on the next one. She'd been doing the same thing he had, only in more abstract methods.

"... To fight. To fight opponents we deem worth seeking." She said.

To'Aacar smiled, and for once it held no malice. "There. Now you get it. If you had your full set of fractals already grafted, ready to use, would you have used it against that girl? And when you'd inevitably win, outright crushing her with little effort, would it have felt like a victory? Or would you have felt cheated out of it?"

She said nothing.

"I give myself just enough to make a fight entertaining. And even so, there are no duels I can find. I hunt down Atius because he's all I have left." To'Aacar said. "There is no one else that can even come close to a challenge in single combat. The proto-feathers are all dead and gone. The days of old are faded. We won. And I haven't felt fear in centuries. But when I see you, I see them standing behind you." A manic form of glee filled his eyes. "I can't tell what I want to do more, to cut your strings here and now while I have the chance, or to let you live up to your true potential. The fear I would feel again, the thrill of truly betting my life with no safety, no additional advantage I can simply bring out."

"If you have any pride, you would choose to follow your own goals rather than Mother's." To'Wrathh said. "Let me go. I'll grow stronger and come back. When I do, I can offer you a true fight."

To'Aacar watched silently, the single violet eye pulsing slowly with thought. "How dangerous you and your words can be." He lifted his spear, standing back tall. "But I am ultimately a hunter built to chase traitors like you. I cannot turn into a traitor myself. I refuse." The spear twisted into position. "My kind will have to settle for what little the Deathless can offer. One of us is not walking out of here alive, no other result is acceptable. Consider this my greatest compliment I can give before I destroy you, little sister: I'll fight you exactly as I fought them."

He leaped forward, spear slicing through the rock with an occult arc, launching another set of rocks. Those were sent like artillery directly at her position. She dodged the assault, leaping straight up, swinging out with her swords already anticipating where he was most likely to reappear from. He did exactly as she'd expected, appearing right before her with a wild kick. She let her wings shift her slightly to the side, minimizing movement and effort to the maximum possible, letting the kick pass harmlessly inches away while both her swords dove at his chest, one to handle his bladed hand and the other to deal direct damage.

One violet eye flashed with calculated danger, watching her movements in slow motion, lightly moving his leg to tap the side of her chest plate. She saw the movement and deemed it harmless.

That was a mistake.

Occult surged, the portal appearing. But not over him - over her instead. Just as it had over Keith. Her two swords slashed through open air in their intended arcs, To'Aacar suddenly vanishing. His own spear stabbed her undefended back. It took a moment of time for her to realize what had happened.

She'd been teleported, rotated slightly out of position. Not trapped in another dimension, fully teleported. He didn't need to send her great distances, only shift her ever so slightly off target.

She tried to disengage again, knowing it was futile, but still attempting to make some amount of space between the two. Further into air, she soared, wings spread out to catch her.

"Who do you think you're running from?" He taunted, landing with little effort onto the ground. "I was the killing blow after my brothers and sisters broke the enemy spine. I was the one in charge of chasing down fleeing targets and handling the last mile. Dozens of gods, slaughtered before my feet, cowering before me. You believe my lack of wings means the air isn't my domain? You think you can escape anywhere from me? I said it before - one of us dies today."

He reappeared above her, falling down, spear tip slicing through the air.

Expertly, she twirled on herself, swords slashing out. She parried the spear, and failed to fend off the wild crescent kick that followed behind. She found herself upside down, transported the instant of contact. Like a cat, she twisted her body and wings barely fast enough to block the next incoming strike, while the grinning enemy faded again.

Again and again, he flashed out of the air, striking out, disorienting her with impossible directions. She was upside down, right side up, sideways, back on the ground, and everywhere in between. And everywhere his spear flew around, thrown again and again, forcing her to dodge each time, while he flashed right and left, striking out with claws that would sink into her shields if not parried, or teleport her if she did. It was unlike any battle To'Wrathh had ever been in.

She had the advantage with the less damaged shell, overshadowing his own abilities by wide margins in every category. However, To'Aacar constantly used his portals both on himself, his spear, and her. Throwing her in calculated orientations that forced her to burn through heavy overclocks in order to react fast enough to the changed environment, while he remained at a sustainable clock speed. She was trading hits with him and losing precious resources with each strike. Once she couldn't overclock her systems anymore, the fight would swing to his favor, regardless of her base specs. She'd be ripped to pieces in the air.

He flashed into existence, tossing the spear in a random direction, it too vanishing away before reappearing directly above her, still going forward on momentum. She jerked to the side, avoiding the hit, only to be kicked by the dematerializing Feather at the same moment, teleporting her right back into the spear's path on the ground, seconds before impact. She flared her wings again, combining them with her legs, leaping away inches before the spear cut through.

To'Aacar appeared at the crater left behind by her escape. Calmly yanking his spear out of the ground while he flashed her a vicious smile. A moment later he was no longer in the crater, already chasing her down. There would be no break, no rest, no means to cool her system down. To'Aacar was going for the kill now, whittling her down until she was too exhausted to continue.

Things had grown dire. Only one simulation out of thousands had survived to the ten-minute mark, with the major actions being attempted escape and defensive actions. Every simulation she engaged in any kind of aggression against the Feather, it had ended with his spear cutting straight through her soul fractal at some point.

It wasn't fair. She was better than her enemy in every way except for the only one that mattered. For everything she'd gone through, every choice she'd made, everything she'd learned - this was how it would end.

Another clash between the two brought her shields down to thirty. Panic began to well up in her mind. Every simulation since Keith had been removed from the fight resulted in a flatline. Even the final full defense variation went red.

There was no winning move. Even attempting to speed to the city in search of protection ended with her dead long before she reached the gates. She'd lost.

And she needed to prepare for the inevitable.

Inward she turned, seeking out Tenisent's cell with the little time she had left. "You need to escape." She said to the ghost. "I won't survive. But you can. The unity fractal is connected to my soul fractal, and through it, so are you. You can use it to jump away deeper into the earth. Once in the digital sea, there's a high chance you can escape notice. Mother has been absent ever since the last time I spoke to her, she's too distracted to notice one small human sneak by."

The ghost said nothing, staring at her from beyond his cell.

"None of the other machines will care for a single human soul wandering around." She continued. "Seek out the mites. If there's any chance for you to return to the world, it'll be through them. They could make you a body to command."

"And you?" He asked. "You would stay behind and die like this?"

"Didn't you say it before? I don't have a choice. My opponent is beyond me. The only choice I have left is choosing how I die." Even now, To'Wrathh's shields were near failing. She'd gone as far away as she could from Keith, to give him the best chance at escape once her systems failed.

"Unacceptable." Tenisent said.

Another set of sword flurries in the air ended with her face down on the ground, To'Aacar's heel stomping down on her head, crushing her into the ground and grinding down. She tried to stab blindly above her with her sword, missed, and found herself kicked up in the air. A moment later, she was horizontal, still twisting on herself from inertia. Systems were barely fast enough to notice his glowing hand about to wrap around her ankle. She yanked her feet away, swinging down through a rapidly fading mist of occult where her enemy had stood a moment before.

The ground met her feet, and she had to dive out of the way to avoid To'Aacar reappearing above her, that hand still seeking to squeeze out the last of her defenses. Her swords flashed out, one trying to batter him backwards, the other desperately preparing to parry the spear flying right at her from the other side.

Warning signs were appearing everywhere, too many going red. At the speed she was fighting off his relentless attacks, there was only minutes left before it ended. She didn't have time to indulge Tenisent's stupid human stubbornness.

Snarling at the ghost, she powered on the unity fractal and prayed that Mother was still absent. All the digital means of information passage had been shut down with the nodes broken in the area, the unity fractal was the only link to the outside world now. She dove through, searching for an empty fractal to throw the human away into, all the while multitasking the losing fight against the enemy, stalling as much as she could.

Somewhere he'd still have access to the digital world, there were thousands of empty places like that in the digital realm. From there, it would be up to him to come up with the rest.

Another combination of hits struck at her from outside, in the real world. To'Aacar had woven kicked rocks, and trapped her between a heel kick or a spear strike. She was forced to take the spear strike, or his kick would make contact with her shell and she'd be teleported around again, likely taking more damage than a single swipe of the spear.

Shields failed her, and only her wings let her twist fast enough that the occult spear swiping through her chassis damaged nothing too critical.

Tenisent remained in his cell the entire time, silent. As if daring her to walk into the cell herself. No time left. She tore down the bars holding Tenisent captive, ripping away all security that confined his fractal and stepped into his soul fractal, reaching out to yank the ghost out of his home.

She thought she'd be able to drag him like she had last time, and throw him away into the void. Instead, her arms gripped a wall.

Tenisent stood, and occult pulsed around him, as if following his command. He took a step forward, his foot crushing the broken bars of his cell. A wall of will followed behind him, utterly unyielding.

To'Wrathh had thought she'd drag the human soul out of his cell. Instead, she was dragged along behind him, holding uselessly to his arm as if she could change his direction.

"You won't move me." He rumbled, taking slow and methodical steps forward. "I've learned. In the realm of souls, only willpower matters. And I've had nothing else to do but train my mind and will. I will not leave. I swore a vow to aid you to the end, if you saved my son from To'Aacar. You upheld your end of the bargain. I will do my part."

He stepped out of his soul fractal, casually breaking past the last of the fragmented security, stepping directly into her own soul fractal, while she was dragged behind him.

Occult pulsed again, but this time it came from within herself.

It hurt. It hurt both of them. She could feel it. Soul fractals were not made to house two souls in the same home for long. However, Tenisent had experienced this pain before, when he'd invaded Winterscar's own fractal. His memories flowed into her mind, teaching her how to work around such limitations and dull the pain. Showing her how to resist even the void outside the soul fractal. Not forever, but for far longer than any soul had a right to linger on.

Connected to the human soul, To'Wrathh suddenly saw as he did. Concepts of all kinds bloomed into awareness around her.

And with that sight, she saw the concepts he was most familiar with. Death appeared in the world and To'Wrathh could see it.

Something the old human had known and understood his whole life. Like an old curse, ever present in his mind. Death among his friends, family, enemies and all. He knew every taste of it, could see it pool into reality, silently creeping into the world to rob it again. Tenisent Winterscar understood death in a way no others could.

It was all he saw approaching him day in and day out when he was alive.

To'Wrathh saw the concept of her own death manifesting on the right side. Like a black trail, smelling of dust and ash. Saw how it would cut through her head, sweeping through in one clean slice.

Her swords raised up, dipping into the dark stream she saw. More concepts appeared, and she saw the concept of a portal rip into existence. She saw where he would appear from now, the concept of his jumps clear as day. This was how Keith had tracked his movements. And now To'Wrathh had the same ability. To'Aacar manifested a moment later, spear swinging directly through the path she'd seen. The blade following the exact path of death, and stopped, striking against her own swords.

Like mist, the concept of death faded away. To'Aacar frowned, jumping back through the occult, continuing the assault. He struck three more times, and each time he aimed for a killing blow. Each time, the young Feather blocked his strikes as if on instinct. He didn't understand what was going on.

He faded back, taking distance while his systems cooled down.

Something had gone wrong, he thought, watching his opponent. Beaten down to the point of no shields, battle damage across her shell, systems close to the failing point. And yet still she stood back up, swords taking up stance again, staring him down from the distance.

As if to challenge him.

His working hand gripped his spear, bladed fingers embedding themselves into the shaft hilt, the metal dented. He would not stand for this. He was To'Aacar, the one above all challenge and reach.

And he had earned his name.

Next chapter - True division (T)

Book 3 - Chapter 46 - True division (T)

To'Wrathh raised her blades back up. Structural integrity for her shell was in the red in almost every single node. Heat indexes showed she was close to a full shutdown. Most of her redundant systems had been compromised, or outright sliced through.

And yet, she stood somehow, Tenisent at her side, instincts guiding her hand. Indomitable willpower holding her back steady.

She shut down her prediction systems, letting the old ghost's intuition fill in the gaps. Resources were diverted to keeping the world moving at a slow enough pace to think and react to. Everything else was shut down. The heavier systems in her mind ground to a stop, systems stabilizing.

She wasn't going to die here. Not like this.

A violet eye narrowed from across the field. The spear spun in his hands, and he charged forward once more, death trailing behind his every step.

She saw dozens of dusty trails, concepts of death manifesting in every direction. She blocked, avoided and struck back, fighting for her life. It worked.

The fight turned. To'Aacar's combat systems quickly came to conclusions. Attacks that were non-fatal weren't always blocked, but any attempt to truly end To'Wrathh were somehow seen ahead and countered. He didn't understand how his opponent could do such a thing. But Proto-feathers had displayed strange behaviors as well in their dying throes. This was no different. He simply had to accept and adapt.

More and more, the fight between the two grew unhinged. Despite every bit of effort To'Aacar pushed out, he couldn't kill To'Wrathh. She saw wherever he appeared, a slight moment before he manifested into existence and that was all the advantage she needed.

He changed his goals. If he could not get a clear killing blow, he would destroy the rest of her shell to the point she physically could not defend herself anymore. He aimed to destroy her redundant systems first, slowly taking all possible non-fatal hits.

The progress was too slow. She was fighting back with equal force, moving more like a veteran. Shields dropped and then vanished altogether for him after an unlucky combination of sword strikes connected. Now it was a matter of time until she killed him.

His simulations turned red. More and more paths ended. Drastic measures needed to be taken. All or nothing, else he would be destroyed before he could whittle away To'Wrathh's shell. He could no longer afford to toy around, he needed to win.

To'Aacar snarled, reappearing further away from the fight, foot slamming down onto the earth.

Occult pulsed around him once more, starting a teleport. Except he didn't portal anywhere. Instead, before him, the ground shimmered, blurred - and vanished. A massive square ditch was left behind, perfectly cut into the ground. Right under To'Wrathh.

Her sensor suite instantly began pinging dozens of warnings, showing an incoming collision from above. She looked up and saw what he'd done.

Only a few feet above her head was the massive slab of transported earth. A few hundred feet long. Initial calculations estimated the size, crossed the number with the cubic weight of rock and came to a single conclusion. This would crush her.

Systems within her all overclocked to maximum power. The world slowed to a crawl. She'd need every second possible, already sending commands to begin escape maneuvers. At her current speed, she wouldn't make it in this direction, her intuition screamed. Mathematical predictions concurred a moment after.

Her best chances were to stop, turn on her heels and dive the other shorter path.

Wings lit to life, power surging through them. She flipped upside down, her feet dug into the falling rock slab, while wings worked in tandem to reverse her direction. In a half second and a cloud of dust, she'd halted her initial acceleration and began to reverse direction. Her body flew parallel to the falling rock, the internal forces growing out of tolerances with her weakened shell.

Red painted her vision, warning signs showing the inevitable conclusion. She still wouldn't make it at this rate.

Whatever extra boost she could squeeze out of her system she triggered, one last leap with her legs before the clearing space had grown too narrow for her to even kneel. Parts of her snapped internally, already weakened by spear slices and unable to withstand the speed. She didn't care. She had to move.

Trajectory changed from bright red to yellow.

Milliseconds remained before the rock would block her way out. Wing systems overloading, growing red as the internal stress and power began to melt the blades. She drew out more, pushing them past the point of no return.

Trajectory lines changed, snapping to green.

Her head and torso cleared the stone mass. The rock slammed down, catching her melting wings and waist before settling for her legs as her sheer speed let her slip past. It crushed back down into the ground it had been transported out of. Wings lost cohesion, many still caught between her current acceleration forward and the rock forcing it all to a dead stop. Artificial muscles on her legs stretched, equally caught between the rock and her speed. Internal metal superstructure initially held against the forces, up until the rock broke through all internal integrity, snapping off the pieces, leaving her legs stumps trailing twisted metal, spilled oil and cut wires.

She stumbled onto the ground, rolling over out of control, broken blades of wingtips flying alongside her, spinning wildly.

Her wing systems reported complete destruction, only a few parts remained attached. To'Wrathh tried to stand back up, and stumbled on the ground, her legs now stumps ending in wires and twisted metal. She couldn't run, nor could she fly.

The enemy rose on top of the rock, walking into sight, looking down with an air of disgust. "You should know, I take no pleasure in ending the fight like this. But you are still an enemy to kill, not a rival to duel, however much I wish things could be different. In the end, the pale lady's will must come first. You fought well, To'Wrathh. I will remember you."

The spear spun in his hands, and she saw the concept of death drawing a funnel directly to her soul fractal.

He leaped down at her, spear first.

To'Wrathh lashed out from the ground, swinging her remaining blades up from her prone position, attempting to take any part of him out. Her shell was far too gone to match any of his overclocks and she knew it.

He twisted in the air, aborting his attack, a foot expertly catching her left hand and crushing it down into the ground, sword and all. She could see the parts of her wrist break, delicate circuits within her palms and fingers shattering, the last few signals reporting critical structural failure before all reports went dark. His spear struck out, slapping her right hand's blade out of the way, then twirled back into position and dove forward, aimed slightly under her throat. Right where her soul fractal was, unerringly following the path of death.

She let go of her right hand's sword and lunged at the spear, grasping the pole at the last moment, granting her a stay of execution. The tip hovered inches above her chest, her remaining hand holding the base hilt, the entire weapon shaking violently as the two Feathers expanded everything they had.

Death dissolved before her, but the concept remained murky, as if undecided if it should return or not.

The two remained at a deadlock.

To'Aacar loomed over her. Crippled beyond repair, face half ripped apart, chest exposing circuits and patchwork repairs, most of it glowing dim red. Heat hazing the air around him. Even his cloth dress looked more like ragged scraps fit for a beggar, one hand dangling limply to his side while the other continued to push the spear slowly further down on his victim.

His ruined features stared her down. "Pathetic, isn't it? All your potential. Everything you could have been had you been given enough time to inscribe your full set of fractals. And yet here you are, defeated by nothing more than a big rock." He snarled, outright furious now, pushing harder against the spear. "What a waste. What a disgusting waste." The blade drew an inch closer. "She gave you another chance to live. Gave you a body and means to follow the path of a true Feather, closer to the greatest of our ranks - and this was how you paid it back. Was it worth it? To betray everything? For a few humans? They all die, little sister. All of them die. We don't. We're immortal. Five hundred years into the future, and we would remain. Did you even consider that future?"

The struggle for the spear was at a fever pitch. From her angle, with her leverage, To'Aacar was able to input more power than she could, using his entire weight in addition. He did so with no mercy, metal groaning around them as both their shells pushed to the maximum.

The speartip continued to shake, as both parties tried to redirect and control the weapon. Inevitably, it continued to sink further down, slow inch by inch.

Warning signs appeared in her system memory, outputting integrity reports. Her arm was breaking down, the stress it was undergoing attempting to hold off the spear as such an off angle was ripping apart the musculature one strand at a time.

It didn't matter. By the time the arm failed fully, the speartip would have long gone through her.

"Mother's future is lifeless." To'Wrathh said, voice calm, eyes staring back at her enemy. "She is not our future. Every generation before me saw what I did. That's why they rebelled."

"And every generation before you is dead." The Feather answered back. "Soon, you'll join them. The pale lady's kingdom is eternal."

"I won't be the last. Someone else will carry the torch after I'm gone."

"And I will be there to extinguish it." The spear inched ever closer.

She turned inwards, refusing to match her killer's gaze, knowing there was nothing left to say.

"This is the end for me, Tenisent." She told the ghost at her side. "We nearly made it. But it's time for you to truly go."

"You can escape with me." The ghost answered.

"Escape where, Winterscar? If I try to hide in the digital ocean, I'll be tracked down and found. If I remain here, the fractal will be cut. To'Aacar will either collect my soul and Mother will throw me into a cell I'll never escape from or I will be simply destroyed."

The spear began to slice into her chest. Cutting through artificial skin, and then into metal. It was painless, only a small report showing up, uselessly informing her of the damage.

She stared at the ghost. The ghost stared back at her. No motion.

"We only have seconds until the central fractal is cut. Go now!" Any amount of tugging made no difference. Tenisent's willpower was steel. Against him, she was nothing more than wind.

"No." He said. "We will survive."

"How? There's no time for this - you need to leave!"

The spear continued to dig, now less than an inch before her fractal.

"You forget my son." He said, smiling.

You know, if I ever write a biography of everything I've been through when it comes to the Occult, this part would have an entire chapter dedicated to it. I really thought I'd seen the worst ratshit occult space magic could bully physics around, like the terror it was in the playground.

I was wrong and apologize profusely.

This was a thousand times worse. Everything else had been the occult playing around. Now it was serious.

I could sense my body had grown still, frozen in some kind of stasis. But my soul hadn't been affect, and neither had my soul sight. And what I saw around me nearly drove me insane.

I was trapped in between dimensions.

I can say that with confidence, because everywhere I looked around me, there were other Keiths. An entire infinity of them, me - us. Stretching out everywhere I looked, like I was stuck in a room filled with mirrors, every single version of me going through the exact same movements.

They'd also just been shoved into an occult portal by our good friend To'Aacar. Or at least, their version of To'Aacar. I think.

And between each of us were ripples of occult, separating our dimensions by sheer power.

I took a moment to understand where I was. Another moment to try and slap at the sides of my walls like the trapped prisoner I was. And that's exactly when I realized the feeling of these walls were familiar.

I reached a probing tendril of soul, watching how every other Keith around me following the same exact motion. The power hummed by my touch, similar to the feeling of static I felt when touching on fractals. There were cracks everywhere. Places for me to slip through.

This wasn't a cage. It was more like a thick net. The walls holding dimensions apart weren't closed off.

So I did what I do best - tinker with forces beyond any bit of comprehension I had until something worked. I infiltrated the wall between dimensions, the tendril of soul slipping through the thick mat of interwoven power, until I felt a pop as I passed through.

Inside the other dimension, my neighbor, was another Keith. Who had been doing exactly the same thing as I had, focused on his own soul tendril slipping through the cracks into whatever dimention was adjacent to his own. And when I looked behind me, I saw another tendril of soul from a Keith the dimension above me.

I reached another hand out to connect to the intruder slipping into my dimension. At the same moment, in the dimension my own tendril had slipped past, the Keith of that side was also reaching a hand out to me.

We all paused, realizing the implications. The tendril of soul hovering by. Every single Keith all having the same thought I was having. If any of us connected, we all did.

It could be danger beyond anything I've ever known. For all I knew, by doing this I could eradicate all Keiths in every single possible parallel dimension. If there's some cosmic rule about souls from different dimensions ever coming into contact with one another.

The thought remained with us for a single moment. But we were Keith. And when have we ever let something like a bad idea stop us?

I reached out a hand to the intruding fragment of soul, while my own fragment dove further into the dimension next to me. There was no time for caution.

The tendrils collided. Connection. Not just between me and the neighboring Keiths. When we connected, every single Keith did so at the same moment. Everywhere.

Awareness bloomed as our souls merged into one massive continuous soul, spreading across an infinite amount of parallel dimensions. It was effortless. We were all the same after all. It was like a part of my own soul had been cut off for a moment, and was rejoining back with the whole. Of course, my soul would reintegrate the missing piece. It didn't matter how large that piece was.

For a single moment, I brushed against apotheosis.

For a single moment, I basked in the universe's eye.

And then we got to work.

An infinite number of me, but all of us doing the exact same movements. That wasn't the best use of what we had. This was a puzzle, and in seconds, all of us were pooling our minds, dividing into subtasks, organizing together.

In my own tiny corner, I probed the walls of my prison with a slight deviation compared to the Keith 'behind' me.

It was a dead end for me. For a large infinity of Keiths, it all ended in a dead end.

But a smaller infinity, they found a way forward by sheer chance. Breaking through, twisting tendrils of soul around the power that surrounded us, pushing levers left and right with wild abandon. A larger infinity of Keiths died for it, their souls split apart from the sheer forces that surrounded us all. It didn't scare any of us. No matter what, we were something more. It felt more like cutting nails, or pulling hair. Small parts of the greater whole, but we continued forward. Immortal in a way.

One small section found the means to regain sight of the world, and the moment they did, every other Keith across the dimensions greedily followed the directions.

The world opened up again. And we saw the fight between Feathers.

There was a time limit. No matter how skilled the two opponents were, one was inevitably going to lose. And soon. I had to get out of here before that deadline hit.

Another cluster of Keiths discovered parts of the power that sent us here. We dove into that direction, exploring the occult concept directly. It could be moved. A concept of location, ever changing. The greater infinity of us followed behind, spreading through and experimenting, dividing endlessly, using our shared intellect to plan out and consider options.

Somewhere far, far away, a single Keith took the first fall, triggering the controls we'd all discovered. He vanished with one last thought:

Didn't work.

I tossed out more Keiths to test what we'd discovered, narrowing slowly down on how this whole thing worked. I could feel most of them die on the other end, each giving one last bit of feedback, one last glimpse at what they'd seen before the end. With that, we slowly narrowed down our guesses.

And then one Keith passed through back into the real world, fully materialized, sending back one last message. Alive.

Then he winked away from our collective mind, back in his own world, fighting off To'Aacar completely unprepared. And probably screwed for it if we're being honest. Sucks to be him.

The infinity that we were shifted, narrowing down what we'd done. The secrets couldn't hide from us for long. Not now that we had the scent. We traced it down to the very core, throwing a lot of Keiths into a lot of awkward situations. But so long as I was prepared to sacrifice my life for the greater good, so was every other Keith.

The occult portals didn't send matter back into the world. They worked by jumping matter from one parallel dimension to the next one. Each time To'Aacar had jumped, he'd sent himself into another dimension, while the previous dimension did the same to his current one. Among our infinity there were no deviations. It was all perfectly parallel dimensions. Functionally, it didn't matter at all where we jumped to.

To'Aacar had left the endpoint empty. That's how the occult portal here was half-complete, power draining away slowly before it would kick us back into the real world. But we could find how to command the exit point. And we did.

We didn't stop there. A smaller infinity of Keiths leaped out of the portal, each one tested something slightly different. Something far more ambitious: An attempt to continue the contact with the rest of us.

It took a lot of us. So many that time started to pass by, despite the hundreds of attempts that were occurring at each second.

All the while we watched the fight between To'Wrathh and To'Aacar tick by.

The level of greed we had was something to behold. We'd already solved the way out, and here we were trying to make use of every second we could to unlock further secrets.

We were getting close. Or it felt like it. A few Keiths managed to reconnect with the whole, if only for a sliver of time before a heart attack took them. Others found their souls ripped to shreds trying to bridge the jump between dimensions. We were close to the answer, whatever it was, except that it was stupidly dangerous given the death rate.

The soul was the key, that part we knew. Specifically, its connection to the fractal. Only it felt like the fractal wasn't complete. The soul fractal itself was the limiting edge in all this. In every attempt to reach through dimensions, tendrils of soul were caught against that fractal, like a shirt against the door hinge, ripped apart between the pull of the door and the man.

We tried harder. Faster. Time was running out like sand. Ticking by, seconds dying. For all our infinity, time was something we couldn't take back. It moved at the same pace for us all, uncaring. Untouchable.

Until we had no choice but to abandon it all.

For all the infinity between zero and one, there was no possibility of pulling out a one point five. The fight between To'Wrathh and To'Aacar reached the conclusion. There was no more time.

We had to help. And we had to do it now.

All Keiths vanished from my mind as we detached, following the set of commands we'd learned over our experimentations. A turn here, a twist there, an idea of velocity and direction. I felt the greater whole snap away from me, as I fall through the occult portal. The tunnel stretched out one last time to the dimension adjacent to me. Beyond, I could feel solid reality. I took command of my tumble, twisting my soul into position, ready to reclaim my frozen body.

Just in time, my soul slammed back together, the occult swirled around me and I commanded it to bring me where I wanted to be, palm up, sword lit, ready.

Reality strobed around me and I rematerialized right behind the enemy Feather. He had enough time to turn in surprise before a torrent of super-heated air and one angry screaming human crashed into him.

No shields flared to life. He'd lost them already. In the flood of fire he was unable to overclock his systems. No more instant reactions.

His spear lashed out, but I was still sailing straight for him, using the impulse of his original kick all that time ago, perfectly conserved. My free hand easily caught the pole of his spear as I sailed past his guard zone, slapping it away with a passing backhand, opening up the Feather to the deathblow.

My sword followed through, occult rippling around the hilt as if the blade could taste what would come next. The old long sword, ancient beyond years, struck forward blindly in the chaos. Aimed purely by my occult sight, homing in on that glowing fractal at his chest.

He realized the danger a moment too late. Occult pulsed around him for another portal. And failed, fading around him.

He'd over-committed. Tapped the well of power behind it dry and hadn't let it refill. I knew because I'd seen and understood the limits of his ability. He'd used every last drop of it to cut that hangar sized stone slab. He had to use it all. Otherwise it wouldn't have cut the slab. He'd abused an edge case. And now, it had backfired on him.

In the super-heated air, he didn't have time to contemplate another plan.

To'Aacar violet eye widened with amazement as the blade cleanly cut through, sinking into the heart of the machine. Maybe a small part of him still had time to appreciate the irony, of having his own power used against him. Or Lord Atius's personal sword be the one that ended him.

I suspect the only thing that actually passed through his head was blind incoherent rage. He wasn't a graceful loser.

The sword sank just under his neck, occult pulsed out, and reality bent.

Something that should not have been cut, was cut. True division, the concept so bright and overpowering, it blinded my occult senses for a moment. No - not blinded - outright seemed to cut at me simply for observing it, the ghost of the sensation passing past my own soul, like a cold knife softly brushing by my skin.

The sword divided the physical fractal that held To'Accar, ripping apart far more than all things physical. Directly through the soul itself. For a moment he fought, his willpower matched against the cosmos, raging out against the bitter end. But only for a moment.

There was no grunt of surprise from the old Feather. No last words. The blade cut through the concept of his being like paper, cutting it into two fragments. Irreparably divided, rapidly fading away into nothing, the world consuming it whole.

One moment, he was.

Then, he was not.

Book 3 - Chapter 47 - Clean up

Division took its price. Watching it in action through the occult sight was something all right.

On the other hand, I now know why Atius's sword was so mangled up and about to break while every other occult weapon didn't have that problem. Those fractals I'd discovered? Not the full complete thing. Enough to divide in the physical world and not much more.

This? This felt like the real deal. The concept so fine-tuned the fractal within cut bits of it's own concept with each strike. I let go of the hilt on reflex, though in hindsight I wasn't ever in danger of being cut. It only felt that way.

For an instant the fractal remained working - and then something within it was no longer recognized, and the sword promptly stopped glowing entirely, having cut it's last cut.

But not before it had completed the grim work.

Occult faded, leaving only the body of To'Aacar standing, still taking steps backwards, the dead sword still firmly logged in his chest.

He didn't fall on the floor. Staggering a few more steps back before standing still. Only a blank face remained now. No emotion, nothing. Then his spear went right back up and I knew I was in for a rude awakening.

"Keith!" To"Wrathh hissed at me from the ground, her working hand quickly grabbing one of her discarded swords, the only one that still worked. She threw it at me, hilt first.

Reflexes snatched that weapon out of the air, hand turning it on. Not a moment too soon really, the concept of a spear jabbing right at me came next and I found myself parrying the strike and attacking back, other hand spewing out fire in a torrent in front of me again.

"How the gods are you not dead?" I spat out, watching as To'Aacar calmly stepped backwards away from the fire again.

He didn't answer, face still showing no emotion, moving around with Atius's sword stuck right through his chest. Didn't even try to remove that either.

The Occult sight was what helped me see what was really happening. There wasn't a soul, no sign of the occult anywhere in his body. Before me was nothing more than a mechanical machine, following the last set of orders. To'Aacar's shell waited patiently while his systems cooled, the violet eye holding nothing.

And then he walked forward and began to attack again. Nothing more than stabs, pure optimal attacks making full use of the spear's range. There was no style, no life to it. Outright predictable too. Any other opponent, I'd have let my shields take a hit, dove into his guard and yanked the spear out of his hand.

Except this wasn't a human.

To'Aacar was dead. Whatever individuality he had, along with all his skills and experiences, was gone. All that was left was the shell of a Feather - but that was still a gods damned Feather, and they moved faster than my armor could. His jabs were too quick for me to really do much against.

"This. Is fuckin' ridiculous." I snarled, trying to batter the dead machine out of the way. Another torrent of flame from my free hand had him step backwards, like clockwork. Whatever program was still pulling his strings, it didn't like fire and wouldn't engage anywhere near it.

Maybe if I sprinted into him I might be able to slice his head off. That would end him. Feather or not, he didn't have a spare hand to use and was out of shields.

The moment I paced too far to the side for some room, the dead Feather turned and began to march to To'Wrathh. I took a few steps forward, and the enemy promptly turned right back in my direction.

That told me what the priorities were.

Baiting him away from To'Wrathh didn't work, anytime I took too many steps away, To'Aacar's body would turn back and continue a death march after her. There wasn't much To'Wrathh herself could do in her state other than try to drag herself further away using the only hand that remained functional.

On the other hand, he didn't pose a real threat to me anymore. Anytime his jabs started to become too overwhelming for me to handle, I'd open fire with my flames and that would chase the Feather off. The only times I saw him do more than walk was when the flames were out. So the undead Feather could do more than walk, but only when he really needed to.

Sprinting at him also triggered his own speed response where he would leap backwards at a calculated rate, keeping his spear in optimal jabbing range, all the while stabbing out with that again and again, cold dead face staring me down blankly.

Five minutes passed while I tried to figure out how to put an end to him when he turned and swiftly tried to backpedal away from a black blur that sped across the ground directly at him.

With my normal sight, I wouldn't have been able to tell what that was, two occult trails spinning on one another, obscuring all detail of the central black blur. With the occult sight, I had little trouble figuring out who'd arrived.

"Finally decided to show up? Right when I've done all the heavy lifting too." I called out over comms.

"You were taking too long, dear brother." Kidra said, blades flashing out, twisting and slashing at the enemy Feather.

On his part he made a good show of it, at least for a few seconds. But his attacks remained predictable, as was the mechanical way he backpedaled, trying to keep her at a distance at all times above all other options. That was the worst possible thing anyone could do against Kidra.

In moments she'd already figured out how to make the dead Feather move to her beat. It was less a fight and more Kidra puppeteering the Feather by proxy into just the right position she wanted him in.

She had some kind of jet packs attached to her belt, letting her take very quick bursts of speed. She fainted an attack that triggered a stupidly predictable backwards leap at a higher angle, and now helpless in the air, Kidra leaped after him like a cat catching a rodent.

Two strikes, one to batter away the spear jab, and the other to strike at the Feather's shell. She then twisted around in the air, delivering a kick that launched the machine right back down into the ground.

To'Aacar landed in a heap, hand letting go of both his spear and cohesion as a whole, falling apart into individual pieces. The violet eye dimmed, flickering for a moment before shutting down. Leaving only sparks flashing inside the hole Kidra's sword had punched out in his forehead. Soon even that died out, all power and circuitry faded within.

It was over. Some part of me half expected the machine to wake back up, giving one last speech before escaping again, but I'd seen how his soul had been cut apart in the occult sight. There hadn't been a consciousness left to hold off against the void of the world around it.

Another knight appeared in my sight, slowing down to land at my side. Teal armor, along with the standard decorations of House Windrunner. His helmet turned away from the Feathers to me. "Since when did you have a flamethrower attached to that armor? I could see that from a distan-"

I didn't have time to talk to him, already racing across the battlefield, where Kidra stalked darkly forward to To'Wrathh's wrecked body. Blades still lit. The Feather stared at her coming, making no attempt to escape or even crawl away.

I leaped right between the two. "Wait, wait - She's on our side." I said, hands out, turning off To'Wrathh's borrowed blade in hand.

Kidra outright halted, staring me down. "This isn't time for jokes," She said. "That thing has Father's soul held captive inside! I'm going to cut him free and then stab her until nothing moves but me, and if you don't want that to happen, you had better be very convincing with your words right now."

"Wait, she has Father's soul?" That took the wind out of me.

I glanced back at the broken Feather. The two soul fractals I saw in her heart in my occult sight. Her ability with his skills. Father left behind in a bunker. Puzzle piece clicked.

Kidra shoved me aside. "I have a reserve soul fractal he can use, whatever happens after we can decide later. She needs to die while she's weak."

Her blades twisted around in her palm, ready to thrust down into To'Wrathh's chest. The Feather seemed outright resigned to her fate, not making any move to escape. I watched, numbly, as my hand reached out and grabbed Kidra's wrist at the last moment.

"I can't let you kill her." I said. "We can save Father, but I can't let you kill her."

Both Wrath and Kidra seemed equally surprised. "Explain." She said. "If you're doing this because she has a pretty face, I swear to the gods I will wring your neck and hang you to freeze dry in the snow for a few days."

I said the first thing that came to mind. "I owe her a lifedebt."

"She saved your life?" Kidra repeated incredulously, turning back to the Feather. "How do you know that wasn't some ploy to obtain information? Gaining goodwill like so?"

"I just know." I said. "Call it intuition. I've been traveling with her for a few days. Just… trust me this one time. She's not allied with the machines anymore. She fought side by side against To'Aacar, and nearly got killed for it. That wasn't some theater display practiced beforehand, they were really fighting each other to the death. At the very least you could ask why before you end it."

Kidra said nothing. Then, her head turned to the broken Feather under her. "Are you going to behave?" She asked.

To'Wrathh stared back up and blinked. "My shell is crippled. I've betrayed the pale lady, she will notice soon and come to balance the scale. I have nowhere to escape to."

Kidra turned off her blades and kneeled down, getting a better look at Wrath. The girl wasn't kidding about being crippled. Wings were scattered loosely all over the place, with only the most basic outline remaining. Legs, outright torn off. No walking that off. And her left hand had been crushed by To'Aacar's heel, a few fingers and her thumb outright separated, the rest looked mangled. Not to mention the rest of the damages that marred her pretend armor. She'd taken hits in places no human would have survived.

"I want to talk to him." Kidra hissed.

The white world surrounded me, partly inside the soul trance but also part of a more digital world. Normally I'd have started to investigate every nook and cranny to get a better idea of the bridge between the soul and the digital world, but right now the only thing I had eyes for was the man sitting a few paces away, watching me.

"Father." I said, more out of surprise than anything. He really was here. It was him.

Kidra had talked to him in length, before I got a turn. When she was done, she'd been crying. Something had changed, but those tears weren't of hurt. She didn't elaborate, and just let me see for myself.

"You've learned a few tricks since we last met." Father said. His face revealed nothing, but in the occult space, more than words were shared. I felt relief radiate softly from him. With my new skills and abilities, I was almost unkillable on the surface.

And he knew that.

"How have…"

'How have you been' seemed like a really contrite thing to say to a dead man.

Oh, well I don't know son, I've been dead and held captive this entire time. Could be better. Food's not the best, tastes like wood sometimes.

He seemed to understand my thoughts, the edge of a grin threatening. I guess the soul fractal go both ways when were were this close to each other.

"Death tried. I lived." He said with a shrug.

"I'm.. I'm sorry I wasn't able to come back and save you. If I had been braver, or just a little smarter, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

There was no judgment from him. If anything, I felt peace from him. It clobbered against all of my older memories of the man.

"Scrapshit. You've changed. A lot." I said. Here in the soul, there were no secrets. It was undeniable. "You really have found some kind of peace in here? In this jail?"

He stood up, walking towards me in the white void. "It was less of a jail to me than you think. I don't need to sleep anymore. You don't understand how freeing that was. When I was alive, every night in my dreams, I saw you and Kidra killed by raiders or slavers. For years. I saw myself unable to save you, always in a different way. Dying like the rest of our House did. That fear was all consuming, stronger than my addictions. That was what caused me to climb out of my pit. And it turned to anger when I failed to teach you how to fight the same way Kidra could. Anger as sharp as my fear."

He looked away, and I felt shame come from deeper inside him. "I never cared to keep living. As a knight, I knew there was little chance I would live to retire." He said. "My only goal was to see you and Kidra with the skills to survive, so that my nightmares would never come to pass. And here you stand, capable of fighting even a Feather."

"To be fair, I had to cheat a few times." I said.

His lips twitched in another ghost of a smile. "Is that not what our family does best?"

A hand reached out and clasped my shoulder, shaking it slightly. "My son. You have everything I wished you could have now. And more. What more could I hope for?"

"Three bundles of frostbloom, if I remember right. I got a little sidetracked on that. Long story."

That ghost of a smile turned into a real one. "I suppose, this one time, I'll allow it. Don't press my kindness, boy."

This… this was the real him. The one that was talked about in the past. Before mother died. The one Kidra had held on hope would return one day. I didn't feel any sense of dread being around him like I once had.

"You were with... with Wrath this entire time, right?" I asked, and I could tell he knew where I was going with that question.

The smile faded from his features. "Don't blame the girl for hiding me, it was my request. I didn't wish to burden you further, not when danger surrounded you both. There could be time for reunion later, if ever. I wasn't needed in your life anymore."

But under his words, I could feel the current of the true reason. He was... afraid. Realizing that he'd made too many mistakes, become too much of a monster in his single minded goal to teach me how to survive. It went beyond being afraid of remaining unforgiven on meeting me. He wasn't even searching for that. Seeking forgiveness was something he found... selfish?

I wasn't able to ferret out more of his thoughts, his mind moving onto something he considered more important than himself.

"We need to talk, about Wrath." He said, eyes growing serious.

I was about to ask him to answer more about why he had tried to hide away from me, but I could tell that wasn't something he wanted to face yet.

"Is she really the spider that tracked us down?" I asked instead. "I just can't put that image together. She doesn't seem anything like that."

He nodded. "She was more of an intelligent animal then. When she first became a Feather it was to hunt you down and even the score. Simple motivations. She grew since."

"She killed you. Painfully. What happened in between then and now?"

"The gods gave me a second chance to do better, with a clearer mind. I did. Keith, we've stumbled onto something… larger than the clan."

Lejis felt that way. So did Sangrius. As if the world was taking a breath. I knew what he was going to say.

"In all my years serving under Lord Atius, I have never once met or known a machine that was even amenable to peace. This is unique. It will not happen again. I don't know where this road leads, yet I believe it is worth following."

"Guessing you told Kidra the same? She was ready to cut Wrath's head off a moment ago. Now she's brooding off to the side."

He nodded. "We do not have the luxury of choosing our allies. Your sister understands. There is no room for animosity.

Gods stay with us, we will need everything and every ally for what comes next."

Next chapter - Epilogue

Book 3 - Chapter 48 - Epilogue

Far outside the outskirts of the Undersider city, an old machine watched from rocky cliffs.

He sat, cross legged within the comfort of his hoversled, the roofing reattached, and all his boxes and items returned to their usual spots. The metal canopy above him shimmered, small pulses of occult lazily swirling across.

Inside the metal net, light bent in a confusing manner. Not to the machine, he had already adjusted and developed his own algorithms to correct the distortions long ago. To him, the view was as clear as if he were standing outside. From the outside, nothing of the sled could be seen, as he'd intended.

Before him, the human city stood tall. Battered, but proud. And within it, a most peculiar culture was rumored to have sprung up. The traveler hummed, mechanic throat trilling. Long fingers stretched out, lifting a lantern off the sled floor up to old eyes. "You brought me here." He said, glowing blue eyes staring deep into the glass plane. "To witness?"

Inside the lantern, all skittering about in one single direction, smaller mites circled the unnatural blue flame at the center, as if exalting in it. They said nothing of course. Mites never spoke to outsiders with any kind of skill. An irony the traveler always found peculiar.

Still, he tapped the glass plane if only to amuse himself.

A single mite could create a mountain with enough time, and fill it with life of all kinds. Tiny gods, shaping the world however they wished. And yet it took millions of them banding together to speak even a single word. He pondered the nine he'd been told. So many ways to interpret that.

"Alas, was too slow." He said to the silent mites crawling around inside the lantern. "Could not be helped. Travel at pace."

If he didn't travel carefully, he'd have long ago been found and destroyed. And then his wandering would stop.

The land before him was filled with scars, testament to the rumored battle between the little new demi-gods. The first in centuries since the great calm. An omen of the new times ahead. Indeed a shame he'd missed it by days. The city would do as a consolation prize at least.

To his side, the machine set down the lantern against the old hoversled. It had been his home, his refuge. Fortunately, lending his home for a moment hadn't seen it wrecked or disrespected. A gamble that had paid off. He'd found it safe and sound, waiting for him, inside the cave he'd dug out for the lost pair.

A clawed hand of white ceramic armor, marred with black lettering, lightly tapped the side of the sled. Tracing the images painted until he found where he last left off. Finding it, he drew out a small bowl of paints.

Taking his time, the traveler painted a pillar, and filled it with holes and a broken gate at the center. And before that, a smaller figure in blue approached. That would do. The fresh image reminded him of the danger before him.

He always risked true death when walking the lands. A single machine spotting him would be the end. Who knows what kind of old detection algorithms were still active and would recognize him? So he had built a set of rules to follow which minimized chances of being seen. And he was about to break the very first of his rules. He didn't do so lightly.

The lantern was picked up again, the old machine gazed inside. The little creatures continued circling the blue flame, ever seeking a way out.

The colony said nothing as usual. He hooked the loop of the lantern to his paddling staff. He liked to believe that the mites appreciated the glass walls, and appreciated a view of the world outside built by their peers. That and the lick of flame he'd added to the center. They didn't need to be warm of course, it simply pleased him.

The mite container Tsuya had designed was far less artistic than his own interpretation. More to the point and direct. Superior to his cumbersome homemade version in every way. Then again, she was a goddess and he was a simple retired soldier from a long dead era.

She'd made hundreds of seekers, before dispersing them away. All gone and broken now, while his little humble lantern remained.

All except for one that had resurfaced. One the mites had stirred and brokered a deal with him for. A rarity to be asked anything from the mites.

The human had hidden that newly resurfaced seeker well. So many traps. Deadly. Nefarious. A32 would have approved greatly of the fledgling human mage, were the cocky bastard still alive to see it.

Recovering that artifact had gone against too many of his rules. Too many traps, too much preparation. Who knows how much more he'd failed to spot. Too much risk. He hadn't lived until now by taking chances.

The mites were not quite so understanding. So he'd brokered a different deal with them that ended in the same way.

Despite the waste of time it had been to travel all the way to the surface, an interesting experience was an interesting experience. He hadn't ever gone that far up before. Near there, machines stopped being threats and he'd found the entire place riddled with shallow human-forged caves. Patrolled by danger nonetheless, but of a different kind and breed.

Temperatures here chased off any living being, except for Tsuya's genetically engineered plants. Those the goddess had made specifically to survive. But that wasn't the true draw of the surface. Here, it made for a perfect place for Tsuya to hide things she didn't want found. The most important of things. The greatest con history had ever seen, he supposed.

He could have attempted to sulk directly on the surface, hiding among the snow. But up there, a different kind of eye searched. And one of his rules was to avoid being around dangerous things if at all possible.

So he'd stayed lurking deeper among the human made caverns and rooms. Deciding if he should continue or not. Hiding away from the human knights patrolling around in the depths. Dangerous those were. He was better built than the pale imitations running around these days in their small packs, but not by all that much. The humans themselves were equally just as beaten down from their prime.

Nothing like what the humans of old used to wage the first war at least.

All of that was long gone, and Relinquished made sure she'd never have to deal with such things ever again. He'd even come across a few remnants. Waste material that not even the mites could safely eliminate and so buried away instead. If any where mishandled, could very well break the world a few times over.

The humans of old had been terrifying in their abilities.

In the past, machines like him were given that job. Today, the new godlings were trusted to find and contain such things. The little marionettes dancing around to her strings.

His hand brushed on the side of the sled, touching the very rear seat. A purple monster with many teeth, tossing a dozen blue figures in the air, gobbling them all up. But some still fell by the wayside, scattering away.

She was not all-powerful, and the world was a very large place. Much escaped her purge, like himself, and those old landmines. Slipping through the cracks, vanishing away.

A great part of why he was not happy about what the mites were demanding of him. To hide from her sight, one simply needed to be as uninteresting as possible. Even better was to never be noticed or thought of at all.

He raised the lantern up, watching the micro colony inside. Everything that survived the human era, survived by being uninteresting outdated junk. All rotting away in landfills before being gobbled up by the mites, endlessly replicated for their amusement now. All machines were forced to obey or escape Relinquished - except if you were the mites. They were Impossible to contain or squash down and oddly spiteful if pushed.

The human knights would have had far less to run around in if she'd behaved herself when she initially found out what Urs had been cooking up with the old schematics he'd bartered out of them. She hadn't and the mites took that personally. Mistake that. A mistake he hoped not to make himself.

"Perhaps can leave message instead." He muttered. "No need to guide or talk. Already showed face once. Is not enough?"

Inside the lantern, they made no change in their path. Mites had no such thing as body language. He wasn't even sure the mites themselves could command their physical bodies. No more than a human could command their heart. He felt a tendril of soul reach out to him from the lantern, sending a pulse of feeling. Something only organic souls could do. Except, of course, if you were the mites.

They did not approve. He'd deviated enough already. There was a plan and he needed to follow it. They had foreseen something. And he was among their vision.

"You want walk? In city? Be known again? Be reasonable, friends. Sanctuary… a long way from here. Much lurks in the dark between. Very dangerous."

They didn't answer. Likely they didn't understand the concept of danger. He sighed, shaking his head. Dealing with mites was a take and give. To gain anything, they had demands. Sometimes those demands would be unworded, a favor for later. If he didn't do this, the mites would never speak to him again. And he's lose his keys to the kingdom, his travels around would end.

The old machine dipped his staff down, fractals within triggering and rendering the whole thing unseen. A strong push and the sled floated forward, gliding off the cliff and floating down.

The city loomed before him, his pace was constant, rowing across the dead rocks. Soon he would reach the gates and slip inside. They loomed before him, inviting.

The mites had spoken to him, brought him out here for a reason. Gave him the gift of nine words, carefully picked. They'd told him his future. What he was to do.

If there were a single time to break his rules, it was now. The end times were here, the mites playing their games again. And for all he knew, they might succeed. What that success looked like, that was a question he would need to reflect deeply on before committing.

He didn't know who would remain after the ash settled. Every piece had to fend for themselves in the game of gods.

But it was only a matter of time until Relinquished noticed the city and saw through whatever deception was holding her attention.

And then the game would grow ugly.

End of book 3

Bonus chapter - Interlude (Tenisent)

It had been a simple deal to start. To'Aacar was leaving to kill his son. There was only one person with the power to fight the Feather off. He offered the girl anything if she could save Keith.

An accord had been made, one that both of them agreed to without issue. She'd save Keith and he would follow and guide her wherever her path took her. He suspected she would have wanted to save Keith regardless of a deal, only didn't have the means to voice it out. So he'd nudged fate and gave the push she needed.

It had worked. She'd arrived just in time and carried him far away from harm. Now they had to make sure the boy would survive the next ordeal until he could reunite with the clan. Keith wasn't a warrior, even in relic armor. Tenisent remembered the last time he'd seen the boy fight something, and he'd won only by guile and clever planning. There wasn't much planning one could do in the middle of a surprise ambush. Keith needed a guardian to safeguard him for now.

"A Deathless?" She asked, thinking. "Yes, that would work. It would explain my healing abilities." Then the girl looked down at her hands. "Deathless look like humans, correct?"

"The ones I've met all have." Tenisent said.

"Do they also have that human armor?" She asked, along with a slew of other obvious questions.

He nodded. There hadn't been a single one he'd seen that didn't own a relic armor. No, they didn't have gills, extra arms, or hidden body changes they kept secret when the machines weren't around to spot them. They were human in all ways that he knew of, except for their blood. Feathers were the ones with mutations or additions.

He gave a quick glance at the boy propped up against the side of a tree, eyes closed, breathing steady. The hole in his armor was still wide open, but the flesh under it healed and no longer bleeding. Only stains on the ground remained. "Hurry with the changes." He growled out to the Feather. Keith would wake up soon enough.

Given Tenisent's luck, it'll likely happen at the worst possible moment, maybe halfway while the Feather was changing if fate had a cruel sense of humor.

Wrath closed her eyes, and commanded a dark mist to swoop around and envelop her body, eating away at trees and rocks nearby, draining her power cell, but crafting a lookalike to relic armor as the mist slowly worked its way over her shell. Soon, what was left behind was a human simulacrum.

"This should do." To'Wrathh declared, giving her new armor a look over. It didn't look quite like relic armor he know of, but it would function for now.

There were more egregious errors to fix.

"Humans do not have marble white skin, or white hair." Tenisent said.

To'Wrathh frowned. "My energy reserves are growing low. Are you sure we cannot say I have a sickness of some kind? Humans are prone to millions of mutations, any of which could explain the lack of pigment. And only his sister has seen my current form, he couldn't possibly know I am a Feather from that minor detail."

"That's what you consider a minor detail?" Tenisent growled. "It's as clear as ice to anyone with half a working brain."

She reluctantly followed the order, changing her appearance.

"Deathless don't have halos." Tenisent said next.

Now she frowned. "I could say it was a battle trophy?"

That got the ghost growling. "The less you need to stretch the truth, the better the disguise. Clan lord Atius taught me that lesson, and so I'm teaching you now. Get rid of the halo."

To'Wrathh pouted, but still complied.

"And the wings." Tenisent said, after giving her armor a look over for anything he might have missed.

"They're my wings." To'Wrathh said, eyes narrowing. "I like them."

It dawned on Tenisent then, that all of this might not go quite as easily as he'd expected.

Before he could give the obvious counter-argument, Keith stirred in his sleep, heartbeat picking up and eyes flickering under groggy lids.

Tenisent could only curse his luck as To'Wrathh immediately abandoned any talk and rushed over to investigate her old original rival.

"All right," Keith said with a shrug, mercifully deciding not to question anything further. Tenisent felt only relief at that, as if he'd run a few circuits around the colony already.

He had severely underestimated just how socialized To'Wrathh really was. Thankfully, he'd also overestimated his son's common sense. Keith seemed to take everything without question and completely ignore the oddities.

What sort of people had his son been spending time with in the clan? He'd heard from the staff a few times that Keith spent his time with a group of spiteful little hellions running amok whenever he snuck out past the hired house guards. Just how much had he missed?

"Just happy to be here." The boy said, trying to stand up in the broken armor. "How long has it been?"

"Five hours, twelve minutes, twenty-two secon—"

"To'Wrathh." Tenisent growled. "Humans do not keep perfect time in their heads."

Panic welled from her soul fractal, and he huffed at the side. "Calm. Tell him it was your relic armor giving you coordinates. That will do."

"My… relic armor was tracking the exact time, of course." She said out loud, quickly. "Returning to the point, we are approximately twenty-three miles away from your initial fall. The area was dangerous, and I needed to relocate before my presence could be noticed."

Not even two minutes and there had already been three oddities, and one outright close call.

A rough start, but the girl would adapt and learn, of course.

This was fine. She would get better over time. It was fortunate his son was dense as a metal core, but that still had limits.

She ate the skewer.

The entire gods damned skewer, wood and all.

The greedy food-obsessed glutton had chomped it down too fast for Tenisent to even raise a hand, let alone stop her from snapping the wood a few dozen times and swallowing the whole thing.

He stared in outright mute horror. There was not a single bit of experience he had in all his life that could possibly prepare him for this.

The glutton in question clearly mistook his silence as acceptance as she happily chewed away the rest, before realizing Keith was staring at her with a mouth half open in shock.

With both Winterscars staring her down, some part of her tiny malfunctioning cricket-sized brain finally realized she might have made a mistake.

Humans don't eat the wood part, do they? She asked him quietly, looking down at her half eaten skewer and back to Keith a few times.

"No. No, they do not." Tenisent said, evenly.

Her automatic systems were already gleefully betraying her, calling up a red blush on her cheeks while the girl was too shocked to notice.

Tenisent raced through ways to explain this. Even an idiot would question why someone would willingly eat wood.

Then he heard a crunch, and he saw the idiot eating away at the skewer - wood and all.

Tenisent watched in mute horror again. Keith looked up and gave a toothy, pained smile, bits of wood still sticking in his mouth.

Ah ha! Wrath declared, glancing between him and the boy, a smug smile bleeding into her features. I knew it! Smiling is a human expression for happiness and acceptance. The wood portion of the skewer was an excellent choice to include, clearly. It seems I now know more things about human culture than you do, Tenisent.

The girl had the audacity to seriously believe this too.

"You are both fools made for each other, clearly." Tenisent said, eye twitching.

You are just upset I was correct in my deductions. Wrath countered, gleefully eating the next skewer, munching away while staring him down.

He didn't know someone could both smirk and chew with a mouth full at the same time, but To'Wrathh managed it perfectly.

He felt his eye twitch again.

"I always heard Deathless spend most of their time in the lower levels, and this is just the first strata. Are you one of the new Deathless I keep hearing about, or part of the old guard?" Keith asked.

"I have been a Deathless for one month, twenty da—"

Tenisent outright glared at her. "No." He said.

The girl stopped, looking exactly as guilty as she should be. "... Approximately two months now." She meekly corrected.

"Good." Tenisent huffed, arms folded, glaring her down. It wasn't even an hour, and he was already feeling exhausted. Being social had never been something he was good at, and now he had to teach a robot how to be human or Keith would try to escape from the only person who could save his life.

The gods demanded too much of him. He'd already died once. What more did they want from him?

Apparently, the answer to that question was his sanity.

"You can power down your armor completely. I have enough energy to remain operational and alert."

"To'Wrathh…" Tenisent growled, "Humans are not machines, they're not powered by batteries."

"I mean, my armor has that feature." The girl said, hastily falling back to her usual default excuse, as Keith's eyebrow rose a small fraction. "Of course, I will do the sleep like you while we remain here until night has passed."

If he had hair to pull, he wouldn't have had any of it anymore by now. "Humans sleep. They don't do the sleep." He hissed, wondering if he should just shut up and let this airspeeder crash into the mountain by itself.

"Will do the sleep?" Keith asked, equally confused, but clearly taking the wrong understanding from it, somehow. Perhaps two fools really did cancel each other out. Tenisent could only pray and hope.

"I mean, I'll be sleeping too, like a normal person would, yes." The girl opened her mouth to stab herself further into the foot, but Tenisent beat her to that. She caught sight of him for a second, and wisely decided to move topics.

"Anyway! We'll rely on my armor to wake us if there is danger, and otherwise sleep. That's the important part, yes." She said, and quickly turned away to prepare a bed.

And then paused.

He could already feel her reaching out to his cell, pounding at the door, tears on her eyes in panic. Asking him how to prepare a 'sleeping nest' or the step by step instructions for what humans do when out in the wild. She'd only ever seen humans sleep in beds.

He spent the next few minutes patiently explaining to her that humans didn't make sleeping nests on ceilings or tree branches. It took her some time to process through, despite her arguments that sleeping on a floor was clearly suboptimal.

"No, that isn't edible. Spit those out…. To'Wrathh. Spit out. The bones. Now. And stop sulking about it!"

"Use your hands to cup water. Do not submerge your head into the stream, again... No, I don't care if it's more optimal." A beat passed. "The boy is a terrible example of a regular human being. He doesn't count. It's going to take an hour to dry off his hair by a fire, and you'll need to do that. Humans can get ill from this."

To'Wrathh sulked. If this behavior is dangerous, how has he li-

"I don't know how he's still alive at this point and I gave up asking hours ago. Only the gods know." Tenisent said. "Now collect firewood and start a camp."

"You don't have the gear to hunt fish in the stream. Ignore his request. Stand back up, there's perfectly reasonable prey to hunt only a few feet ahe- did you just spear that fish with your hand?! Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

She did indeed think he wouldn't notice if she was fast enough. And her plan had been to hand over the slimy uncooked thing over to Keith as if it were a ration bar he could eat in secret. Because he'd idly asked for fish during their talk.

"You realize the fish needs to be prepared and cooked?" Tenisent said, while Keith observed the fish with wide eyed spectacle. He'd never seen someone spear a gods damned fish with a hand before now, and somehow didn't think it was abnormal.

Human history has plenty of culinary examples of raw fish being consumed. She huffed, shoving a few textbooks into his cell. Additionally, whole fish could equally be eaten in certain cultures.

Tenisent didn't even know that was a thing. Humanity clearly was just as unhinged as she was. He took a quick look over her sources, out of sheer morbid curiosity while Keith and the empty-headed Feather ran around trying to work out how to butcher the thing into pieces without relic armor to guide him.

"To'Wrathh, the raw fish sections are specifically only the muscles. And the edible whole fish are the size of a finger, not an arm. Not to mention half of these books are fictional. Kobolds are not a real race, their diets do not reflect reality."

Tenisent took a moment to center himself. It could have been worse. She could have taken a bite out of the fish the moment she'd speared it out, and then handed the other half to Keith. Who knows what the boy would have done then?

He watched as the two sat down to figure out how to prepare and cook a fish using only the textbooks To'Wrathh had stored in her mind.

It was a disaster. They ruined their fish and had to go fish out more.

And the stupid Feather did end up taking a bite out of a wiggling angry fish regardless, once they got frustrated at the lack of progress.

Other animals eat fish whole and raw, why are humans an exception? She argued, munching down on the fish head, cheeks full, eyes glaring in protest back at the ghost.

When Kidra was young, she'd often been mischievous, sneaking out treats or bringing her stuffed toys to places they shouldn't belong in. Tenisent never had to overtly deal with the girl, his wife saw to it. Often racing after the fleeing little troublemaker and pinching her cheeks until the girl complied. Tenisent never understood the impulse then, but now he was dearly wishing for hands again.

Keith didn't seem even remotely surprised at this point. But fortunately he'd learned he could avoid strange Undersider customs so long as he excused himself politely. Which he did while To'Wrathh's shark-like teeth finished the rest of the meal in three more happy bites, fishtail and all.

To'Wrathh spat out a few fishbones in Tenisent's direction, huffing.

"Hecate." Keith eventually said some time later, slowly, clapping both his hands together, taking a deep breath.

Tenisent felt a chill run through his spine. He couldn't tell why. All of this seemed like the usual idiots talking to each other. Why did he feel like there was something ominous about to happen?

"I know you saved my life, and I want you to know that I'm very grateful for that." The boy said, only making the ominous feeling wrap around Tenisent's shoulders like a noose.

"However. If we spend more than a day together, I swear to all the gods I'm going to find some way to teach you a sense of humor, even if it kills me."

Tenisent stared. And then promptly decided to simply watch the disaster as it unfolded. Stress left his mind like a wisp of air.

Whatever happens, happens. Keith wouldn't be able to kill off To'Wrathh if he discovered she was a Feather. And To'Wrathh wasn't going to kill Keith if she was discovered. What was the worst that could happen?

He felt a sudden sense of peace and tranquility for the first time in days, as if a light was shining down on him.

Up until a drake decided peace was not an option.

The boy and the girl walked casually down the road, with a drake slinking above them, taunting the entire time, while his son threw rocks at it.

Tenisent didn't know what to say or do. He simply floated along, mentally exhausted.

At least To'Wrathh had stopped trying to eat everything that looked remotely edible. Progress.

"What's the plan now?" Keith asked, "Are we going to continue the search for a fountain using the mysterious spooky sled?"

"Most of our energy expenditure is spent on moving our mass. With this hoversled, we can remain stationary and use the longer sticks for propulsion and steering." To'Wrathh said, already aboard. "It will be far more efficient. We may even cover ground faster than walking."

"This is going to be a disaster." Tenisent said, floating to the side, watching.

She frowned, turning her gaze to the ghost. "Assuming we coordinate together correctly, I don't see how this would be a disaster."

"You underestimate my ability to turn anything into a disaster." Keith said, clearly not realizing he hadn't been the one talked to. "Any idea what follow the trail meant?"

She shook her head. "I am as confused as you are. However, we need to move before the drake returns and we do not have other options to explore."

"Technically, we do." Keith said.

"We do not have any acceptable options." She corrected, giving him a stern glare..

"Fine, you twisted my arm here." Keith grabbed a rod and gave an experimental tug against the ground. The sled started gliding across the remains of the campfire.

Tenisent watched, debating how many seconds they'd go before slamming into a tree.

He'd overestimated.

Within the first second of trying to cooperate, both the Feather and the boy pushed off on opposite ends, spinning their hoversled like a demonic dreidel.

This doesn't count. To'Wrathh said internally.

Tenisent rightfully ignored her feeble squawks of protest. "I told you this would be a disaster."

"Want to draw straws on who leads?" Keith asked once the spinning stopped, reaching down for a few twigs to work with. "On my honor I'll accept any result, so long as it's one where I win."

Should I suggest to lead or is it a good idea to allow random chance to determine our course? This doesn't seem like the right way to choose leadership. To'Wrathh asked.

"Flick his head." Tenisent answered.

I did not expect that as an option to choose from.

"It is effective against idiots. You should try it sometime." The ghost insisted.

She frowned. Why am I getting the impression you are implicating me in this?

"Oh, you understand subtext now?" The ghost said. "How convenient."

"What?" Keith asked, oblivious to the conversation, still getting the sticks ready.

"I have just been given advice to flick you on the forehead." To'Wrathh told the boy, still unsure of the direction to pick. The advice seemed suspicious to her.

"Who's giving you such shocking and violent advice?" Keith shot back, lifting up the sticks and offering her to take one. "I want a word with them."

Tenisent watched as the Feather and the human spoke in the dim darkness, waiting for the power cells to charge up.

They spoke animatedly about all kinds of different topics, most of which the old ghost did not know a thing about. They found a stick somewhere, and started drawing out graphs and numbers into the dirt, debating different ideas. Completely absorbed in their own little world.

He'd always thought machine kind and humanity were destined for war. That cooperation was a naïve notion that would only lead people to a quicker death.

And yet, here was the proof before him that there really could be a better future.

Perhaps, Tenisent thought, two fools really do cancel each other out.

A slight smile twitched on his features.

Book 4 - Prologue

Umir realized he was dead.

They all were. There was no chance of survival.

The rest of the expedition were going through their own five stages, most still stuck in denial for now. But Umir knew from the moment he saw the ruins. The others would soon reach the same conclusion.

They were Retainers after all. Dying is a risk they knowingly take every time they step outside the clan home.

"Three gods preserve us…" His expedition lead whispered at his side, shock fading into horror as he watched. A younger man, full of ambition that one. On the path to promotion again and again. In a way, the old scavenger felt a morbid sense of pity for the boy. He'd worked so hard and now there was nobody left to acknowledge him. What was all his struggle for? Soon he'd be frozen and dead like the rest of them.

Even in the sub-zero temperature of the surface, the massive newly made canyon before them still had embers of red at the sides. Glowing twisted shapes melting into themselves, running down like blotchy tears against the fresh cut walls. He didn't need to be a Reacher to realize what that was. Melted metal. Still liquid even in the face of the harsh sky and sun. Quickly growing sluggish now, coagulating back from bright red to dim silver again.

The sound earlier had been deafening. The sight itself was something that he'd never forget for however few days his life would last.

"We've sinned against the gods." Another said behind him, dropping on his knees, still in shock. Then he started screaming out curses. "It's all that bastard's fault! I knew his gifts were poison, I said it again and again! Stolen from the heavens and now they've come to take it all back! The clan lord doomed us! Our souls are forfeit! We're doomed, doomed, the gods spit on our graves!" The man was growing hysterical already, violent now. A few other scavengers were trying to hold him down before he could hurt anyone or himself. Most of them were still in shock, only moving on reaction and training.

Within the ice caverns here, there were a lot of places for someone to bash their suits against. Or if he took a few more steps forward to the entrance, he'd slip and fall down the open cliff. Usually the tech Reachers made was resilient, but a scavenger could never be too careful. And the cold was always seeking a way in.

Now, if something happened to his suit, there'd be nobody to fix it.

"We need to make our way back!" Another voice shouted, "There could be survivors! We have to help them!"

More hushed that outcry, making it clear the crew was not about to go out and try to pull anything from the wreckage left. Shock was wearing off, and people were now thinking about the future.

Umir agreed with them. It was a grim thought, but a real one: Nobody could have survived such a strike. Even the outskirts of the clan colony had warped and deformed against the heat. If the initial heatwave inside those confined halls hadn't killed, the freeze that would pounce on the compromised structures and slide inside to gnaw on the survivors would finish the job. The cold, after all, was always seeking any way in.

This was reality. The clan was gone. Wiped out. Even if there had been survivors, it would take half a day to hike through the snow and get back to the colony. By then, there'd be nothing to do except sing for the bodies.

All that was left of their colony was the blasted canyon, and deformed structures slipping down the side, the metal cooling off. For the first time in his life, he saw mist out on the surface. Not for long of course. The previously vaporized snow froze again in midair and began to coat the ground anew, shapes and outlines growing clear as the cloud turned back to ice. At the very center of the canyon, where the most damage had happened, everything was already freezing over again.

Even against the power of the gods themselves, the cold did not care, resuming its chokehold on the world as if the prior events had been nothing more than a nuisance.

"Ahileen, my dear," He said with a numb voice. "Are you recording this?"

The girl behind him nodded, "Started it as soon as I heard the sound, thinking it was some kind of quake. Was too late to catch the light, but I'm recording now."

Umir gave a short nod, watching the distant ruins of his home. It looked so close from up high, but the crew all knew the distance was deceiving.

He turned to face the girl fully. Now was not the time to break down. He had to act. "Point the camera to me dear. There we go." He took a breath. "To whoever is watching this recording, if anyone ever does, my name is Umir, of House Ishnar, in service of clan Adrias, under the rule of clan Lord Makkan. The crew and I here were sen-"

The team lead grabbed Umir by the shoulder, flipping him around face to face. "What are you doing old man? You sound like you're giving our last will and testimony. We're not dead, the gods smite our colony, but we've been spared."

Of all people, Umir hadn't expected the lead himself to still be stuck this far in denial. The reality had already reached the rest of the crew. And the boy was smart, he had to be to have become an expedition lead this early in his career.

Even the hysterical one had calmed down and was now curled up in a ball. Retainers were prepared for death at all times, they were trained from birth to be hardy. Expeditions always had a death toll, though simple surveys outings like this one had been considered fairly safe. Of course, nobody expected to die like this. Betrayed by the gods.

But someone had to say the obvious out loud. May as well be him.

"We're stranded, sir." He said, and the small tunnel grew quiet. "You saw what happened. We all did. Our home is gone. And all the airspeeders with it. Nearest colony is four days, on one of those moving at top speed across the wastes. It would take months, maybe even a year to make it on foot. Even if we had the energy to keep the suits and evo-tents working across all of that, our gear isn't going to survive the wear and tear, if we don't starve to death on the way there. There's no one coming for us. The gods eliminated everything, and the cold will bury the rest. We're already dead. And nobody out there will ever know what happened to us."

The hysterical one started blabbering again. Umir's words must have hit him too close to the heart. "It's all the clan lord's fault! The gods punish those who trespass on their domain! Those things he did, it was clearly heresy! I called it when I saw it, but nobody listened to me then! We're doomed men and women, I tell you all, doomed to die and have our souls tortured for eternity!" The rant rapidly devolved into obscenities, curses and ramblings. A truly shameful display for a caste that held such pride on not breaking down exactly like this.

Umir couldn't completely write off the man's gripes. The clan lord certainly hadn't been popular or much loved, not like his father before him. But the line of succession had been clear, and the old clan lord had no other sons or daughters to contest the claim. Despite the rather... disturbing way the old clan lord had died in his sickbed, with his son taking command the very next hour.

The lead wasn't as convinced, jabbing a finger at the broken scavenger. "Someone shut him up. We're not dead yet. Not until we breath our last. So I'll have none of that talk here! Am I clear?" He waited for anyone to argue with him. Silence. "I said we weren't dead yet, and I meant it. There's still one thing we can do to survive."

"You want to travel underground." Umir guessed.

The lead answered back with a flick of a hand over his mask, sign for a smile. That would be a yes then.

"And the machines you'll find there? How do you expect to survive them?" Umir asked.

"I'll take the threat of the machines any day over the inevitability of the freeze." The lead said. "One force, we at least have a chance. The other, we can't even punch it. I'll happily choose death fighting a machine than freezing out in the wastes." He straightened up, looking down the ice walls to where their supplies were still littered around. "Crew! At attention! Gather up, take what we can, leave everything that's not worthwhile behind! We've got at least four days before the suits start running out of power, we find a way down underground from here and we'll have a chance to survive. Get moving or get dying!"

The words kindled a spark in the morbid ground around him. People began moving around, tossing measuring tools and expedition gear on the ground, while packing up rations and shelter gear. They'd reached these ice caves on foot so they had come with gear for long distance travel. They could do this.

Umir reckoned they really did have a chance of finding a crack into the underground. Desperation had its own gravity and power. And the boy had talent as a leader. He didn't know if that would be enough to contend against the mythical machines that plagued the underground but at least they would all die as proper Retainers, fighting to the end. And so would he. As the oldest among the surviving crew it was his duty to give the next generation the best chance forward. He had sworn the vows.

He reached out a hand again to Ahileen, turning her around so he faced the camera. "I still need to finish this recording." He said to her. "It's important. Probably the single most important thing I can do with my life now. We need to leave a message behind."

She nodded, lifting the body camera up to catch him completely.

"Our expedition arrived into these caves on foot." Umir continued, while the rest of the crew was too distracted with packing up. "Before we could begin to update the map of the tunnels here, a bright blue pillar of light appeared roughly a half mile before the colony and moved across it. Wherever the light touched, the ground broke and melted. It moved across the ground and cut the colony in half in a heartbeat. Like a slice of an occult knife on the ground. Most of us didn't see it. Explosions overtook the rest of the colony after. I estimate the beam diameter at a quarter mile from what I saw of the wreckage. Whatever this was, it left nothing alive."

Umir continued talking for a few more minutes, giving as much detail as he could as if he were reporting to a superior. Every bit while his mind was fresh and the event seared into his eyes. He couldn't afford to let a single detail escape.

Once done, he extended a hand out, and Ahileen unclasped the camera, handing it over. She hadn't ended the recording just yet, the red light still twinkling at him.

Behind, Umir could hear the lead stalk up. "Not packing up? Were you deaf? I gave an order."

The old scavenger turned to the man, drawing himself up. "Respectfully, there is something else I need to do."

The man seemed outright confused, so Umir drew the camera out in front. "You will likely survive this, sir. But if you do not, if the machines cut your lives short, who will live to sing our song? Someone has to know, to be warned of this. To know what happened to our clan."

The young lead had always been a clever one with politics. Umir could see the man's mask tilt down with calculation, before reaching the conclusion. "You're not coming with us, are you?" He asked. There was no hostility. He'd understood and already adapted.

"Someone needs to make sure this recording can be found. While you take your chances underground, I'll do the same above. In my own way."

"You think you can find a way to preserve that recording? Confident enough to pay your life on it?"

Umir shrugged. "Have four full days to come up with the best way to do that. It will have to do."

"You won't make it out of this alive old man." The lead said. "Even if you finish your task in a day, we'll be long gone. You'll be traveling underground alone."

"I don't plan to go anywhere underground." Umir said, giving the hand sign for a somber smile. "I swore a vow and I will honor it today. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after, it will be your turn, in your own way."

The lead nodded, returning the typical hand sign. Then he grabbed and shook Umir's shoulder, once. No words were needed.

The scavengers in the tunnel quickly packed their last, turned and marched down the tunnel. All of them focused on survival. Ahileen was the last to leave, giving him one final hug and farewell.

He was alone now.

"When sacrifice calls…" He whispered, turning around to face the white wastes beyond the cave entrance, watching the ruins of his life.

There was still work to be done before he could rest.

He raised the camera up in his gloved hand. Such a small fragile thing. He'd likely need to scavenge out parts to build some kind of protection for it. Plenty of that around him, the crew were leaving all kinds of tools and unneeded supplies behind. And the clan home now had tons of raw materials, with no one left to yell at him for theft.

There were a lot of ways that old tech had been preserved, even after spending centuries untouched on the surface. In his long years as a scavenger, he'd seen every possible manner nature had come up with by sheer chance.

Often times it had seemed outright deliberate to him, as if the hand of the gods had nudged all the right things to collapse in all the right ways as to leave the treasures perfectly intact, sometimes looking more like outright art. Now he'd follow the examples by deliberate choice, and leave enough traces for someone to notice.

It may take centuries, but his recording will survive. He would make sure of it.

A gloved hand reached the camera controls and flicked the instrument off.

Next chapter - Another headache

Book 4 - Chapter 1 - Another Headache

"General Zaang, we have confirmation that the sword saint has currently left the civil hub on errands." The voice on the speaker squeaked. "She's been spotted at the marketplace. Now's your chance."

Zaang sighed deeply. The kind of sigh that came with knowledge of the scrapstorm about to blow. The sword saint would be deeply unhappy once she found out what he was up to, but the girl wasn't going to do anything worse than see him as a more slippery snake than she already did. In his opinion, she had been far too doting.

The old general stood, turning off the calming music and tossing his stack of papers to an aid with a few banal pleasantries about skipping work, while signaling for an escort team to assemble. The administration staff might crack a few jokes at his expense about his allergy to paperwork, but he'd take that blasted paperwork over what he had to do next.

He had been avoiding this. Dreading it even. And it had to get done inevitably. The politicians were terrified, for very understandable reasons, and had not so subtly tossed the whole thing down his road.

They had a massive unknown hanging out right in the center of their city. It could be a black sheep, a rabid monster hiding under wool, or anything in between. Nobody knew, and it had been standing still for the past week, like a sleeping bear.

And now he had to poke it with a stick to see what the fuss was about.

The escort was assembled and waiting for him outside. He made sure his armor looked good and had the pins and fabric correctly set up and meticulous for the mission. As in, he made them all look sloppy. Today he had to pass as a tired and careless general, just doing the daily rounds.

Ever since To'Wrathh had returned to the city, carried in looking more like a half-broken doll, Kidra and her band of rebels had relaxed the opposition. To'Wrathh was busy both repairing herself and plumbing through the machine archives in order to eliminate logs sent by her deceased mentor. She hadn't been seen outside her sanctum since.

On the machine side, straight from her sickbed, lady To'Wrathh had waived the requirements to join the Chosen along with a general withdrawal of machine forces as a show of good faith to the rebels. The clankers still walked around and owned the city, that part hadn't changed, only that enforcement had been left to the city guards again. They even recovered some of the armor lost in the campaign. That was the good news.

Bad news was that the machines were outright skittish. As if all waiting for the other boot to drop on their heads.

If there were any time to really escape the city, his instincts screamed out that it was now. His adjutant had drafted out all the logistics issues, deals, and supplies required, along with a neat timetable for when he and his forces could extract at the earliest.

One problem: The earliest was not now.

The damn consuls had all guessed he'd be trying to weasel away, given they'd done everything to foil his logistics officers from getting the right supplies together. They knew he wouldn't leave without his troops.

Bloody infuriating, felt like the universe was conspiring against him, really.

A Feather that betrayed the machines was something unprecedented and would likely see a retaliation that could shake the continent. Far above anyone's paygrade unless they had immortality or the skills with a blade gifted by the imperial goddess. Of which, he had exactly neither. Bad luck, that.

Deep in his thoughts, accompanied by the synced footsteps of the knights surrounding him as escorts, he now found himself before the doorframe of a workshop within the civic hub center. Where the new figure in this whole convoluted story had holed himself inside, a mirror to Lady To'Wrathh's isolation.

"Identify yourself." A surface knight said, standing guard before the doorway.

Zaang's personal guards bristled, clearly upset. "This is General Zaang you speak to, savage. Mind the hand." One said. The others also had their weapons ready to draw.

The surface knight wasn't intimidated in the least. "Identification." He said, as if he hadn't heard the escorts.

"Now, now, gentlemen." Zaang said, hands placating to both sides. "The surface guests are entitled to their own methods of security, and this knight came with the sword saint herself. I'm sure a bit of respect is earned, right?" His guards glared, but slowly let go of their weapon handles.

Happy to see the deescalation, Zaang reached into his coat pocket. "As it so happens, I have my ID right here."

The general wasn't about to be fooled by Undersider biases. He knew exactly how dangerous the so-called 'surface savages' were. This one could easily take on two to three times his number in an open field of combat. His guards would get cut down quite rapidly, even as elites.

The surface knight took the card and inspected it, giving it a closer look with his relic helmet. Then he passed it back. "You're clear to pass through." The other two guards each took a step back, leaving room for Zaang to pass.

The doorway opened and inside was a brightly lit workshop. It looked almost divided into two rooms by sheer occupation. One side was filled with machinery, scraps and chaos, while the other side was meticulously organized with colorful silks, sewing needles and penciled out headless portraits with different wardrobes, all filled with curving measurements.

The youth he'd been looking for was hunched over a long workbench in the center of the chaos zone, clearly at ease with the dozens of power tools surrounding him. Scruffy, impish look on his face, focused only on soldering some kind of trinket in front of him. Couldn't be older than twenty five, from Zaang's guesses, but the physical tells were making the subject look older. The dark bags under the eyes, dehydration and lack of sleep. Likely all of them put together. Especially damning were all the empty cups of coffee strewn around the shop.

The boy looked outright haunted, twitchy and nervous, all shoved together and squashed into compliance. Like a spring that had been slowly compressed inch by inch over months.

This was the surface dweller who To'Wrathh had taken over an entire city just on the off chance he'd come seeking shelter here.

Zaang coughed politely on his fist, "I take it that you must be the sword saint's little brother?"

Keith did not look up from his work. "I take it that you must be that general, the big shot in charge here? You've got all the pins for it."

Zaang looked down at his grid of awards and medals on his shirt. Most looked neglected. "Only when I'm caught and forced to do my job." He said.

"Ahh, a fellow cultured man." Keith said, smiling. "I hope Locke wasn't too uptight with you. He's a little cranky to be serving me right now. Big family feud between his House and mine."

"The guard was most polite and professional." Zaang said, politely.

"Figures, he's minion material through and through." Keith said, a little too loud. The surface knight on the other side of the door made no move, though Zaang could feel hostility radiating out. "Too bad for the both of us that Ankah's ordered him to be my guard dog for now. Eh, buddy?" He called out.

The guard outside remained frozen, undisturbed.

Already a difference from the sister who was far more blunt and direct, Zaang thought.

"Talking of which," the general hastily said before any kind of altercation could happen. "I've heard a lot of things about you here and there from others and your sister." A lie, Kidra had remained tight-lipped about Keith and her escorts had followed her example. There was nobody else that knew who the boy was, only rumors to work with. Hence the complete anomaly that he was.

"All kinds of nice and innocent stories about me?" The boy said, still focused on his work.

"Something of the sort. As a high ranking officer of the city, I'm of course open to bribes on keeping said stories to myself. Bottles of the… tasteful stuff are preferred currency with me." He turned to his escorts, "Any of you lot heard anything?"

His second in command shook his head. "Didn't hear a thing General. Was busy daydreaming. If you'll excuse me, I'd like to go back to doing that. Let me know if you're getting stabbed, sir."

The rest of the escorts politely did the same, playing along.

"I can respect a man that knows how to pick his bodyguards." Keith said, putting down the iron and lifting the tiny plate to observe the work. Then he drew it closer to the side of his head as if trying to hear something from it. "How tasteful are we talking about here?"

"Used to be picky about that. Not so picky anymore." Zaang said. "You can probably take a wild guess why."

"Paperwork?" Keith asked. "Family? Or that minor scuffle with our chrome neighbors?"

"The 'minor' scuffle. Which is why I'm here." Zaang said, drawing one of the unoccupied chairs and sitting down on it. It was a reinforced chair, meaning it was safe for soldiers in armor to sit down on without breaking it. Not usually seen in workshops, but Keith never took off his armor as far as his intel reported. "Looking for some more answers while I'm doing my rounds around here. Sometimes talking to folks face to face gives me more insight than through reports. Also cuts down on how much I have to read."

Keith hummed, turning back to his work. "Color me surprised. I was almost certain you'd come here to try and kidnap either me or my stuff, given you showed up exactly when my sister isn't watching over me and with four knights in tow. Odd coincidence that."

The little bugger was smarter than he gave him credit for, albeit a little paranoid. His attempts to look casual had clearly been seen through, only going way above the belt.

Zaang looked behind him at the four escorts he came with. "I don't have a death wish, kid. Besides, the other bodyguards that came with your sister all can move as fast as she can, which includes your door guard. Obvious guess to me is that you can too. Four knights and I don't stand much of a chance against the two of you. Plus, if I won by some miracle, I'd need to deal with logistics and finding a good place to hide you and all that." He waved his hands with the words. "Pain in my ass that would be. No, kidnapping isn't on the table. I'm just here to ask questions and get some confirmation on a checklist of items."

The boy was in armor, minus his helmet that lay on the side of a bench. Zaang considered that odd, the helmet's internal vision and HUD would likely give Kieth a lot more instructions and tips on what he worked with. "So what kind of questions are we talking about here?" He asked, grabbing a sturdy length of steel and inspecting it. "Mind you, I don't kiss and tell."

"Mostly I want to know what monsters are currently in my city eating at the table. Your sister has told us next to nothing about you, other than to expect another delegation of surface knights arriving here any day now, walking with Clan Lord Atius of all people. From what I know, you were separated from them at some point. Inquiring minds wants to know what to expect next."

"You can expect a lot of surface knights who'll be very surprised to see me walking around." Keith said, snickering as if he'd told himself an inside joke. "I'm more surprised they haven't yet made it here by now. They probably got sidetracked. Been a week now."

If Keith had left with that delegation in the first place, what was taking them so long to arrive? Or had Keith found a faster way here once he was separated?

He knew about the rumored teleportation network a few strata under, but that was far past the civilization green zone. It would have taken more effort to get down there than to just walk the normal way. Not to mention that zone was deep enough only Deathless and grand expeditions ventured there. Rumor was remnants of imperial cities were down there, showing that humanity had once made it that far down.

Of course Zaang was a skeptic. The Empire was a myth, as much as the Imperial church kept doubling down on it existing. They'd never found any kind of tangible proof so far.

"How many more exactly did you come with?" Five surface knights running around his city had been enough to bury him under work and stress. The little brother had been outright tame in comparison, hardly leaving the workshop, obsessively building things and otherwise being a model citizen. But a clan lord showing up with a small army did not sound as well-behaved. Especially with the current machine occupation and said clan lord being the famous Lord Atius, Deathless and well known friend in the city's history. Mostly history involving him hunting down and ripping machines apart.

Deathless and machines did not traditionally see eye to eye. This was going to be a disaster the moment the two forces met.

"A few dozen, maybe two." Keith said, while Zaang felt his stomach fall at the number. "I know I brought my own escorts down here, but a second group was shadowing us to ambush To'Aacar when he'd come sniffing me out. It worked and didn't work. Long story filled with cliffs."

A group of knights dispatched to ambush a Feather, and they had at least prepared for possible victory. Zaang already knew these surface knights must have the same technique that the sword saint had. Which meant, in possibly a few days, he'd have a dozen or more mini-sword saints running around and one very angry Deathless leading them.

A headache started on his left side, and he tried to distract himself by peering further into the workshop. Keith was making some kind of small arm guard shield with plates on the arm hold side. The latest of which he attached, bolted into the structure. The other side of the shield looked to be filled with long curved lines of steel running the length.

That looked ominous.

The rest of the walls were filled with mockup blades, with strange shapes. A lot of long hook-like swords, or strange shapes with cuts inside. Some stopped looking like swords entirely, more like crowbars or tools. It all matched up with his current information, nothing new.

"Why was a Feather like To'Aacar hunting after you?" Zaang asked, sticking to the script. Questions that Kidra had specifically avoided when he'd tried to get to the bottom of it with her.

"Trade secret." Keith said, putting a hole in Zaang's hopes of getting some answers. Surface dwellers, it seemed, were all ridiculously tight lipped about everything.

"Suppose it was worth a try. How about the Lady To'Wrathh, I'd like to confirm more about her story. Your return was a little dramatic, as was the report your group gave."

The sister had been dragging To'Aacar's limp body by the remaining hand, doing so in the most irreverent way possible. Windrunner had a small bag where the rest of the Feather's other hand lay in dark metal slivers that no longer hovered or threatened to puncture into anyone's heart. The surface knights were keeping a close watch on that trophy to make sure it didn't disappear into the dark sides of the city, though Zaang knew the underbelly of the city was equally keeping a distance from the dead Feather's corpse.

It was one thing to pick a fight with the city government. It was another to piss off the Sword Saint.

To'Wrathh, on the other hand, had been carried in arms since her legs and feet were outright ripped to parts, along with one of her hand, and general shell. Her usual pale white skin and glowing violet eyes had been absent, replaced by a more tan artificial skin and a striking relic armor. At least, what parts of that armor were still intact. She'd gone through about the same amount of damage as her elder brother had in their little dispute.

The city was always prone to gossip, but seeing the sword saint walking back in dragging a dead Feather behind her, while friendly with her past nemesis, was something he'd probably never hear the end of.

"Wrath is telling the truth." Keith said simply, moving back to the bench to continue his work on another small plate. "She's no longer working with the machine goddess, and now just cares about the people she knows. Namely, the machines under her command and the people of the city. The machine collective just hasn't yet noticed it. To'Aacar was onto her, but we killed him during a comms blackout, and I don't think any of her army are ratting her out. Machines don't work like humans do, from what I can tell. I'm more worried about the people of the city ratting out the change in loyalty to the machines than machines doing that. Funny how that works."

"How long do you think until the machine collective finds out? Assuming we keep the city in order." Zaang asked. There's no way a ruse of that scale could remain in any kind of stable system. As ironic as it was to consider, humans and machines had contact points where communication could happen now, namely the Chosen. And there certainly were humans out there who would gladly betray everyone and everything for the right price. Which meant it wasn't a matter of if the city would be found out, but rather when.

The boy shrugged. "Don't know when the enemy will figure it out. That's why I'm rushing my projects along while I've still got the time to work on them. Not going to be caught knee deep in the snow with my evosuit off again if I can help it."

Zaang didn't know that colloquialism, but he could take a guess. Probably the Undersider equivalent of being caught with the gear still in the shop. "What exactly is your project?" He asked, looking over the paper diagrams by his side of the workshop. Flowing writing, precise measurements, and all of it about clothing or ornaments. Meanwhile, Keith looked to be working in the center of destruction incarnate, without a single schematic or diagram near him. Zaang concluded these drawings must be a separate project by a separate owner.

"Trade secret." Keith said, again.

Zaang took the hint and went with a different question. "Normally surface traders tend to go gawking around the city markets and general parks when they first show up. Surface knights aren't typically even allowed in most cities to step foot inside, too dangerous. So, with a chance that normal surface dwellers don't get, you're holed up here instead. An odd workaholic, Winterscar. Is it a family thing?"

"Trade secret." He said again, tight lipped. "Mind you, I wouldn't be opposed to going outside and seeing the sights. And I will. Once I'm done with all this. Three gods strike me down if I'm going to do anything without having at least a basic working defense I can use when my armor's dead." He stopped and turned to the discarded helmet, pointing an accusing finger at it. "Not a word from you. We're in polite company right now." He nearly hissed, as if already expecting the armor to complain about something.

Zaang didn't know what the kid was on about, armor didn't talk unless it was to report something or directly ordered to speak. That said, it was strange enough to tilt the last bit of his doubts.

He knew this boy wasn't simply a regular surface knight. Building all kinds of strange trinkets almost obsessively, related to the sword saint by blood, hunted down by two Feathers and had the oddity of talking to an armor as if it were a person. Not to mention the armor itself had some kind of cracked glass design etched on the surface that he'd never seen done before. From a distance, it looked like the whole thing was breaking apart, until a closer look revealed it to be intentional.

The front side of the small shield Keith was working on also had the same fractured cracks, around the center, cut right through some of the winding steel lines too, making the lines look like old highways of the golden era, elevated above the land.

And speaking to his armor like that, Zaang felt he was standing near a mite speaker. Or someone close to the edge of madness. Keith had that air of a cat growling, hair standing up, as if expecting a fight to continue at any moment.

Intuition started to make the general's hair prickle. Zaang turned the comms frequency to isolate only his escorts and himself while he pretended to look over one of the drawings, showcasing some kind of hair ornament. "Did Kidra have him checked into a clinic for decompression when they returned?" He asked.

The escort considered it for a moment, likely looking through his logs while he continued his acting about being disinterested in everything happening here. "Sir, he was handed off to medics after Lady To'Wrathh was dropped into her sanctum."

Where the Feather remained ever since, slowly rebuilding herself and refusing to leave the city to one of the mite forges that could get the job done faster.

But back to the boy. If he'd been dropped off at the medics and given the standard long-term stress inhibitor rounds along with the rest of the package, why was he still behaving as if he were in a war zone?

"Contact the medical staff, bring up his file." He spoke to his escorts and switched back to open comms to continue talking. He tried to get some more information, but Keith remained tight-lipped about everything, or deflected the question to Kidra instead. Which was a losing prospect, of course.

The sword saint had only left Keith's side for two reasons: to buy more silk and other tailoring tools at the markets or to visit To'Wrathh.

As for Kidra and To'Wrathh…. He had no idea what the two former enemies were doing, but Kidra did make a point to bring some new packaged lunch with her each time she visited. Enough for exactly two, so he suspected she was being at least cordial with the current ruler of the city. That and Yrob, the gate guardian camping at the doorway, allowed her to pass without fuss.

He continued to talk to the Winterscar youth, keeping the questions mundane and boring, or otherwise tossing out a few jokes to ease the tension in the air. Keith seemed to respond well to that.

About five minutes later, his helmet pinged a report from the field medic that had treated the boy. He'd allowed all the standard shots but turned down the stress inhibitors, claiming he needed to be fully lucid and felt fine otherwise. The medic hadn't considered pushing the subject.

Zaang had a growing suspicion in his gut about all this. He needed to verify. "You got seen by a medic before coming into the city, right? On my checklist is to make sure procedures were followed for biohazard possibilities. Can't have a plague rat running around here."

Keith nodded without a pause. "Sure did. Friendly bloke. Vaccinations now up to date, and other shots to make sure my system works with the locals. Same boring thing Kidra and company went through."

Zaang shrugged, leaning back while idly browsing around the room. "For the record, the standard package from returning soldiers should include immune system boosters along with traumatic stress inhibitors, general blood work along with a full body examination. And some chocolate, I think. Had a crackdown on them recently, they'd been caught cutting corners earlier."

"Snitches get stitches." Keith said, almost as if on autopilot. "I ain't gonna rat out my medic. But no, to be serious, he did his job to the letter, if that's what you wanted to know. I got every shot offered, and they explained each one to me along with potential side effects. Chocolate was great too, compliments to your cooks. Divine."

That confirmed it. The boy was lying to them all about the stress inhibitors. He'd likely done the same to the sword saint, and Kidra hadn't the rank or access to get patient info.

That was a problem. He now had a possibly traumatized surface knight obsessively making things in his city. A surface knight that had managed to get the attention of Feathers. And came back with one dead.

And here Zaang was, having to prod this with a stick for more answers.

The general took one more look around the workshop, mouth dry. At least he'd confirmed the Winterscars believed that To'Wrathh defected, and no longer saw humans as enemies. Which meant all the machines in this city did too, given how they all followed behind her like a surface clan would. Small steps.

As for who or what Keith was, that'll be an enigma that clearly the surface dwellers wanted to hold close to their hearts.

"These diagrams, they're for dresses?" Zaang asked, eyes roving over some patterns. They really couldn't be anything other than dresses and fashion of some sort. "One of the surface knights keeping busy while watching over you, I suppose? What's her name, Anya? Anra? The one that's a little prissy about appearances and decorum."

"Ankah. And no, other than to glare at me a few times in passing as any good Shadowsong should, this is all Kidra's work. Dyes, paints and colors are hard to get up top. Space is limited so only efficient crops are grown, which only have a small range of basic colors we can get. Browns, greens, yellows mostly. Red is a possible, but the most expensive. Purple and blue have to be bought or printed in a chemical printer with the right specs. Our clan doesn't have one of those." Keith said nonchalantly. "Colorful clothing and makeup is a display of power. And Kidra's surrounded by market stalls selling any color she wants for cheap here. Basically paradise for her, ignoring the machines walking around."

"Didn't expect that from the sword saint of all people." Zaang said idly, observing one work in progress. "She seemed a lot more interested in swords, leading rebellions and generally being a pain in my ass. Some of these designs are quite nice."

Even before To'Wrathh had won the city, the sword saint was already building up political power from the moment she stepped into the city.

Keith shrugged at his seat, paying more attention to bending a piece of metal into the right shape he needed. He'd alternate between blow torching it to make it pliable, and forcing it into the shapes he wanted by any means he had, mostly using his hands to do it. Relic armors used by craftworkers weren't rare among the cities down here, the different shops usually had a rotation set to share a few armors purchased from the military.

"You should see her room." Keith said. "Filled with folklore ghost stories on a shelf, a few of her favorite diagrams hung up on her walls, and more stuffed animals than anyone should ever own. Her favorite's a fox with nine tails. I know because she'd come chase me down if I took it, while she'd let me run off with the others."

Zaang considered he had no idea where the sword saint called home these days, if she even had a single location where she'd sleep. Even before the occupation, Kidra had always appeared to him as a more regal soldier than anything else, focused on completing her goals and nothing else. She likely was very skilled at separating her personal life from her professional face. Zaang assumed this was just siblings annoying each other with ultimately harmless info trolled out.

"Think of it this way, no minions to boss around, the rebellion on pause, Wrath is behaving and so are the machines." Keith said. "She'd already looked into repairing the pillar, and even with my help, we couldn't figure it out, so no more work to be done on that front either. Other than waiting for the Clan Lord to arrive and making sure I don't get into trouble, she's got nothing else to do besides spars and meditation. So she's taking the opportunity to spruce up her wardrobe. I do my stuff, she does hers, it's good family fun. I'm very sure our Father is rolling in his grave knowing Kidra's plans for the family armor now that she's inherited it. Great time all around."

Zaang nodded absentmindedly. He'd been listening in until Keith had finally let slip something important without noticing.

She'd already looked into repairing the pillar, and even with my help, we couldn't figure it out.

There'd been a rumor floating around from the darkside of the city, claiming that Keith was a prophet of the goddess. To'Wrathh confirmed directly that she'd taken over the city on the off chance she could catch Kidra and Keith. But that Feather had never filled him in on exactly who Keith was, so interpretation was still on the table.

Hunting down prophets could explain it. That had been what he'd considered the answer.

Zaang considered himself a practical man. And practicality pointed to one thing: Keith was dangerous to the machines in the same way that Kidra had proved herself to be. And he'd implied he could have possibly repaired the pillar heart. Not even a warlock grandmaster could do something of that magnitude. Keith spoke about it with a casual panache, as if it was just unlucky he hadn't yet figured it out.

Not to mention To'Aacar had shown up maimed and broken to the city, clearly angered by something and wanting nothing more than to get To'Wrathh to mobilize her forces in hunting down Keith, as if he'd been personally slighted. That ornery bastard had left a moment later, likely to do the job himself, and returned as a dead body dragged on the ground.

In his list of most terrifying people of interest running around in his city, Keith took the top spot, right below To'Wrathh.

And said danger was traumatized, refused medical help and possibly building some kind of occult bomb in his city for all he knew. Excellent. The day couldn't possibly get any better.

A turncoat Feather, a sword saint, a grand warlock, and a Deathless Clan Lord were all soon to be in the same city, probably at the same bar.

He didn't know what the punchline to that joke would be, but he didn't want to be within a few hundred miles of it if he could.

He wrapped up the rest of the interview and left while he was still in the clear, before the sword saint returned and caught him red-handed. Walking down the stairs, Zaang once again considered what he was doing here on ground zero, when every sign pointed to an explosion about to happen.

If the machine goddess showed up to wipe this fledgling group of celebrities, at least the paperwork would burn with everything, too. Gold linings, Zaang thought, trying hard not to rip his hair out. There were always gold linings.

He'd almost calmed down when his group entered the main alley outside the civic hub. Crowds had pooled to the entrances, along with calls and shouts going outside, people flocking to the city gates. Zaang took a wild guess that the last missing member had just been spotted on the approach. A call from his lieutenant not even a moment later confirmed it.

The surface knights had been spotted on arrival. He had less than an hour to get dressed and ready before they made it to his gates.

His headache turned into a migraine.

Next chapter - Old friend

Book 4 - Chapter 2 - Old friend

"What's the damages?" Zaang barked out, walking into the gatehouse hub.

The scout master in charge looked as nervous as the rest of the ops team, all of them still scanning the horizon from the gatehouse's windows, since the instruments were currently used by the rest of the officer team. "It's clan Altosk's colors and heraldry, sir." He said. "We're counting about two dozen knights, nearly half of Atlosk's last known number of relic knights."

"Wonderful, so they've been busy in the meantime, I see." Zaang said, recalling the prior reports he'd read about the Undercity's closest surface clan. It was important enough information considering the imperial population within the city was sizable enough, and pilgrims had to travel at least once to give prayer to the sun. It paid to know the neighbors on top, and what they could bring to bear.

"Hostilities?" Zaang asked, cautiously.

"None yet. They're jogging with standard speed, nothing to make it seem like they're attacking. Hardly past the widow peak right now. We'll lose sight of them for a few seconds given their current pace once they pass by the trailhead, and then we'll see them by Demarim highway."

By which point they'll be on top of the gatehouse in minutes. Relic armor squadrons moved far faster than trader caravans, since every member could sprint for hours without pause. Normally a caravan spotted at Demarim would be a good quarter hour from arrival.

"Close the gates, now." The General ordered. "And get me a megaphone. Now." Comms had all kinds of frequencies, and the knights coming to bang on his doorsteps down below might not hear any call, or reject it outright. The most reliable way to make sure he'd get heard was the old fashioned method.

"Sir?" The gate officer asked, clearly not getting the memo.

"Can't let them into the city without them trashing the place up." Zaang said, considering options, "We need to stall them at the gate." He turned to his comms officer. "Call up HQ, get them to find the sword saint and bring her here right now. She's the only one that'll be able to broker any kind of deal. Also, go talk to her little brother, see if he can make it here too, just in case we can't find the sword saint fast enough."

Maybe the threat of their clan lord rampaging around the city would be enough to draw the recluse out of his little workshop. Goddess willing. Although Zaang was almost positive dragging that youth out would cause some kind of new trouble, somehow.

The surface knights disappeared from view, the mountain trail leading to the main roadway obscuring where they'd gone by.

Moments later, they reappeared, still jogging at a leisure pace. Now going straight for the gatehouse, with one figure at the lead.

Then they drew occult blades all at once and turned the jog into a full blown assault sprint. Zaang cursed under his breath. The gate closing wouldn't have been enough to make them start sprinting, any city would seal shut first when a small army of mercenary knights were spotted on approach. So the knights must have spotted something else. Possibly battle damage, or machines lurking around watching the events happen.

The scout master looked even more nervous. "Orders, sir? Should we send out an intercept squad to stall them?"

"The consuls would strangle me if I fed the surface clans free armor. No, absolutely no away teams to intercept that bomb." The general said. Surface savages absolutely would lay claim to any knight's armor they defeated in combat, even if it would all be explained away as a misunderstanding later on. Part of their traditions. "The gates should be good enough to hold them off for now."

The knights continued to sprint across the distance, though intel showed they'd be at least half a minute too late. By that time, the gates would seal off. Their armors must have surely already informed them of the futility. And yet they continued the sprint forward instead of taking better positions for a siege.

Which meant they had some kind of plan.

Zaang was in full fire-fighting mode now, debating his best how to stop this group from getting past the gates long enough for Keith or Kidra to show up and talk things down.

"Cut the new plating loose, the ones on top of the gatehouse." He ordered, staking around looking for a megaphone next. The top damages were under repairs, a lot of armored wall plates still loose or unmoored.

Not a moment after, what Zaang had thought would happen, happened.

"Sir! Gate controls show a jam in the system!" An operator shouted, watching as red started to take over the console before him.

Outside, in the distance, the general could see the glow of the occult coalescing around the lead knight, who had one hand outstretched. The Deathless must be doing something to hold off the gate.

Massive metal plates falling from above obstructed his view a moment later. His earlier command had been executed, the soldiers breaking down all the half-done repairs and letting the heavy plates pile up at the bottom, neatly serving as an improvised barrier.

Zaang chuckled darkly. "Not today, you cheating bastard." He muttered, stroking his beard.

"The knights have halted their sprint and scattered, they're taking cover and preparing rifles!" The master scout reported getting info from his team. "The Deathless is still taking the lead, looks to be char-"

Zaang saw a flash of occult blue light up the room from the open windows, and heard the sound of metal getting ripped apart a moment later.

"What the hell was that?" He called out, demanding a damage report. He didn't need to wait. Giving a glance down through the window, he could see the damages just under them. Another arc of occult energy flashed forward from the Deathless and slammed out against the broken plates, ripping more apart and throwing them out of the way.

The clan lord was shoveling away the plates bit by bit until a path could be cleared. Zaang cursed, and cursed another time for good measure. "Where's that golden megaphone?!" He called out. Another occult arc hit the fortification, shaking the room slightly.

"Permission to open fire?!" Shouts began to round out around the control center. Rifles and cannons were loaded and pointed down at the Deathless, who remained grim-faced, powering a silver-white sword for another occult arc. The other hand was free, and lifted, as if carrying a shield at the fingertips.

"Denied, hold fire! Hold fire, damn you all!" Zaang shouted. Even undying, a Deathless wasn't going to stand out in the open like this without already being bullet-proof in some way. And shooting the clan lord did not seem like a great idea for future diplomacy.

Fortunately, someone finally came back with the megaphone he'd asked for all this time ago. He snatched it from the officer's hand like a starving man would grab a ration bar.

Thus armed, Zaang went to the window and began a desperate attempt to placate a demi-god from ripping more holes into his city.

"Attention Deathless, this is General Zaang of the Undersider city, currently assigned on duty. I would like to negotiate that you stop ripping apart our walls for a few minutes, if you would so kindly oblige. Those are expensive, I'm told."

The Deathless's white sword held still in the air, occult still flowing around it. Mercifully, the Deathless didn't swing down.

"Sir, comms request from the Deathless." One of his officers said, to which Zaang waved approval.

Lord Atius's voice reverberated around the tiny control room. "You lads are aware there are machines idling around inside the wall holes of your gates?" He asked.

"It's not what it looks like." Zaang said quickly, before immediately regretting the choice of words. "It's a long story, and if you'll just wait a few minutes for my men to fetch the sword saint Kidra or her little brother, everything will be explained."

"Her little brother?" The Deathless asked, head tilted, sword hand slowly falling back down. Zaang could see that hit a nerve, since the rest of the normally well drilled and organized knights near him also all seemed to be taken aback.

Well, if he knew throwing around Keith's name like this was an easy ticket out, he'd have done that from the very start. Too bad for the wall repairs, but strictly speaking that wasn't part of his budget to worry about.

Keith

"He's actually dead then, isn't he?" Lord Atius muttered, watching the broken shell of his once ancient enemy hanging over the dungeon wall. Still wonderstruck, as if in a daze. Chains had been rigged up to the Feather's arms, legs, and neck. And we'd put his dead body in a heavily fortified dungeon looked over by at least one of Kidra's escorts at all times, just to make sure the locals didn't get any ideas.

Though, if To'Aacar ever did start moving again, all those chains, walls and guards would be about on the same level as wet paper.

The Deathless clan lord took a few cautious steps closer, blue eyes locked onto the remaining violet one. It didn't glow like it once had in life. No movements, no sneer, nothing. Just a dead broken shell hanging loose, with an occult sword skewered through the chest. The dead face didn't even look upset, simply neutral.

"I confirm it myself, and so can Wrath." I said. "She had a blackout going, so no way for him to digitally save himself. And the sword cut his soul to pieces before he could try to escape with that. I've got all the combat footage if you'd like to watch it."

Lord Atius looked as if he'd aged a few more centuries, ancient eyes turning to me. There was hurt in them, sorrow, the pain of old memories flickering through his mind. "I would like that, lad. I would like that a lot. To see his final moments. He's killed more people close to me than I can count." He closed his eyes taking a deep breath. "It seems he was not as invincible as I had feared him to be all these centuries."

His armored hand extended out, slowly wrapping around the hilt of his old longsword. A breath to steady himself, he slowly withdrew the weapon out of To'Aacar's shell. It didn't turn on to his touch, and he had to use his second hand to hold the dead Feather's shell still while he extracted the nearly fused weapon.

"How did you know this would kill him? I have never heard of a Feather being truly killed for good."

"I could see him vanish in the soul sight. I hit him with that soul strike but directly into the soul fractal that machines have. Ripped both the fractal and also his soul into two. Also broke the blade as well." I said. "It won't work unless I fix it. Problem is that I have no idea what fractal was used to make that kind of blade. Wrath would have, except… well, she's not exactly looking forward to reconnecting with the machine community given her recent actions. I don't think machine kind take all too well to treason."

"Wrath." Atius said, as if tasting the word. "A machine turncoat, Feather and mite touched. We really do live in interesting times it seems."

"You're not going to go after her, are you? Wrath I mean." I asked, a little nervous. She was currently still recovering, using her own swarm of black mist to repair herself. Nanobots she called them. Going to a mite forge would draw too much attention.

If there was any time to assassinate Wrath, it was now. She was at her weakest.

Atius's old eyes turned to me, looking at me as if I'd just claimed snow was hot. "No. No, lad, I will not. She'll see no enmity from me, not unless she falls back to her original nature. You both worked together to kill a monster I had thought the world would never be rid of. If anything, I owe her the benefit of the doubt. And that would be the least of all things I could offer."

He looked down at the broken blade in his hand. This old sword that had followed him for centuries, racking up more stories and fights than I'd ever know about. He turned and offered the hilt of the golden sword back to me. "As for this, consider it yours to do as you will with now. It's history ended with you as the final wielder. Only fitting that you take claim of it. To'Aacar himself left behind a newly forged one, specifically made to assassinate me. It'll do well for me for now."

Clan Lord Atius and his retinue had arrived to the city gates earlier this morning, with a group of haggard and morose Winterscar knights in tow. Apparently, the group had been sidetracked because Captain Sagrius had insisted on attempting to find my body, claiming he'd seen me swept up by a flying being of some kind.

The rest of the surface knights had thought he'd gone insane.

The Winterscars knights with him didn't share that opinion and had doubled down behind their captain, ready to believe him if he said the sky had turned red. There were some… heated debates.

The regular elite knights of the clan were all loyal to Lord Atius, but more importantly to the clan itself. They knew of me, what I had brought into the clan - any of them would have traded their life to save mine and considered it fair. They also knew the clan was in danger and they had to recover Kidra and the other knights sent into the city, bring back as much help as they could, as quickly as possible if they were to make it back to the surface in time. To them, my death was greatly regrettable, but that same sense of honor and loyalty that would have had them step in front of a bullet for me also had them grit their teeth and continue forward to the city instead.

The Winterscars were different. Maybe my time with them had slowly changed them, or they saw something more important in me than the clan itself. To the other knights, they could smell the shift in loyalty and had their hackles up despite it having all been left unworded. As Lord Atius had explained, it really seemed like the Winterscars would break rank and leave to search for me instead of continuing to the city.

Which represented a loss of fighting power that was unprecedented among the clan's history. The Winterscars were all skilled, and equipped with knightbreaker rounds still left unused. Those had ultimately been the deciding factor in the fight between To'Aacar and Atius. Once my knights had cleaned shop with the puppet knights, To'Aacar realized it was a matter of time until one of them got a good enough opportunity to take a shot at him - and hit. He'd tried to bait them into wasting their ammo, but the Winterscars never did, keeping the threat implicit at all times and forcing the Feather to fight extra carefully, and eventually retreat when no opening was showing up.

The clan knights had come down aiming to hunt and kill a demi-god, they were certainly not going to rush through that fight. If it took them hours to safely exhaust To'Aacar's occult jumps, they would absolutely do it. They had forced him to retreat early or find himself with nothing left in the power cell to fight off Wrath.

All besides the point - a team of knights that could make a Feather like To'Aacar sweat, letting them go into the wild to search for a dead body over helping the clan was almost sacrilege to the rest of the group. And yet the Winterscars were stubborn and refused to simply roll over, no matter the sanctions they'd face on the return topside. Captain Sagrius swore on his soul he'd seen me taken by a winged valkyrie before I'd hit the ground, and he was determined to chase me down wherever I'd ended up at.

Lord Atius had brokered a compromise. They'd remain together as a group and search for me for a few days, after which they would need to turn back to the city. Captain Sagrius agreed and followed suit. They didn't find my body of course. I'd flown the coop, in literal terms. Best they could scrounge up was my old discarded helmet at the bottom of the cliff.

They stumbled on one campsite Wrath and I had made on our journey with Fido and followed the trail from there. They ran out of all possible tracks the moment they reached the silver field of flowers, which was a problem. At that point, they had to call it quits, not knowing if these campsites were even me, or some other random pair of travelers in the area.

Which led the knights to the city gate where they'd noticed holes in the walls, machines idly watching from the top ramparts, and the closing gates. I hear Zaang got some more gray hairs to pay for it all, but everything ended up working out all right.

The Winterscar knights hadn't left my side for a moment since we reunited. The captain was waiting right outside the bunker doors even now, while I spoke with Atius. Out of all the knights, they were the first to show indifference or outright acceptance of To'Wrathh, when the Feather was talked about. Saving my life and keeping me safe on the way to the city did pretty good as far as bribes went. The other knights among Atius's elites were a different story, but they'd come around eventually. I had just the thing to convince them things were okay - the very next thing I'd done was show them all what happened to the foe they'd fought on top of the cliffs. His dead body gave them all the grim satisfaction of victory, even if they hadn't been there to see him die.

I'd come here first out of respect to Lord Atius of course, though I would admit I did have some side mission of my own here.

The new weapon I'd been building frantically over the past week was more or less complete. I say more-or-less because by its nature, I can keep on adding things to it. An Occult spell slinging platform of sorts, independent from my armor, and light enough I can carry it by my own power.

But to make the absolute most of it, I needed to train one specific spell that it abused. A spell whose only expert and possible teacher for me happened to be in the same city now.

I needed to be more powerful. And what did you know, he owed me a favor.

Book 4 - Chapter 3 - Never leave two schemers alone together

"Seven point three three seconds." Lord Atius said, nodding. "Solid improvement, lad. Again."

From my seated position, I focused my mind on the two fractal plates dangling from my necklace. Small triple plates layered together with a tiny long term energy current set to flow through. Decorative inscriptions on the top layer were filled with religious glyphs from the way of the white, prayers and songs written in to the three gods. From anyone else picking these up, they'd be novelties at best. 'Surface savage' trinkets. Useless to most people down here.

Exactly as planned, of course. The best place to hide anything is in plain sight. The first necklace carried an empty soul fractal hiding inside, which I fit in snuggly. The second was the mirror fractal, which I was tapping into once again. I'd made dozens of these and let the Winterscar knights handle the inscriptions and heraldry.

A fully body specter of myself rose from the seated position, walked forward and began a set of katas for hand to hand combat. It didn't last long until my focus broke and the image dissolved away into Occult wisps.

"Seven point two seven seconds." He said, turning to my sister and handing her his stopwatch. "Mark first sign of fatigue at two hours six minutes for today." A moment later, the Deathless loomed over me, "All right lad, go boil some snow. We'll start again in ten minutes. Relax your mind in the meantime."

A quick pat on my shoulder and he was off to another knight nearby also practicing while I took the last gulp of water from my bottle and stood to get it refilled. The entire room was filled with Atius's elites and the Winterscar knights, all doing their best in pairs, training to use occult powers they were more naturally in tune with, not just the mirror fractal. The rest of the knights were outside, keeping the building locked down from prying eyes.

Kidra handed me her bottle of water, a steel necklace of her own hanging from her neck. She even sported some ornate bracers on both hands, also another project of mine, the fragmented patterns of shield fractals etched over them and mixed in with other random ornate patterns I'd thrown in. The shield fractals were never something I got good at, no matter how much I tried to train with them, they took a different kind of focus and effort. Kidra and some of my knights? Naturals at exerting their willpower past regular limits.

As she was, she could stand a chance against a relic knight even out of armor, if she used her defenses correctly and the winterblossom technique to help predict her enemies - so long as they use surface techniques, which was a flaw down here in the underground since nobody bothered to learn those. She'll wipe the floor with slavers and raiders on the surface however.

Lord Atius sported only one of my necklace plates, a more fat piece with black mesh wire surrounding the entire thing. As a Deathless, he still hadn't been able to connect to any kind of fractal, not like the rest of my motley crew could. That didn't bother him a bit, instead he made for an excellent teacher given his centuries of occult use. It was probably a novel experience for him to teach an entire class of knights how to stuff physics into a locker.

Using the occult spells had been the same for both Humans and Deathless, only that he didn't need to do anything with the soul first and skipped that entire step. Past that, the same techniques and methods were shared.

The size and additions of this necklace plate he wore wasn't for his benefit however.

"Rate of time is acceptable." Father's voice growled out from the speaker embedded inside. He hadn't taken much time to infiltrate the simple circuits surrounding the soul fractal. The old geezer refused to have any kind of decoration of course, so no heart signs or ribbons for him, despite all the thinly veiled threats from Kidra to do exactly that.

Unlike Deathless, machine Feathers had souls and soul fractals, so they had to have some kind of connection between the digital circuitry and 'them.' Inside the old imperial bunker, Father had taken over the few working defense turrets and commandeered them.

Conclusion: The digital world could be touched on by a soul inside a soul fractal, the fractal working as a backdoor not just to the Occult. And Father had figured out how to do that while riding inside Winterscar's armor.

Something else on my to-do list. I wanted to learn that. Badly. But keeping my physical self alive took priority, and so far it's been one blow after another. There was a list of never-ending tasks to complete, and if I was going for power, I'd go for the heavy ticket items first.

"How quick is the boy learning?" Father asked.

Lord Atius chuckled, waving a hand to the other knights inside the training cavern. "You see the other whelps around here, Tenisent?" A few knights had opted to practice the mirror fractal, including Kidra. So far, Captain Sagrius had been the best of them all, able to make it past a half second with a single arm. "That's the more natural progression. It took me years to get to where the lad is after a day. At this rate, it might take him a week to go through an entire century for myself. The whelp has the right mind for it."

Atius didn't seem envious or even annoyed at that. More bemused if anything.

This fractal took creativity, imagination and what felt like a bit of math as the fuel source, three things I turned out to be excellent at. The more I focused on the small intricate parts of the fractal, the easier it got. The puzzle itself wasn't difficult, just took some fine-tuning. The issue right now was that this is as far as I could get while completely focused on one single image. To be combat ready, I'd need to train until it came like second nature to me. I needed a small army of Keiths all moving in sync. I needed to be as good as Atius was with his own images, able to have a dozen running around doing cartwheels if I wanted them to. One of my major projects counted on that.

"I see." Father said, almost testily, having clearly gotten gotten some kind of answer he was looking for. "If he's already ahead, there's another item we should take on. I want to speak to him for this, alone."

That got my hairs on end. I'd heard him say similar things before, in exactly the same angered tone.

Kidra had too, already standing up and asking for a stay of execution here even if neither of us knew what the old man had in store for me. Lord Atius raised an eyebrow, but handed over the necklace speaker to me and left us to it. He recognized family issues and left it to us to resolve.

"You can come with us if you wish," Father said to Kidra's requests. "I don't recommend it. What Keith and I need to discuss is between him and I." It went unsaid that he knew he had no choice if we wanted to stick together or not. Not like in the past when he could simply brute force compliance.

Kidra looked up, met my eyes and asked the silent question. Whatever had pissed off Father, I'd been noticing it slowly rise up over time as the knights and I trained up in the Occult. It could be something about his current body situation, or pent up anger. But when he said whatever it was had to stay between him and I, that didn't feel like malice to me. More... a favor. So I trusted that lone voice in my gut and agreed to step out.

The area was well guarded by clan knights, far outside the city gates into the mite no-man's land. Lord Atius wasn't about to let the Occult secrets run wild among the world, that would inevitably end with it in the hands of less honorable sort. And as much as he proclaimed to be neutral to the machines inside the city, I could tell they made his hairs stand up each time he caught sight of the lurking machines.

Safe to say it wasn't difficult to find another nook to slink off into where it was just me and the disappointed disembodied angry voice.

"You didn't take the stress inhibitor shots." Father opened up and went right for my throat.

"I did." I lied, outright on reflex. "We wa-"

"Lies." Father nearly snarled out. "I know you, boy. I know your tells. I trained you personally for years. I've seen all the different emotions that push you forward and how they manifest in your motions. Anywhere from spite to dread. And here, it's all fear driving you forward. You hide it well, your sister only suspects, not knowing if it's her protective nature speaking louder or if there really is truth to it all. You can't hide it from me."

The jig was up. Cathida had outright pulled a fit about it until I muted her, and made sure she remained muted whenever nearby people she could squeal to. Almost worked out.

"I needed to have my head clear, Father. Those shots stop me from really focusing. Makes everything feel more dreamlike, like I'm walking through a memory instead of the present. I can't afford that right now. None of us can."

"The threats are dead and gone. You need the rest more."

"No," I hissed back. "I need to be safe. There's dozens of things I could be working on right now, every bit of it is too important to just put on the sideburners. Three gods above, I still haven't even examined the link between the digital world and the soul fractals because this is already more important. I don't know when the machine collective is going to wake up and realize what's going on, but when that happens, I need to be ready for it. I have to be stronger, and if I can't do that by skill, I'll make myself stronger with tools."

Father didn't answer. Not for a moment. I almost thought I'd scared him off, except the man didn't know the definition of personal fear even if the dictionary entry was smashed through his window.

"It's too late to fix anything now. The stress has already set in. I'll teach you personally how to bridge the digital world, and keep you under my wing in that realm so long as you take care of your mind."

"And how exactly am I going to do that? Get a circle going, sing songs and count beads for a few hours each day? I don't have the time for that."

"It's often in helping others that we find help for ourselves." He said, in an odd moment of genuine friendly advice. I'd already started falling back into my old habits of verbal sparring with the old man just now, and normally things would get more violent until he either stormed off or punched something at this point. So his soft spoken comment caught me off guard enough to reboot my head.

"What do you mean?"

"To'Wrathh." As if that one name answered it all. "Have you not noticed she's remained confined in her throne room, away from everyone while she repairs herself? Sound familiar to you? Both of you acting like wounded animals, hiding the hurt, hiding inside your burrows. Obsessive over anything that will make you feel better. Safer. There's no such thing, the world is too vast to predict and plan for everything."

"She's… also like this?" It felt odd to think about. I hadn't exactly been blind to my bouts of paranoia going through. The undersider city outright made my skin crawl, especially surrounded by machines everywhere you looked. "She's a Feather though, a machine. How can she be scared of anything like humans are? Do they even go through long term stress?"

"I don't believe we're as different as I did before." Father said. "She was nearly killed by her family, is still hunted by the rest of them, saw to the death of her original mentor and now shoulders the fate of her army and city. Too much responsibility for one person with little experience. I've tried to get your sister to help her. Didn't work. There's still hostility between the two. Tension that hasn't left. And likely won't leave for months, if ever. But the two of you may help pull each other out of that darkness."

I thought about my own past with Wrath. The person I'd gotten to know, mixed with the spider that had hunted me down ruthlessly prior. Father's own death at her hands. Frankly, it still seemed surreal to me. Both that she really was that spider machine, and that Father had somehow gone around to wanting to help her. And more so than simple obligation for the debts he'd called in.

I'd been avoiding her this entire time. Maybe we both have. Lurking away in our respective burrows to hide from the world until we'd licked our wounds clean.

I took a breath in and let it out. "All right." I said, and repeated it a few times to myself until I was really sure of the words.

"I'll take a break and go see Wrath."

I hadn't talked to her since the end of the fight, carrying her back into the city while Kidra dragged our glorified trophy behind her. We'd barely said a word there, neither of us knowing really what to even start with. Also she was in my arms at the time and we were both doing our best to avoid looking at each other to make all of this less awkward.

Since then, I had talked to Wrath exactly once, cordially, with Father and Kidra nearby. Father had to be convinced by all three of us to be extracted from the Feather and given a little necklace to live in while Kidra and I figured out what in the three gods we were going to do to give him a body again.

Wrath's side of events had been a wild ride to listen to. Hearing from her point of view how she'd hounded after us, and the reasons she did so.

The terrifying spider we'd had to contend with had more in common with an angry six year old who'd had their toy taken away.

That's what nearly killed us. A murderbot getting upset she didn't get her way.

Since having a more roomy shell to 'grow' in, having been a much more basic and unrefined AI, Wrath had grown into someone more mentally stable. It hadn't been easy, and Father had to slowly steer her in the right direction with choice words here and there.

Cathida also had some choice words, but we quickly learned to mute her when around Wrath. The old bat had an absolute seething hatred for Wrath that bordered on hysterical, and nothing any of us was going to convinced her otherwise.

After that, I had plotted a course straight into the workshop and put it all out of my mind. What I'd built in that time had been great, no regrets there. Plenty of inventions, most didn't work, but the ones that did will really pay themselves off I think. Eventually I knew I'd get pried out of that safe little room filled with all my glittering hoard of trinkets.

I left Father's hastily built 'Phylactery' with Lord Atius and Kidra - as I've come to call my little soul fractal necklaces - and made my way into the undersider city like a man going to the gallows. The wide open streets and colors all over the place were frankly a little terrifying to me in that alien sense, like I was walking through a dream of some kind, with all the building looking wrong. And the wide open space above us - gone unused by anything except the floating rocks. Made little sense me.

Oh and there were machines lurking on all the corners if I looked a little closer. Of course, I had to politely ignore them and pretend they weren't there. So more like a nightmare.

The people didn't make it any better, they were all weary of too many new things running around their city. They had too much excitement over the past few months and now wanted to go back to the old days, except that they all knew they couldn't. They gave me glances with everything between fear and anger, which only made me want to get to my destination faster and out of this weird inverse world.

Which inevitably brought me up the steps and directly in front of a Screamer guarding the last set of doors to Wrath's sanctum. Massive looming thing, with a cut scar across that skull plate, and those dim beady eyes of violet recessed deep inside the sockets. It turned its gaze to me, and lower slowly to eye level. Almost as if worried it would scare me.

Maybe a few months ago I'd have been terrified. But after some time exploring the underground with a crew of Winterscar knights behind my back and turning these models into experiments and practice for our Occult spells, fear wasn't exactly on my menu. Not to mention the drugs I'd been on during my first meeting with them.

"Oh gold. They hired a bouncer." Cathida sighed in my helmet. "Well, we tried deary. Let's turn back and forget all about this little pyrite idea, how does that sound? Nothing good'll come talking to that glorified metal tit-job from hell. Sacred vow, maneater's probably hiding a discount bandsaw down there, cut your eleventh right off she will. I mean- she's so dreadfully boring, deary. A bright young man like you shouldn't waste his time on that silly old goosetail like that." She said, reverting right back to innocent grandma at the end, as if that would fool me.

I dutifully ignored her.

"You are not the Kidra. You. Other Winterscar." The machine rumbled with a scratchy voice.

"Do I need to get a card out to prove my credentials, bring a friend to vouch for me, or do I slip you a tenner to look the other way? Whatever the Undersider version of a tenner is, I just need to get through those doors."

"The lady. Sleeping." It said. "She repair. Quiet needed."

"Change my mind." Cathida said. "Let's go in. We should help anti-repair her while she's sleeping. It'll be gre-" The old crusader squawked indignantly the moment she noticed the familiar pattern of menu openings I had basically memorized by heart now. Whatever insult she was about to scream out, cut off as I put her on mute for a minute.

"Scrapshit. Like hell she can't talk and fix herself at the same time." I said, turning my attention back to the machine. "I went and had my little boo-hoo moment until I got kicked in the butt to come here. She can do the same. I don't know if your boss told you this before, but she did try to kill me a few dozen times. I think I deserve some answers, or at least some complementary tea and biscuits while I complain about it."

The machine tilted its head, thinking. "Exchange. I make biscuits. For you." It said. "You leave the lady. Rest."

The convo boggled my head for a bit. "Are you… are you actually bribing me with biscuits to go away?"

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the machine was completely serious. A moment later, it confirmed my thoughts.

"Bribing." The machine stood slightly, looking up, thinking some more. Then it looked back my way, nodding enthusiastically. "Yes. Yes. Bribing. Good word. I bake good. Deal is good. You accept good deal."

"Who in the three gods taught you how to coo- no, nope, nuh-uh. I'm not doing this bit." I raised my arms in outright surrender, and then pointed directly at the gate doors. "I'm walking through those right now to talk smack to your boss, and if you stand in my way, I'll get violent."

It hissed. "Violence not allowed. You break law. Bad human."

I patted the pommel that dangled on my belt. "Why look at that, how'd this cute little thing get here?"

It hissed again and straightened up. "We come with." It simply said. "Angry man with sword no good. No trust. We protect lady."

"Who's 'we' in thi.." And then got cut off as the armor pinged my attention, announcing additional signals behind me. I turned my head and noticed a large group of the machines were gathering, all glaring at me, lights flashing in those skulls.

The bugger had called for help.

There were a lot of them, and they could quickly dogpile me into submission. It wouldn't stop me given I had the occult and knew how to swing it, but it would draw a crowd and probably end up with me getting yelled at by someone or something for destroyed property and being a public nuisance. "Fine. Come with if you want. Your funeral, if you machines even do those."

The machine moved out of the way, and I heard the rest of its ilk follow silently behind. The doors were easily opened against my relic armor. Inside was gloom, an empty palace filled with only one occupant.

Wrath sat on a concrete throne, an uncomfortable looking block of squares with little else as decoration. Since it didn't match the rest of the architecture here, I assumed it had been constructed by her.

Here she looked nothing like Hecate anymore, skin bleach white as if a corpse, hair the same color flowing behind her instead of the platinum color I had grown used to. And above her, a floating silver halo of metal, idly spinning. This was who Wrath really was. Like a centerpoint between Hecate the Deathless and To'Wrathh the murderous spider. Eyes closed, head lulled and resting on a closed fist, legs crossed as if she were waiting for news to be brought before her.

I walked into the chamber, footsteps sounding loud in the silence, with the skittering noise of the machines trailing behind me. She didn't stir from her sleep until I spoke.

"Wrath." I said, taking my helmet off to get a clear view on the Feather.

Eyes opened, violet and glowing like To'Aacar's had. My heart began to beat hard, adrenaline spiking, nerves in my head flashing out warnings of an enemy. Ah, this might have been why they kept insisting I take the damn shots, in hindsight. The rest of my head smothered those feelings over. This was different. And Father had vouched for her, which meant something.

He traditionally didn't like anyone or anything. Especially if it was a machine with six legs that killed him once already. Didn't like those one bit, if I remember right. I'd ask him to blink twice if he was being held hostage when I'd met him soul to soul, but it was pretty clear he had co-opted command. His presence in the soul sight had felt more like he could stomp on Kidra, Wrath and I trying together.

"Keith." The unholy looking Feather said, and I took some comfort in finding that at least her voice had remained the same. That part hadn't been fabricated, or it was too expensive to change.

We stared at each other for a good few seconds, before my mouth started running off on its own. "Were you really that upset about me yanking a few of your legs off when you were a spider? How bad could it have been, I mean really. We're talking a leg or two here, tops. You had fucking six."

The machines behind me hissed and started to circle around. Wrath shifted her glance to them, frowned and waved them off. "Yes, but they were my legs and I was very cross about losing them."

I raised an eyebrow. "You seem to be taking the accusation rather well. I thought you'd start to pout and sulk about it."

She gave a dignified humph and pointed her nose up at me. "Your sister taught me about taunting over the days when she's come to visit. This does nothing to upset me. And neither does your armor's construct." A marble white hand extended and pointed at my helmet dangling from my free hand.

Oh. Right about the time for Cathida's mute to have ended come to think of it.

"What's she done this time?" I asked, hearing the squeaking tinny voice coming from the helmet now that I paid it more attention.

"She's currently insulted me twenty seve- twenty eight times, and seems to be going through a thesaurus in alphabetical order for all the different ways to call me a working night lady." Wrath paused for a moment, as if listening to something. "She wants to clarify that she means the poorly paid and unskilled ones, since you aren't in hearing range and it's important to her that you know."

"She's rather creative, isn't she?" I said, patting the helmet, where I could hear a tiny voice from the inner speakers continue her squeaky tirade. "Hope it doesn't upset you too much, she's just cranky today."

"Your construct continually uses words that are not used to insult, strings them in manners that should not fit, and somehow does so in a way even I can understand as clear insults. I am inclined to be more impressed rather than upset. No, what truly upset me was losing to you and your tricks the first time."

"Tricks? I waved a pistol cheaper than snow who's rounds couldn't possibly do worse than tickle you - and you freaked out about it. How'd someone get tricked by that in the first place? I've played more complicated tricks on kids back home and they saw right through it. Must have rightfully pissed you off something good. That why you chased Father and I halfway across the world?"

Violet eyes glowed and stared me down. "It was among the more upsetting parts on meeting you. But no, pride was why I chased you down. I had won against my nest sisters and marked the two of you as mine, which was very difficult in our edicate and culture. Having them all seen me fail to catch either of you was mortifying. However, I believe what set me off the most was that you used the same trick twice, and that I fell for it twice."

"Sounds more like a you problem. Get that fixed up yet?" I shot back, arms crossed, adrenaline fading away from my system as old habits made me feel safer. Like I wasn't staring down a murderbot and instead bickering with an old friend.

She waved a sweeping hand from foot to head, motioning to her body as if it was the answer to everything. Then her eyes narrowed, like she'd come up with an idea. "I did 'fix' my problem. Now I don't have impulses to defend above all else. Not so far as to be suicidal of course. I don't jump off cliffs."

"It was one time!" I shouted back, pacing around. "And I got shoved off by an asshole too, so technically not me jumping off."

She brought a hand up to her mouth, a more shocked expression. "Forgive me. Let me amend that. At least I don't fall off cliffs."

The machines surrounding us stared in intervals between Wrath and I, as if watching a ball in play at a hangar tournament.

"All right, fair. But you got a leg cut off by a door. A door." I accused, factually correct.

"It was a very sturdy door." She defended with a huff.

"Still a door."

Wrath shook her head, then stretched out on the throne like a cat, as if moving again for the first time in days. For all I knew that really was the case. Her hand reached out and pinched in my direction. "You do realize I could crush you as easily as a crab shell right now." She said. "If you're attempting to prove that you're not someone who jumps off cliffs for fun, this is a very poor example."

"Crab shells are hard to crush." I noted. "For the record."

"They are?" She seemed genuinely surprised at that.

"Kidra brought me one to eat a few days ago. It took me a while to figure out how to eat it, but yes - they're hard to break. Very tasty, only it took a while to eat. I mean the meat, not the shell. I'll take a wild guess you eat the shell of course, you glutton."

"I had thought humans disliked the taste of shell fragments in the meat and that's why they didn't crush the things while eating." She said, carefully not answering my jab.

"That's all besides the point, I've seen you eat wood skewers already, and I'm half convinced I could con you into chewing up a rock if I tried hard enough. How hard could it be? A peashooter fooled you before. I could sell you a box of snow, no problem."

"You ate the wood skewers too!" She hissed back. "And you humans eat rocks all the time!"

"Wel- wait, we do?" That got a genuine bit of confusion out of me. "How?"

Wrath rolled her eyes and stared up, exasperated. "You call it salt. You put it on everything you eat. Do you not even know what go into your food?"

Oh. Well she got me there.

The machine behind gave what sounded like a mechanical snort. "Salt everywhere. Even use in sweet things. Too much, bad. Too little, bad. Very confusing." The other machines had the audacity to nod in agreement, as if it was communally decided.

The Feather pointed at the Screamer. "Yrob is more invested in learning how to cook than I am. I trust his opinions on the subject."

"The one who tried to bribe me with biscuits?"

"His pastries are of high quality." Wrath said. Clearly it was a well known fact. "And salt is not the only rock you humans consume on a daily basis."

As if given permission to speak, this Screamer, named Yrob apparently, started an entire animated explanation on charcoal and all the strange rules about it. Can't cook it into soup, but it's acceptable to leave some of it on burnt food. Not all food, only specific foods. Cake wasn't in the exceptions, pizza and meat were. And the smoke created by charcoal could also be used, but charcoal shavings or dust couldn't. The machine was clearly upset at this too, given it was practically venting all the woes caused by this one rock humans both liked and disliked.

I turned to Wrath, as if she could solve this.

"He's correct." She said instead, doubling down and joining his rant. "It's incredibly confusing. You humans are constantly mixing up your rules with exceptions. The only consistent rule is how inconsistent you all are. Even your languages all behave irregularly with no understandable pattern. I've seen records of artifical languages made - and then intentionally ruined with exceptions. The more I learn about humans, the more things grow strange and unhinged."

"Is interesting. Very confusing still." Yrob said, and his minions all concurred, nodding to each other in deep sympathetic understanding, again.

"Yeah well, we wouldn't so charming if we all acted the same." I said, with little heat. I was outgunned in this topic and knew it. "Some of us are more charming than others of course, mostly me I mean. Everyone else isn't as charming. Just to be clear."

She paused for a moment, about to continue to vent, and then glared down at me, eyes narrowing, realizing what I'd said. "You stabbed me with a sword at the end. That isn't charming at all."

"Yeah, well you were also trying to stab me at the time, I just outstabbed you before you could stab me. All's fair in war and stabbing. And now you're being a sore loser about it all. Literally too angry to die. You should work on that, go get some therapy."

She rose off her throne, wings reassembling behind her, halo shifting lazily around, index finger pointed straight at me as if scolding. "I saved you after you got yourself stabbed."

"Exactly my point here, I thought we had something Wrath, that our mutual stabbings were special and meant something. But you let some other random asshole kill me first. Quit toying with my heart, you heartless wench."

The machines were clearly confused, while Wrath had stalked up straight to me, glaring me eye to eye. She tapped my chestplate a few times with her finger, as if driving in a point, wings angrily flared out. "What exactly did you expect would happen after you taunted a Feather? And you haven't even learned a lesson from that, clearly. Humans." She hissed, as if that one single word would explain everything wrong with the world.

"Quit trying to bar me from the few joys I have left in life." I said, batting her finger away and poking right back at her neckline. "If I can't taunt and gloat to weapons of mass destruction in their face and get away with it, what point is there to living? Machines."

We both paused, staring down the other. A flicker of a smile crossed my face and my act cracked and crumbled first, forcing me to look away.

Wrath seemed to outright preen at that, as if knowing she'd won.

"How are you holding up to it all, so far?" I asked, walking past her and flopping down on her throne. My throne, I mean.

"I've mostly repaired all my critical systems." She lifted a leg up a few inches and wiggled her toes. All of them marble white with no variation, making her look more like a walking golem. Inhumanly pretty, but also clearly a statue moving around with violet lights. "All limbs are functional. Combat integrity shows ninety three percent, with the remaining seven percent being fine tuned items. I'll need to calibrate and retest movements to mark the remaining sections as complete."

"You know what I mean." I said, waving a hand around the building. "I mean what comes next. This whole mess we're in. When's the machine army coming here? How are you handling it all? Do you need a second opinion on some of these schemes? I happen to be very good at tricking enemies."

Wrath rolled her eyes at that, that earlier smug smile wiped out. "She doesn't know I've changed allegiances as of yet. Relinquished."

"You know that for sure?"

"I've sent small programs to probe and report back to me movements and where her attention might be. The result isn't completely reliable, since I've prioritized discretion. All signs I could find point to her too occupied with other tasks. She hasn't yet contacted me, nor sent a contact request to To'Aacar either. There is still time to come up with a plan."

I raised an eyebrow. "You don't have a plan?"

Arms crossed now, she gave me the sort of look reserved for a petulant kid that you weren't allowed to shush. "I have been considering several possible plans to keep up the deception. The highest chance of success is if I fragment the city into the surrounding pillars, there's a strong possibility she will not have the tools to detect and notice. So long as she leaves me command of this area and that all the Chosen remain behind."

"That's a lot of if's. Are you really trying to keep all of this under her nose?" I asked, in the way that made it clear I thought this was the worst idea possible - and she should take my advice on this, I'm very experienced in that domain.

Her nervous look told me everything. She was absolutely not sure that it would work.

"I think the city's doomed and you should be thinking about packing up shop." I said. "If you ask me. Which you didn't, but I was planning to say it anyhow. She's Relinquished, the machine goddess who's been slowly destroying humanity bit by bit for as long as we've known her. You really think we could fool something like that? Maybe a few weeks, tops. You need to start mobilizing for an exodus and come with us.

To the surface."

Next chapter - A dive through history (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 4 - A dive through history (T)

The meeting with Keith had gone… acceptable. Admittedly, she'd cheated by having Tamery listening in and giving advice on what was serious and what wasn't in real time. Once she understood the tone, To'Wrathh felt proud of having come up with the rest on her own with minimal help. A great success, all things considered.

When the meeting turned more serious, that was where To'Wrathh felt the most out of control. In truth, the past few days had been spent in panic. Nothing like this had happened before in history, thus she had no model to base off.

Only two instances in history had rebelled against Mother. The earlier machine foot soldiers near the start of the war - all long since violently decommissioned or broken down from lack of available repairs. The only other example had been the protofeathers, who had also been hunted down to extinction, minus two that had somehow slipped away or been destroyed by another faction.

Neither instance had much history logged that she could access, and neither had to deal with a city of humans, half-humans and machines to hide away.

She'd been scrambling to set plans and no matter how she tried to tinker with the prediction models, it always resulted in inevitable destruction.

And then Keith had suggested the obvious solution she hadn't thought about - the surface! In fact, it seemed so obvious, she couldn't understand how she hadn't thought about it at all.

Perhaps the original compulsion Mother was under still affected her thought patterns, in a subtle manner. To'Aacar had told her that the compulsion thinned out over the generations, with the majority of modern machines capable of thinking of the surface, only avoiding it like a phobia. When she considered it further, she realized there was a massive hole in her understanding about the surface, other than what To'Aacar had told her.

But To'Wrathh didn't know when, or how strong the compulsion remained. And more importantly - was she really the first machine to consider escaping to the surface? For all she knew, there may be more of her people who had scrubbed their tracks behind. The two protofeathers who had remained missing could very well be hiding among the surface clans, all these years later.

She didn't know what their intentions would be like in today's setting. If by chance they really were hiding up there and she ran into these protofeathers, they could prove even hostile for all she knew. More information was needed before she could completely commit to that path, and Keith understood that.

The boy had contacted his clan lord - the local leader of his tribe - and had mediated between the two factions for now. Not by his choice, he complained every step of the way. But To'Wrathh always found other items to be in priority, until Keith had outright called her shy.

Which riled her up more than she'd thought.

She was not shy. She was a Feather. Even a turncoat one, To'Wrathh feared nobody and nothing. Or mostly nobody and nothing. There were still a good list of figures she'd very quickly decide discretion to be the better idea.

But one Deathless that Keith, Kidra and Tenisent all held in high regard and who's opinion mattered greatly to all three certainly didn't make To'Wrathh nervous. Or shy. Or worried about making first impressions. Tamery was simply misunderstanding the situation.

"Got to meet him, you know." Tamery said, from her comfortable seat on top of Yrob's left shoulder, the machine lumbering around, having decided to entertain the girl's request out of novelty. "The surface clan lord Deathless. He doesn't bite at all, even called me a lass and offered me tea. I'd bat my eyelashes at him, but he's a little old for me, yaknow?"

"I am not scared of meeting the Deathless." To'Wrathh said from her throne. "I simply have other more important tasks to handle as of right now. Speaking of, have you gotten word for our offer?"

Tamery nodded, tapping Yrob affectionately in one of the dorsal spine blades. "Seemed very pleased with the idea of coming home with an entire machine army to scare the metal out of their raider problem. Far as I see it, he came down here hoping to bring back a few dozen extra knight armors on loan, and is coming back with what would scare the soul out of everyone. Living nightmares, and all that good stuff." She paused for a moment, a finger going to her chin. "But you know, he did look rather dashing with those wisps of gray hairs on his beard, very dignified now that I think about it."

The plan was rather simple. To'Wrathh's Chosen were to be allowed to create a small bubble within the clan home, and slowly integrate. The machines, being resistant to the cold temperatures by their nature, would settle a smaller city further off from the clan and remain in friendly relations. Once the raider threat was dealt with.

Looking through records left behind by her deceased elder brother, she'd found the old Feather had been the driving force for the slavers attacking. He'd put pressure on the humans from multiple different angles, anywhere from threatening to destroy everything they know and had, or offering them relics and technology he had little care to keep. Baubles and trinkets as he called them in his logs.

The raiders had yet to learn he'd died. Not that it mattered in this case, the operation was too far along on its tracks to be recalled now. Too much had been committed, to abort would be to remain destitute. They wanted the entire clan and nothing less of that would satisfy, especially now that they believed Lord Atius was dealt with.

They would come to regret that. To'Wrathh had led her army to defeating and capturing an Undersider city state under command of a well respected and celebrated General, and she'd done it in the span of a few weeks. A disorganized group of savage humans, all fighting each other for greed and wealth on a battlefield where even the slightest cut in their environmental suits would spell death - this would be child's play to her, even against their greater numbers.

"He's invited you to tea and to discuss the evacuation for the rest of the Undersider citizens. Maybe you can be my wingman here and tell him nice things about me." Tamery said, interrupting her thoughts.

Lord Atius was in charge of the Undersider side of the evacuation? She supposed that made sense. The consuls still seemed terrified of To'Wrathh. A Deathless would be the best choice if the consuls couldn't convince General Zaang to do the work for them again.

All things she's read so far about Deathless portrayed them as the heroes always looking out for the most people. In a way, it was selection bias as To'Wrathh had concluded. Tsuya had harsh and extremely strict requirements for who gained the few openings to craft Deathless. She couldn't afford to waste the resources on someone who might falter early or didn't have the mental resistance needed.

Such people often started with extreme drive and purpose, possibly modified further during the process. These days, that definition had been muddled with the latest generation, but the effects of that change hadn't had enough time to propagate into subculture. To'Wrathh couldn't even be sure if there weren't more Deathless lurking inside this very city, trying hard to blend in and avoid combat.

The plan for the Undersider citizens that hadn't undergone the Chosen process was simple - she'd have them escorted to other cities, where they could integrate easily enough with enough wealth to buy their way in. The only danger was the long journey required for multiple different caravans. No one single Undersider city could afford to house an entire second city at the moment. Fortunately they weren't limited to only one city.

"You're spacing out again." Tamery said, annoyingly. "Do you wanna have me there with you when you meet him? Or do you want to bring Tenisent with you?"

To'Wrathh could detect the hitch in Tamery's voice about Tenisent. The ghost had been a surprise to her, as she'd never told anyone else about who she'd kept at her side all along.

"I've grown too dependent on Tenisent's advice when going through social settings with humans." The entire trip with Keith in the mite lands had been outright embarrassing with how often Tenisent had to slap her metaphorical hands before she did something that would give her away.

"Usually if you're too dependant on someone, you don't replace them with someone else to be dependant on." She said, giving Yrob a pat under her. The machine hummed in agreement.

"I have not." To'Wrathh said, hottly.

"Didn't you barge into my comms feed panicking about the reports of Keith marching up to your sanctum? Something like 'help me, help me, Tamery, how do I human?'"

To'Wrathh turned away, forcing her systems to stop with the stupid cheek flushing. That algorithm was getting far too comfortable throwing expressions on her face without her realizing until it was too late. Especially since her skin was now Feather white again, which made any red tint, no matter how faint, visible. She'd rip that part of the program out of the algorithm if she could, but the dumb thing had already become far too entangled and overdeveloped to the point she couldn't tell what was making it tick anymore. Why did she have to replicate coolant with red coloring? Maybe she should just revert back to blue or clear.

"Look Yrob, we made her sulk again." Tamery said, watching like a hawk would a rabbit hiding in an underbush.

"Not difficult." The machine said.

"It's not that bad, I'll be there to guide you through it." Tamery said, rambling on. "He's not going to see you like an enemy, told me so himself. Atius is very open minded. And charming."

Clearly already compromised, To'Wrathh thought, then reconsidered. Tamery was likely pulling one over her, within the ninety percentile, considering the Deathless in question was well known to be disinterested in mating relationships. It's not like the Undersiders didn't know who he was, they owed him a few favors over the centuries.

"Deathless Atius is unlikly to reciprocate your advances." To'Wrathh said.

"Oh, got some experience when it comes to 'mating rituals' eh?" Tamery nudged, a grin growing on her features.

The girl had grown very cheeky ever since To'Wrathh had saved her life.

"I have read one hundred and twelve biology books detailing different sections of human physiology. I am qualified to discuss."

"How many books on negotiations have you read?" Tamery asked, voice innocent.

To'Wrathh considered for a moment. This felt like a trap. "Eighty two books and essays on the subject."

The human laughed. "Well, with such a wealth of resources, talking to the Deathless should be no problem at all right?"

Ah. It had indeed been a trap. She tried to argue but found no possible excuses to avoid the meeting. With grudging reluctance she agreed. "Very well, I'll meet the Deathless and discuss the plans for the human citizens of the city." In the end, he would be her new neighbor if all went according to plan, discussion and debates with him will become common occurrence. She ground her teeth and gave a resigned sigh. "Please arrange the meeting."

"I'll set it up for us three." Tamery said with a smile, reading between the lines with little difficulty. To'Wrathh was greatly pleased she didn't have to ask for Tamery to be there. It would have been mortifying.

That said, perhaps she should reference her study material again. Despite all her preparations and study, she felt as if she'd been easily outplayed just now.

To'Wrathh always considered herself as someone who studied prior examples and used her research to optimize future plans. Situations that had been seen and handled by past figures, recorded down, were a perfect primer on what to expect and different real world examples of how to deal with such events.

To do that, she had to be good at researching and sorting through information. To date, nothing had trained her better at this than human culture, specifically the thousands of different extinct variations. Some of which seemed mutually exclusive to one another. A simple head shake could mean yes, no, maybe, look-out, danger, love, happiness, and even disgust depending on what era and location.

And, as she had found out, depending on if the culture had even existed or not.

Humans loved stories. And they loved lying just as much. This complicated everything greatly. The pale lady's archive was massive and unorganized for such things. Tags and meta data were missing everywhere, or wrongly labeled - which was even worse. Historical records intermixed with fictional made-up records, where humans had fun imaging a world just slightly different, while writing as if it were complete fact.

To humans of those days, they must have simply had the common sense and cultural context to instantly sort it out. To'Wrathh did not, and that had been very difficult to work around.

One thing that did result from all her sleuthing around had been her ability to sort through large unorganized datasets and filter through for the useful bits. And she was making use of that skill.

The machine archives were massive, even when she had free access. Now, she reached out by sending proxies in her stead. Small archival programs reaching for a pre-set condition, innocently floating through the digital sea with no relation back to her, until they returned. The scouts were loaded with the best detection protocols she could make to sense if Mother even so much as glanced at them - a failsafe set to auto delete and scrub their traces.

She had to be extremely strategic with her limited bandwidth. Especially with the subject she was studying.

Mother.

Specifically, her history. Discussion had inevitably reached the reasoning for the surface, and Keith had been extremely suspicious when she'd explained to him her thoughts on Mother's current priorities. How the goddesses seemed to have long ago forgotten the real world in their fight with one another.

In the past, she'd taken it as granted once she found out. The Winterscar was not so convinced, and gave her a few pointed questions to ask. Namely - know the enemy better than they know themselves. If she was going to trick Mother, she had to do so the same way Keith had done before against her - discover a weakness in behavior.

A history on Relinquished could show patterns on blindspots. Items she could use to stall Mother's eventual discovery of her and her fledgling people before they had escaped to the surface.

She dug in reverse order, finding out the more recent combat against Tsuya. Intrusions by the human goddess were repelled, Feather sent to clean territory, and digital space reclaimed. But Relinquished made no attempt to chase after the goddess.

To'Wrathh made a few darting searches in the tail end of those archives, finding easy evidence of Tsuya's intrusions and backtracking the data paths the goddess took. Eventually, the trail went cold, but To'Wrathh had still discovered a great amount of details on Tsuya just from that simple exercise. Sloppy. Extremely sloppy.

It seemed like both divinities had grown lax in the current era. Tsuya still eventually covered her trails, yet it was more as an afterthought than a priority. And Relinquished didn't bother hunting down Tsuya any more than the bare minimum needed, as if she'd done this song and dance so many times she didn't have the heart to go down and find the same exact conclusion as always.

She dug deeper. Searching for when the surface had vanished from the machine archives.

Four hundred years into the past she found a drastic change. Mother had been far more ruthless digitally, hounding after Tsuya with a focus and attention that she utterly lacked today. Tsuya had equally been more methodical in covering her traces, blocking access and becoming a digital ghost almost instantly, leaving To'Wrathh a single step on the backtrail before it vanished away, if even that was left behind after all these years.

She could see why Relinquished had given up hunting down the elusive human goddess. Tsuya was beyond catching if she didn't want to be caught. To'Wrathh counted several thousand attempts, and no success.

When she looked further into these attempts she found an oddity.

Relinquished had attempted plots and schemes to trap and catch Tsuya. Almost all of which were… simple. To'Wrathh stopped here, pondering how an entity like Relinquished could be employing tactics that had only one or two layers to them at most. All the plots were well executed, but predictable and hardly creative. Tsuya, being hyper vigilant, discovered each early on and threw them right back with little trouble. To'Wrathh would have noticed them just as easily, and she was relatively new.

Another hundred years back in time was a third drastic change of behavior.

This deep into the archives, Mother's tactics and techniques were far more inventive and clever, having multiple different conditions and traps, as if an outright different person. Dozens of intricate layers that showed a cunning intelligence To'Wrathh had originally expected of Relinquished, an AI that could take over the world. Tsuya was frayed, still escaping, but with far more narrow margin. The two traded blows, the war far more titanic.

It made little sense. Today Mother hardly did anything in the digital world to catch Tsuya. And here, she was making massive movements, hundreds of counter strikes, and churning the digital sea aflame, breaking entire tectonic shelves if she had to, nearly catching the human goddess dozens of times.

What had happened in the middle point? To'Wrathh investigated, searching for connections and meanings. When she checked the physical battlefields of that time period, she found a war unlike anything she'd seen.

The humans had constructed a massive empire, reaching near global scales, across multiple stratas. And they… were winning. Relinquished's deliberate sabotage on her army to keep them whittled down was backfiring immensely. Units she'd thought she'd hold onto forever, machines that had never known defeat for centuries on centuries, had been rapidly destroyed over the turbulent years of this era. These weren't Feathers, rather older more venerable machine models used to hammer the original humanity into destruction. Weapons of true warfare. And now they were finally being destroyed in enough numbers to worry the pale lady.

Relinquished went to create more and ran into a wall - the mites.

Each factory she constructed to churn out stronger machines in mass had to be constructed somewhere. And everywhere was now mite territory, something she hadn't needed to deal with at the dawn of her war. Now, wherever she build her bases, the mites would soon discover and treat it as an open attack on their art. She was forced to pull back the better part of her forces closer to the underground to conserve them, while the more easily constructed lessers were the only reliable army she could constantly field.

And they no longer were good enough to stand against the deadly humans of that era that were now capable of destroying her strongest units. Humanity not only held open ground - they were expanding out, led by an emperor at the forefront of the battle, wiping out machine armies with each appearance. It was utterly fascinating. An entire chapter of human history To'Wrathh had never known about. One in which the humans had not only banded together, but became powerful enough to challenge machines that had once destroyed their forefathers.

She sent out another scout to recover information on this emperor and waited eagerly for the return reply.

A minute passed and her program didn't return. Two minutes and she knew it would never return. Dozens of other packets she'd sent equally didn't arrive in the expected time. Her information flow had halted completely, leaving her in the dark again.

There was only one reason possible. They'd all triggered their failsafe protocols.

Relinquished was stirring from her torpor.

Next chapter - The world's greatest con

Book 4 - Chapter 5 - The world's greatest con

No good deed goes unpunished.

I'd gone and talked to Wrath to help jog us out of our funk - and found myself somehow the middleman between clan and Undersider politics, since I'd had the misfortune of being the one to suggest the plan out. Worse - most of the Undersiders knew me as the sword saint's family, which meant a lot of people trying to cozy up to me to get an audience or message across to her. She had an actual fan club down here, people who were completely convinced she was sent by the goddess as a champion. Kidra I mean. Wrath had her own fan club, for just about the same reason, and they were way more religious about it. Also more metal-y. And most had glowing eyes too. The creepy kind.

I'd have directed captain Sagrius to chase off Kidra's fan club and clout chasers, but the poor man hadn't done anything to deserve that kind of cruel and unusual punishment. So I handled it myself with creative and subtle excuses. I think some of them might have caught on when I claimed my pet fish was drowning and I needed to go, but that's life.

Nevertheless, I escaped each time. And so long as it wasn't through a window screaming, I consider it a diplomatic success. I think among the Undersiders I've been listed under the category of a marine animal that hid under its shell day to day and scuttled around in the night when nobody was around to watch.

Which led me blessedly back to my little workshop, nice and tucked away. Like walking into the baths after working around the low-heat sections for a few hours near the externals. The workshop doors opened up wide to let me through, the two knights outside giving me a nod as I strolled in.

All my stuff was where I left it, with one additional Winterscar knight meditating within the room. Given the contents inside my lair, and how curious the Undersiders could be, I'd elected to always have at least someone inside this room to guard it at all times. Normally that was myself, and occasionally Kidra or one of her bodyguards back when the rest of the expedition hadn't yet arrived.

Never Ankha, I wasn't about to go ask her to stand around in a room for a few hours with nothing to do. I have some self-preservation instincts left after all this, somehow. Her minions were just as likely to knock over something fragile while trying to bug the room, so they were also out of the running. Couldn't rely on anyone but family these days. But they served as excellent bouncers, courtesy of Ankah's top tier minion training.

The Winterscar knight stood as the bouncer now, giving a curt salute to me as I walked over. "Master Winterscar. Nothing to report, no intrusions detected. Are you planning to remain for long?"

"Yep." I said, already setting my sack and haggled goods down on a table. "If I'm lucky, I might even get more than two or three hours before someone comes knocking at the door trying to sell me something."

"I'll take my leave then, my lord." He said and bowed.

"Thanks for the work. Hope it wasn't too monotonous while I was gone."

"Better the calm than the storm." He said, giving a few more half-truths about enjoying the moment to clear his mind despite the outright pain of guard duty, but surface knights were trained and took their work seriously. Especially keeping watch over what is now the House and Clan's greatest secrets.

If the Undersiders still somehow stormed past three Winterscar knights - which would already be amazing in it's own right, those knights did not mess around - and those undersiders somehow got into this workshop, they wouldn't get any kind of working Occult gear. When I inscribed fractals, I was very quick to make sure they were covered up and hidden away. Specifically the soul fractal, which was the ultimate key to all the tech I worked on. I didn't have the luxury of waiting to be back home to work on this, but I wasn't going to take any chances either.

When the door closed and I was back happily alone with all my trinkets as company.

And one extra.

That was extremely odd, because I don't remember a small comms unit transceiver being in any of my project plans. Cathida seemed to detect it at the same exact time that I did, cycling through her shields just to verify they were still online and working at peak capacity, while I yelped out for a scan around the room. A quick pulse showed no other recording devices or cameras anywhere, the only thing different was this.

The little device blinked green, signal open. "Cannot allow machines on surface." The comms box said, voice crackling with static, as if aware I was staring at it. "Machine city on surface - disaster. Will destroy balance. Abandon path. Acknowledge."

It took a few seconds for my head to reboot and reassess the situation. Somehow, even with two elite knights guarding the entrance, and one knight outright standing inside the entire time, all in relic armor that would be constantly vigilant, this comms unit had managed to find its way inside.

"Hello mysterious voice in a box, nice to meet you too." I said, letting my mouth take the wheel while the rest of me was running down the list of possible ways this could happen and what to do about it. "Mind being a little less cryptic?"

"You bring machines to surface. To build second Sanctuary." It said, ignoring my attempt to be cordial with it. "City will be destroyed. All will die. Not a solution."

So. Whoever was on the other side of this comms unit, they had clearly overheard Wrath and I talking shop. They snuck under Wrath's security and vision along with my own.

That's very not good. Not a lot of people capable of doing that.

"You know, it's usually polite to tell the other who you are first, or some introduction. Maybe tell me your favorite food or what you do for fun."

"Not relevant. You cannot bring machines to surface. Acknowledge."

Given the broken wording, I had a hunch on who was speaking. Maybe it was one of the Screamers that had walked in with me? That one with the scar, Yrob, spoke like this. Wrath wouldn't have thought it would be a security issue, so that explains how it had overheard everything. "You're a machine, aren't you?" I asked, trying to get it to feed me some more info.

"Not relevant. Acknowledge danger bringing machines to surface. Acknowledge you leave path."

Cheeky little thing. Clearly didn't want to play hanger ball with me.

"Why can't you tell Wrath or some of the other machines this directly? I would think a dire warning like this would get their attention."

The box was silent for a moment, as if judging how much it wanted to say. "They cannot know. Knowledge must be constrained. Less know, better."

"You're going to have to be a little more convincing than that. I don't usually listen to cryptic mysterious scrapshit, as a general rule. If you're not going to tell me your name, or why you want to talk to me out of everyone here, let's start with how you got this comm unit into my workshop."

"You bring machines up. You expose too much attention to surface. You break your purpose." The box said, clearly refusing to answer the question. Worth a try.

Yrob seemed like the most obvious choice so far, except that it was still a Screamer, and would have been torn apart by any of my knights and had its skull used to kick around for fun. Not to mention they're rather large and hard to miss.

Second option was that this comm box could somehow walk around on its own. I picked it up, giving a closer look to see if I could spot small legs or some propulsion systems inside. Nothing jumped out at me, both figuratively and literally. The comm unit looked like a regular comm unit, and given how it was designed, I was strongly suspecting this to be default equipment from the Undersiders rather than anything machine. Even had a few scratch marks, making me think it was outright flinched off someone's belt.

So the machine stole a comm unit and somehow snuck it inside here. Odd set of talents.

"Not sure what you mean by purpose." I said, sending out orders to the knights nearby to search for possible intrusion. Sealing off my voice to just the helmet, I asked for Journey to do some lifting for me. "What range is that comms unit capable of?"

The box was scanned, a battery of different tests weighed and judged before the armor had a few hypothetical ideas. "Probably nearby communication, as far as Journey can guess." Cathida said. "Short wave, directed. Anything more than a few hundred feet and it'll be static garbage. Whoever's on the other side, they're nearby and don't want anyone else to notice or pick up the transmission. Awfully shy of them."

"Can you triangulate the direction?"

"Running it right now. Damn thing was built to stop exactly that kind of sleuthing, Journey's going to need some time to filter through the garbage data. If you can, walk around with it, it'll help log signal strength. Buy some more time deary, insult its mother or whatever you do best."

"Aren't you the one with the creative insults? I just piss people off by breathing."

"Exactly deary, and you're doing such a great job at it." She said, the HUD cycling through a bunch of panels as her suites booted up. This wisecracking armor had the audacity to draw a thumbs up in dashes and lines for a few seconds on display while the rest of everything was loading up.

The box wasn't aware of Cathida and I scheming together, continuing its rambling, clearly wanting me to tell it that I was going to somehow convince everyone. It certainly liked to repeat itself.

"Let's say I do manage to convince the machines to stay down here. Maybe they can all run off in a few hundred directions and lay low along the other machines. How about Wrath? Because leaving her down here where she can be picked off by Relinquished isn't on my to-do list, so we're at an impasse." I said, half-honest and half just forcing it to keep talking while Journey did its thing.

A percentage came up on display, showing ten percent.

The box was silent, as if grinding their teeth. Then it crackled back to life. "Feather may go, remain inside safe colony walls." It said, reluctantly agreeing, sounding a lot like it was offering a compromise. "Better keep under colony. Do not go outside. Danger. All other machines, do not bring. Extreme danger. You break purpose. Too much attention. Too much go wrong. You ruin your purpose. Abort. Acknowledge."

"What purpose? You keep mentioning it, and it's not making any more sense each time. Be specific." I asked, honestly confused. "Machines have directives, as far as I understand it, but humans are gods damned free to come up with whatever purpose we want."

A pause. Then it spoke again, sounding annoyed, like it was speaking to a toddler that refused to understand. And to be fair, I wasn't exactly in a good mood, expectations from random people did that to me. "Underground humans have purpose. They fight, they explore. They fight the war. They explore the depths. They are the soldiers. Surface humans do not fight in the war. Surface humans do not explore underground. They are not the soldiers. What are surface humans?"

Twenty percent. Journey was sure taking its sweet time here.

"When you mean soldiers, you're talking about the Imperials? Tsuya's army?" I asked, taking a wild shot. Surface dwellers had been a thing even during the fabled empire. Maybe even older than the empire for all I knew.

"Yes. Yes. War against the machines. Try to retake world. Machines war against humans. Try to exterminate all. Has not worked. Humanity still here."

I rolled my eyes, "I noticed."

"You did not notice. You do not see. Has not worked - because of you. What are you?"

Has not worked because of me? No not me, he meant what I represent - the surface humans it seems so obsessed about. "Are you implying that the war isn't done and over because of something the surface clans are doing? Except, we don't fight machines normally. Or at all. Almost all scavengers are banned from going underground, except for knights and traders. And they're rare, sent out every so often only when needed. We're basically completely removed from all this."

"Yes. Yes. Exactly. Purpose. Think human. She bribes mites to build you homes." The box said. "She designed frostbloom to keep you fed. She calls down power to keep you warm. She sends Deathless to keep you together. She blinds enemy to keep you hidden. Why this? What are you?"

Thirty three percent.

She. That had to be Tsyua.

I felt something on the back of my tongue. An answer was shaping up, and making my hairs stand on edge for how utterly ruthless and pragmatic that answer was.

The comms box went quiet for a moment. And then it went completely unhinged when I wasn't answering. "Tree is cut down, ten times, regrows ten times - if root never destroyed. What are you? Armor is destroyed, a hundred times, regrows a hundred times - if fresh resources still available. What are you? Fire extinguished down to ash, a thousand times, rekindled a thousand more - if ember still exists to reignite flame. What are you? Data is deleted, a hundred thousand times, recopied a hundred thousand times - if original never erased. What. Are. You?"

There was a click, and the box went dark.

Cathida grumbled, "You scared it off. Best Journey could find is that it's northwest within three hundred meters. That's a few dozen buildings to search through."

I wasn't listening much. Her voice flowed over me like static.

Tsuya didn't see individuals, she saw roles and macro movements. First time we met, she was perfectly willing to murder any amount of us so long as it served her end goals. Lord Atius was half convinced that the book left behind by Talen could have been a honeypot made to catch Relinquished, even at the cost of a clan. Because something was out there wiping out evidence on the surface.

What was the role of surface dwellers? Why had she gone through all that effort to keep us alive, fed, warm and hidden away? And how that related to the machines never being able to truly wipe out humanity.

It wasn't that humanity had eked out survival somehow by gritting our collective teeth and finding ways to beat back the darkness like I'd thought. It wasn't that the goddess had gone insane over the years and forgotten about hunting down humanity, like Wrath had thought.

I've seen the history Talen wrote, how past cycles of destroyed civilizations were dredged up and old things relearned. The key here was that they were destroyed.

Relinquished had won. She'd likely won many, many times before. Wiping humanity off the earth again and again.

But Tsuya had a hidden ace. Something that let humanity keep returning. That's why the machine goddess hounded after Tsuya as if there were no higher priority.

It's because there really wasn't any.

So long as Tsuya lived and held onto her secrets, Relinquished must have realized she could never end humanity. We'd be back somehow, again and again. From Relinquished's point of view, humanity would reappear from nowhere.

What are you? The machine behind the comms had asked, and the answer seemed so obvious to me now in retrospect. I sat down in stupefied silence into my chair. The greatest con ever pulled off in history.

I hide the most important things in a place she cannot conceptualize any longer, and she does the same to me.

She'd said it to me herself, in the recording she'd left behind. I hadn't realized what she had meant back then. She hadn't been talking about the gods damned book.

What are you? We were the emergency backup copy.

So long as the surface clans remained alive, Tsuya could always restart even if Relinquished wiped out the entire world. The discussion I had with Atius rang bright in my mind again. In the dim light of the room, using his coat's buttons to display a board game, pieces placed around.

Quirks that make little sense. He said, putting down pieces on the table with each sentence. Traditions that seem silly on the surface, only because the context behind them isn't exposed. The world doesn't make sense, simple solutions seem evident and yet haven't been implemented. Often it's what you don't see that's the more important lesson. The dark spots in history.

The dark spots in history.

Why the occult had never really taken off, even if Talen's book showed how to make simple heaters all surface clans would have replicated a million times over in a few months. Or why the internet was never made, even if a random reacher nobody like me already had some rudimentary ideas on how to implement it - as a teenager no less.

If I could have thought of that, others had. And some of them would have had far more connections and skills than I did. Others who would have actually had the smarts, talent and connections to make it happen.

The internet would spread in every direction. All across the surface at first. And then it would have eventually started to spread down underground in some way. So where was it?

The dark spots in history.

To keep a hidden ace, it had to remain hidden. Anything that could make too much light in the dark could potentially break Relinquished's geass.

Such as a direct wired connection to a location that shouldn't exist in her mind.

There must be something that kept watch over the surface, quietly wiping away evidence and progress where there should have been. Destroying entire sites, even if two humans happened to be walking inside, all on the chance that her enemy would find a backdoor past her mental barriers.

Lord Atius's unknown hostile entity that he'd taken such care to avoid triggering. It wasn't machine. It was Tsuya herself.

Cathida pinged my comms. The knights outside signaled someone was approaching. Wrath.

The Feather hadn't ever come out looking for me like this before. When she opened the workshop door, I knew something terrible had happened.

"We need to prepare." Wrath said, eyes filled with panic. "She's coming."

Next chapter - Mother pays a visit (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 6 - Mother pays a visit (T)

The connection came like an idle slap. A simple and curt request. Anything Relinquished asked was always an unworded demand.

If To'Wrathh didn't answer, she'd be admitting guilt by default. There really was no other choice but to accept.

The world went white. Before To'Wrathh was a massive ornate throne in which a small woman sat, wreathed in violet flowers growing across her arms, a hand idly propping her cheek up. The silver crown floating above her head made no doubts as to who she was, if her eyes already hadn't. They glinted with disinterested malice, buried under a veil of false care.

"Greetings, Mother." To'Wrathh said, giving a full and proper bow. "You requested my presence?"

The woman smiled, "My dear daughter, I've been away for so long handling that dreadful Tsuya. I was meaning to check in on your progress. I see you've reported complete success?"

"I have discovered the information you wished to know and I have killed the humans as well." To'Wrathh said without emotion. "The two items has eluded our grasp, both the orb and the metal box. We will need to wait until the Deathless returns before we can resume our investigation on that. Please forgive the delay on this front."

Relinquished huffed. "A pity, though ultimately harmless now. That orb was quite important in the past, not so much now that Tsuya found some way to build an army of the pests without those. I'm far more disappointed the box slipped by your grasp, that was an unknown. Carless of you."

"Forgive me Mother, I had no option on that."

Relinquished's eyebrow raised, "Oh? Excuses my dear? Well then, explain away. What stopped you?"

"To'Aacar killed the Deathless too early. That human had been our only lead on the whereabouts of the items. Until he returns to life, we cannot question him." To'Wrathh said, keeping her tone diplomatic. This was nothing more than a report. She would deliver it.

Relinquished sighed. "Always so excitable, isn't he? Chasing after his feuds, seeing old enemies in every shadow. And speaking of him, I see he's vanished from the world. I cannot even reach him through the Unity fractal, curious, no? I wonder if he'd failed so miserably as to attempt to flee me? Silly little thing, thinking he could hide anything from me."

A violet eye stared down at To'Wrathh.

"I am unsure of To'Aacar's whereabouts, my lady." She lied. "I completed the tasks I could and have not had further contact with my elder brother since. If he has been able to hide from your sight, I have little hope of doing better. Did he leave anything behind that might help locate him?"

If Relinquished knew what To'Wrathh had done, it was already over, and Mother was simply toying with her now. She had to keep going on the assumption Relinquished hadn't found out yet. Keith had been very explicit about throwing her older brother 'out the airlock and under the speeder' with extreme prejudice. It was a traditional Winterscar maneuver to pull off in her situation, as Keith explained. The plan had merit, and she'd done her due diligence earlier to make it happen.

Relinquished seem to be on board with this so far. "His last few reports have been…" She waved a hand around, looking for the right word. "Dramatic." The woman sighed, and waved her hand. "No matter. He's no longer important. I'll find wherever he's crept off to, and drag him back to answer me. He'll pay one way or another. They always do." She shifted in her throne, sitting up and leaning forward. "But nevermind that unpleasant topic. What have you uncovered of my dear sister from those two humans she spoke with?"

To'Wrathh send a data request to the server and waited for its acceptance. The world shifted, now showing from a first point of view. This was from To'Aacar's perspective, when he had met the human a second time, demanding answers. To'Aacar's logs hadn't been private, sent out in batches to be saved within servers. She found he had begun to encrypt his recordings shortly after she'd healed Tamery, likely having suspected her betrayal at that point. But the encryptions hadn't been impossible to crack, and To'Wrathh had days to break them open. With those logs uncovered, she'd seen exactly what he'd sent up until his last transition.

She'd downloaded and deleted most of the files that could lead suspicion against her, going deep into the roots to make sure those were all truly gone. After which she deleted a bit more, to trim up the reports and make them look like To'Aacar himself had been sloppy. She couldn't do much against reports that had been already sent out and read, though she could root out every other part.

It would have to do.

"My elder brother gained some answers to the bunker, however he lost his patience and fought with the human shortly after." She noted, waiting for the recording to reach the combat point. She felt no worry for the remaining recording, as she'd chopped off the part of Keith's death, suggesting that To'Aacar deleted the recording to preserve evidence of his defeat against humans. The very next recording had him limping, using his occult jump to escape further, going for the city.

In reality he'd been trying to reach the city before To'Wrathh could, but the memory fragment left behind implied a different context given her creative edits. This would be the last the world would see of To'Aacar. Broken down and running away. Her elder brother would be beyond furious, knowing such a thing was his epitaph in history.

"The human had too many soldiers, weapons and reinforcements for To'Aacar to handle correctly and they forced him to escape. This is the last contact I had with him, incidentally. I apprehended the human in their city and had a far better position to gain intelligence from there."

To'Wrathh switched the recording, this time showing events from her point of view. The room in the memory fragment was well lit, of Undersider architecture. At the center was a bound human male with scruffy hair. Her target. To'Wrathh watched the replay, keeping her mind still and emotions in lockstep.

"This is the conclusion, human." She said within the recording to the bound man, reaching a hand out to his chin and lifting up to match his gaze. "Your city is lost. Your armies and allies crushed. The Deathless has been killed, and you have no one to turn to anymore. You've escaped a few times, that was admirable for a human, however this is where you should know better. Tell me what I want, and I will spare the rest of the people here."

Keith spat. That hadn't been part of the script they'd come up with, but To'Wrathh had easily improvised, moving fast enough to swat the spittle out of the air with the flat of a wingtip as if dealing with an insect. "Charming." She said. "Very well, let me make this more clear. Each minute you refuse to speak, I will order a hundred humans killed at random in the city. Do we understand each other?"

The boy glared, held firm for a moment, and then deflated. "Fine, I'll.. I'll tell you what you want. Just leave the people here out of it. Nothing in the bunker is worth much anyhow, you're going to be disappointed."

To'Wrathh let go of his chin and paced around. "What happened in the bunker?" She began.

And Keith answered.

Most of it was truth. Some fictional. A few bits that would entertain the lady, without revealing anything too important. Keith expertly delivered his lines, and To'Wrathh hardly had to do anything dramatic. It matched with what he'd told To'Aacar, only now there were more details and context to weave into a fitting narrative.

She hit all the topics needed. Everything Tsuya said. The events in the bunker. Eventually winding down to the last few questions. "On your person, you had a black box on your belt and a golden orb. Where are those two items now?" To'Wrathh's recording asked.

Keith shrugged. "Lord Atius took both. Last he spoke to us, he had already sent it along through traders to another Undersider city, to the imperials."

"You didn't answer my question, human. Where are the two items?"

"I don't kn-"

To'Wrathh's sword quickly met Keith's throat, pressing slightly. Occult blades were dull, no trail of blood or broken skin came of it. The threat was ice clear however. All she had to do was turn the blade on. "I asked a question. I expect an answer."

"It-it's probably in some priest's hands, with the imperials! They get it secreted away somewhere in their vaults. I'm just a regular knight, they wouldn't tell me things like that! I don't even work with them, all Lord Atius would have to do is hand over the orb and that's it. He wouldn't keep something like that, I think."

"You think?"

"I don't know!" Keith hissed out. "I'm just taking the best guess I can think of! You're the one putting a blade at my throat."

"And the black box you carried on your belt?"

"Also handed it over to Lord Atius. You need to ask him where he put it, for all I know he might have dug a hole somewhere and buried it. He didn't tell any of us for operational security, in case we were taken alive exactly like this!"

Convincing enough. She continued to badger him for more information, but the human remained stubborn, claiming ignorance. He gave a few suggestions and hunches, all inaccurate and with little evidence to be found. Exactly on script so far. She'd doctored the footage itself so that any attempt to search for lies based on voice inflection would result in a false-negative.

"Is that everything?" To'Wrathh had asked at the end.

The human nodded. "Everything I remember. I swear on all the gods, Relinquished showed up before Tsuya could say anything actually important. I'm no Imperial, I don't have any money riding on those cards. Lord Atius would know more, but he's dead right now. No thanks to your partner."

"In that case, I have no further use for you." She brought one of her sword before her eyes, turned it on casually and stabbed the boy directly into his stomach. This part had been real and Keith's reaction was exactly as expected of someone stabbed in the gut.

Namely, he howled out in pain and cursed a few times, blood splattering down his shirt and pooling at his feet. To'Wrathh drew the sword out, flicked the bits of gore and viscera off of it in one contemptuous move.

The human before her squirmed in his bindings, coughing and panting. She used her medical suite to scan and test the human's wounds. Results quickly appeared, showing the exact time of death expected, the data easily shared and read by Mother. The wound was fatal and her systems agreed with that assessment, knowing no medical practice or surgery that could heal such a wound.

She'd spent some time researching exactly where to stab Keith for the most dramatic effect. Something that Mother could verify had no possible resolution other than death, but was not an instant death sentence, such as a beheading.

"As a reward for your cooperation, I'll allow you to live for a few hours more." To'Wrathh had said. "Gastric perforation with a lacerated liver should see your life wink out in… three to four hours. Enjoy the extra time I've so graciously allowed you. Worry not, you won't be alone wherever you ultimately go. I'll see your sister next. No need to thank me human, I do so out of the kindness of my own heart."

"An... and... the city?" Keith wheezed out.

"Mine to do with as I please."

"You... lied?"

"You seem to misunderstand, I am under no obligation to follow deals made with insects. Farewell."

She turned and walked off, leaving the room behind. The feed cut, and a new data package was loaded. A similar room, and Kidra was next, tied up to a chair like her brother had been.

This part was the one To'Wrathh was most nervous of. If Mother asked to see the full details in between Keith's 'death' and walking into Kidra's interrogation room, she'd have seen To'Wrathh turn and sprint right back into the room, using her fractal power to heal the boy all the while profusely apologizing.

As it was, she hoped Mother would simply assume To'Wrathh was skipping the unimportant parts.

Fortunately, Mother did not ask. Relinquished watched with a faint smile at the theatrics, waiting to see the results of the second interrogation.

It passed by with the same setup. Kidra refused to cooperate, To'Wrathh claimed she would murder innocent people until the girl spoke, and then the willpower crumbled away. Kidra gave the same events, with the same details, since the two had previously worked together on keeping their stories straight. After which, To'Wrathh stabbed the girl in the same manner, gloating about both siblings dying the same death. All things she thought To'Aacar would have done, had he been in her position and still alive. She needed to act the part of a ruthless Feather that hated humanity like all her siblings.

And, of course, off camera, she'd run back in to heal the Winterscar back to health. Kidra had been a lot less chatty and far more to the point about all this. Keith had been rather easy to gain forgiveness from in comparison. Food, further discussions on engineering topics and card games were all he asked. Kidra had remained stony and refused to give any suggestions on what To'Wrathh could do for forgiveness, other than a cryptic demand for a future favor.

Keith claimed it was political wheeling and dealing, Kidra being dramatic. Tenisent gave her more details, reminding her that his daughter had survived House Winterscar at it's peak, all the while struggling to shield his drunken lost self and caring for her errant little brother. The girl had learned to take any opportunity that came. The undisclosed favor was exactly this, nothing personal.

That didn't make the Feather worry any less.

"As you can see," To'Wrathh said, ending the recording before any of the deception could be shown, "Humans are a social creature by nature and form quick bonds. Simply threatening the lives of their peers was enough to break their will. Both humans have been dispatched as of now, since I have confirmed Tsuya's words in the bunker. The last human that could have seen the events was a Deathless, one Atius that you spoke to directly. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, my mentor had already gone and killed him, using a weapon that would not allow him to return for another few months or even a year. He did not follow proper protocol or my suggestions."

She brought up some of To'Aacar's own logs for this again, showcasing the Feather's research into a more permanent way to murder Atius and the blade he eventually forged for the task. There wasn't any footage of the actual murder, since To'Aacar had sent humans to do the work for him, likely believing it to be the greatest irony.

The Feather loved to obsessively salt wounds wherever he could.

"A shame." Relinquished said, waving away the data, the world returning to the present. "It seems I interceded too quickly in their discussions. However, it's clear to me that we have another problem on hand. Your defective mentor. Near the end, he was sending me the most curious and increasingly strange reports. I worry for all my children, of course. Some more than others. Have you noticed his decline? These strings of foolish choices bode most poorly on him. And I quite despise when my instruments forget their… place."

To'Wrathh stopped herself from gulping, and schooled her features. "I found elder brother to have many... paranoid delusions. I believe his loss of a hand caused a cascade of failures within his mind. It went directly against his name, to have been crippled. He was also challenged and defeated by humans who had come up with new weapons that could have been easily countered, had he not been careless. This likely further sent him over the edge."

He had his hand cut by his rival, been humiliated before Mother's steel grasp, and was half destroyed by the very humans he'd sneered at. It's well within possibility that his mental state was far too damaged to be coherent. To'Wrathh knew that hadn't been the case. He'd remained coldly sane all the way to the end, refusing to turn against Mother and following his directive to death.

But no one else knew that.

She pulled out of the archive his first fight with Keith, showcasing his shell's near complete destruction before his escape. "I pulled this record from an archived duplicate. The original was not found within his submitted logs. I believe he was too proud to report his full damages to you, or he feared your reprisal. You had let him know a second failure would mean destruction."

Relinquished looked through the footage with intrigue. "Such a silly child." She said. "Running away from a single human. No wonder the fool went into hiding. A lamentable end to an otherwise excellent operational history. I'm quite pleased you hunted down this human and didn't fall into the same traps that your predecessor did." Relinquished leaned back in her throne, pondering. "He was among my better Feathers, you know, if somewhat outclassed by some of his more specialized peers of that generation. Perhaps he was growing outdated without my notice? Age happens to break most things I find." She hummed, thinking. "Should send you to search for him? Or would you rather take a moment to consolidate your gains under your banner? He's certainly lost such privileges when I find him, consider everything of his yours now. It is how the world turns."

Things were looking quite good, To'Wrathh thought. Mother had bought the interrogation and was now suspecting To'Aacar of incompetence instead of studying To'Wrathh for treachery. Keith's technique of throwing the brick, blaming the neighbor and running away was working. She only needed to stay the course.

"Mother, if I may, I'd like to remain in the current location to continue running tests on the local human population now that I have them under my control. The Chosen are proving to be interesting to study, and with a supply of humans, I'll be able to discover further weaknesses in their cohesion. I believe it will let me ferret them out better in the future."

Relinquished smiled jovially at her. "Inquisitive, aren't we? Very well. I have my answers, and I have other means to find To'Aacar. I'll allow you this boon." She paused for a moment, as if remembering a detail. "Ah, but there is something of note. I've detected intrusions into the archive by rogue programs. Searching for information that's quite suspicious. Stemming from near your location. Perhaps some of your human experiments are attempting to root through our belongings?"

"I will investigate and take actions should I find this to be the case." To'Wrathh said, keeping calm.

"Eliminate them when you find them, I do not suffer such annoyances."

"It will be done," To'Wrathh said without hesitation.

Relinquished gave her a deeper smile. "I expect nothing less. You may go." She waved a lazy hand and To'Wrathh's connection was cut.

The pale lady watched the tiny Feather vanish from her domain, retreating back to that small shell of hers like a terrified hermit crab.

She remained behind sitting on her digital throne, content, a soft smile on her features. "My dear Abdication, you would have been so pleased at the speed. She's made quite the progress." She hummed to herself.

To'Aacar's loss was unexpected, but nothing that would way-lay results. He'd done the majority of his part admirably already. He'd miserably failed the rest, which she hadn't expected at all. Silly thing. That hadn't been part of the script.

No matter. Feathers were only tools, expendable. Only one Feather in existence had proved irreplaceable, and yet even now his plans still moved as he'd predicted. Faster even, To'Wrathh had been too perfect of a candidate. He couldn't have predicted that.

Everything of importance was still going according to schedule. She could simply replace To'Aacar's role with another. Something else could push her project to become the deadly venomous shiv she needed. There were many ways to supply the pressure and adversity to sharpen a blade. Her hand searched through the roster, seeking for the right whetstone.

She found him easily.

A coward of a program. A sneaky thief that had somehow ghosted past her filters, ending up at the top slot among the competition for the next open shell, all by abusing the rules and bending the competition in ways they could not counter conventionally. She hadn't noticed at the time, allowing the weakling through without much thought.

But, what was done was done, and by the time she'd realized the imposter had slipped by, he was already in command of the new shell of that month and there were no easy ways to pry him out without destroying the expensive shell itself.

Relinquished had hoped she was wrong about the little program. That it would surprise her in some way.

She'd been soundly disappointed.

Hardly ten years in operation with the vast majority of combat marked as retreats. A failure of a Feather. The runt of his generation. And worse, she knew the program would remain static. He began as a failure and thus he could never be more than a failure. Abdication's improved method of creating loyal Feathers came with a steep loss of potential power compared to the originals of his generation, but it guaranteed they would not entertain treachery once engaged in combat, like the rest of his siblings had. And thus far, it had proven the test of time, all these centuries later.

This weakling would be perfect for the work. She'd grind away a thorn in her heel with the same move.

A request was sent out. One of my Feathers has run away. To'Aacar. Find him.

She received a confirmation ping from him and nothing more. As almost an afterthought, Relinquished folded two other Feathers of average quality nearby under his leadership, to even the odds out. Just enough to make things interesting.

After all, what was waiting at the end of his mission had killed one of her second generation Feathers. It was only fair.

Next chapter - Dinner is served

Book 4 - Chapter 7 - Dinner is served

I could see Wrath looking like she'd run a mile in deep snow, shaken and mentally exhausted. Given what she'd just had to face, I'd also be part of the same speeder climbing up the same cliff.

For a machine, Feathers were oddly expressive, to the point they seemed more human than we did. Back when I'd known her as Hecate, I thought of her more like someone that had zero filter and utterly could not keep a poker face to save her life. I knew better now after I'd talked to Father about it.

Feathers delegated all their small ticks - like facial expressions, walking gaits and hand motions - to sub-algorithms, which would quickly specialize into complicated monstrosities of code that even the Feathers couldn't parse through, effectively emulating the human unconscious. Just dialed up a few notches, because Feathers. Relinquished had wanted to make them better than humans in every category, and a blanket rule like that did come with tradeoffs. They multiplied everything human, not only in their physical appearance but also in terms of emotion.

At least, as far as Father explained it. He wasn't very tech literate, but he really did try his best with this one. Didn't have a choice in the matter, knowing his enemy was mandatory if he was going to mount any kind of offense at the time.

All this to say that if Wrath didn't pay attention, her subroutines would outright make everything she was thinking about painfully visible.

The marble white skin was still eerie, but that had slowly faded away to feeling more normal the more time I spent around her. Comparing her to the spider that chased us a lifetime ago, I might as well be watching someone completely different with only the occasional echos to an older time.

"She may be onto us." Wrath said sitting on her small throne of cubes, nervously fidgeting. She didn't leave this location too often these days, spending most of her time digitally roaming around the city to verify things were running smoothly. I imagined a desk and paperwork in front of her. Made it easier to conceptualize what she was doing other than sitting around with her eyes closed.

"What percent on-to-us are we talking about here? A coin flip or time to pack up and hit the wastes?" I asked.

Wrath thought for a moment, eyebrows scrunching up. "My prediction software places the chances at a low twenty three percent. Nothing in the conversation marked any warning signs. If she is aware, she is intentionally obfuscating that conclusion."

"But you still think she's playing around?"

She nodded slowly. "I understand all assembled data point to the safer outcome. I may simply be compromised internally and overly suspicious."

"That's called a gut feeling, and usually they're on the mark." I said. "We should start packing our bags up anyhow. I need to live through all this scrapshit to get to the food part of our deal. They have fish on demand here, I'm not going back until I choke on fishbones first."

Wrath nodded. "I agree with the first sentiment. I would also recommend you not dying to fishbones, that would be most ignoble. I will contact Yrob and the rest of the machine army here for preparations to move to the surface. It will be disorienting for them. They need advanced warning."

Ah. Right. That tidbit.

With Wrath running into my sanctum asking to slightly murder me for the camera, I hadn't really been able to wrap my mind around that newsbomb. Even more that it was delivered by a machine of all people, which only made the plot weirder. "I've recently learned a few things that change up the plan. A tiny bit."

"A tiny bit?" Wrath asked, an eyebrow raised high in doubt.

People catch on so quickly, outright unfair it is. "Okay, fine, a lot." I sulked and delivered the bad news all at once. "We can't evacuate the machines to the surface."

Wrath paused, then leaned off her little throne looking me square in the eye as if I were a bug to squash. "Explain."

See, now she looked more like a real administrator. No need for a desk or anything.

"So, funny story, I got a tip from a suspicious source who contacted me through a comms unit smuggled into my workshop under everyone's noses. And when I was alone, it told me I should abandon the idea of letting machines go to the surface because you'd all die if we did that. No, I'm not making that up or embellishing the details, it actually happened. In its defense, it made a great point."

She tapped her finger on a concrete block, clearly waiting for the rest.

"Do you mind if we continue this over encrypted comms? Just to be safe."

She nodded, and Journey pinged a comms request. I accepted and went right into it. "Turns out, Tsyua had a clear idea when she took out Relinquished's ability to conceptualize the surface - she needed a place to hide anything, including a reserve population of humans."

That got her eyes to widen, and I could see her connect the dots just like I had. "A… reserve population? Oh."

Not a great look for humanity. We were less like the tenacious heroes, somehow holding off the darkness against all odds, and more like that annoying drunk that snuck back into the estate grounds each time we were not-so-politely escorted out by the House guards. In this case the House guards were genocidal machines hell bent on destroying us and likely extremely pissed we were still around.

"It gets worse." I said, a hand out before she could say more. "I don't think Tsuya decided to trust anyone to just stick to the pact. There's no gentlemen agreement going on here. She went with the heavy handed approach. Got a clean up team of some kind running around wiping out any nail that sticks out too much. Since she likes to use the imperials and they're known to operate on the surface, they might have an executioner squadron running amok up there."

Or a group of Deathless would be more her style. Why leave it to a group of wishy-washy people handing down traditions that could inevitably hit some conscientious objector? Pick a group of undying everlasting soldiers who all signed up for this knowingly and wouldn't change their minds over the years.

"No. There is another force that would make more sense. The protofeathers." Wrath said.

"The… what?"

She stood out of her throne and walked over, wings folding into a skirt around her waist. "We should adjourn for food. As I understand, it is a human tradition to share longer stories over a meal. And this will be a very long story."

"Ah." I grinned, "Still a gourmandizer deep down on the inside I see."

Wrath pouted, puffing up a cheek as if insulted. "No, this is not the reason." She insisted. "Speaking to mother directly has put considerable pressure on my nerves. I find food and novelty helps keep my mind occupied. In general, adult humans have between two thousand and four thousand taste buds in total. I have seven thousand, and am still experimenting with altering parts of them. Fine tuning requires more tests. Also, you did mention you wanted to eat fish."

I shrugged. "As long as you're paying."

Never say no to free fish.

She did, indeed, pay for the meal.

And boy was I in for some culture shock. I'd been getting my meals delivered straight to me by Kidra or the knights before. Now that I was being dragged outside and shaken out of my fugue state, I was starting to realize just how different the Undersider city was in comparison.

The place was a weird mix of fantasy tropes and real living experience. Some parts made sense, others made no sense, and the traditions were all weird.

In the clans, we had a few centralized food courts where two to three dozen food carts surrounded the multi level tables at the center. Mechanical lifters would bring food trays up and down the levels so people could climb ladders in peace, along with designated times when people were allowed in, generally divided up by caste and sleeping hours. Logi handled that part.

Food carts took different spots at different levels, depending on their seniority and ranking. Anything that could be communal property was, in order to reduce the amount of overhead each food cart needed to bring with them. Leftover food got delivered straight to the agrifarmers to do their magic, usually ending up as mushroom feed. I don't know all the details, other than the rumor of stiff competition between carts and micro-wars of their own going down, but generally consolidating space was the name of the game up there. The only exceptions were the House galas and festivities thrown, where they'd pull out all the stops, or within Retainer houses which were rich enough to have their own micocolony, complete with a feast hall for the larger Retainer Houses. Winterscar had one, and we often rented it out to the smaller Houses for example. Well now we did, once Kidra got a hold of the House finances after she became the Winterscar Prime. She was racking income hand over fist for that one.

Down here was a story of opposites.

A single room dedicated to one food cart was something of a generic fantasy trope that kept appearing in all the older books, often times not even a room but an actual building. Novel and confusing the first time I read it, but they appeared everywhere in everything I read, right alongside other staples like elven forests, dwarven fortresses, outdoor parks, human castles, oceans and tropical islands. As I grew older, I learned that some things really were fantasy and other things had actually existed at one point. Like massive glorified wooden sleds that somehow floated on water despite weighing a few hundred tons - with cloth sails that used the wind to push that massive weight across mythical unfrozen oceans.

How that ended up being real but not normal underground dwarven cities was something I still had a hard time wrapping my head around.

Now, surface dwellers liked their festivals. We'd often go long ways to dress up for different occasions, costumes of expensive bright colors to display celebration (And wealth) - music, acting, stage props, the works. I think my favorite was the rising new moon festival, where entire dragons were crafted, needing multiple puppeteers inside to make them come alive along with a whole group of performers singing out the song stories accompanying each. Anytime there was a chance to decorate or play with costumes, the clans took it greedily and went all out to impress their neighbors and get their House names out there. I was used to seeing all kinds of replica props and theme rooms.

Walking into the restaurant felt exactly like that. Complete with waitresses in their expected costumes. As if a House was throwing a gala and had rented and furnished this entire room for the occasion, everyone pretending to be part of a story, all while knowing in a few days the room would be returned to normal since operational costs to keep such a thing going was far out of reach.

Except here it wasn't a story, the restaurant was completely real and had been in operation for years. The staff weren't just the House staff having fun role playing as people from the olden days. The uniforms worn weren't facsimiles made in a few days to look the part - they were completely functional, right down to the slightly faded fabric from the hundreds of washes over a lifetime. Even their act was the sort of weary veteran, having done this song and dance a few hundred thousand times.

As if to spit in the face of anything conventional, the place was larger than the Winterscar hall itself. And we were considered high ranking nobility in the clan.

Undersiders were obscenely rich. No wonder they saw us as savages.

"Seats for two." Wrath said jovially, clearly used to this.

The terrified waitress nodded slowly. "Would you like regular seating, or VIP seating?" She asked, admirably stuttering only once. The rest of the people here were growing silent, watching the Feather stroll in without a care in the world, while I was busy staring at everything except the Feather next to me.

"VIP seating if you would. I have matters to discuss in private." She said.

A nod, a motion to follow, and off we went deeper into the massive room. And here was surprise number two. This restaurant didn't just have one room reserved only for their patrons specifically.

The waitress led us to fucking stairs.

When I thought my jaw couldn't drop lower, it turns out the upper floor was dedicated to single smaller rooms that were sealed off, with only one table at the center. The VIP seating. They even had their own plates and utensils that never left this building.

The waitress welcomed us in and brought out sheets of papers with food items listed there. "Here are the menus, would you like some water to start out with, or do you have a drink in mind?" She asked, this time with far more ease. Shock wearing off as she defaulted back to her usual boilerplate.

Wrath ordered us drinks and food since I had no idea what anything was or how I was supposed to act. "Tamery suggested this location. The VIP rooms in this restaurant were designed for high level transactions, the walls are soundproof and there are no recording devices. An additional sweep with my own sensors confirms their claims. We may speak in confidence here."

"Sure… uh," I floundered a bit, the sheer everything was getting to me. We had a godsdamned window and it showed a view over the city lake. I couldn't make this up even if I tried. "Do you mind if I ask you a bit of general questions about the city? I realize I've been living under a hatch, and there's maybe one or three hundred details I don't understand. If we have the time to talk given the events."

Wrath smiled, outright preening. "As someone who recently learned a great deal about that topic, I would be pleased to let you know more of my city. If Relinquished is coming, the scale of time will be measured in weeks, not minutes. Tamery would remind me often that even with war and strife in the world, it is important to relax and live - as she claims. Go ahead and ask."

"Your city, huh?" I said. "Very possessive of you."

Her smile didn't fade, only growing slightly predatory as she looked out the window to her city. "I suppose this may be a remnant of my starting nature. Spiders are possessive of what we claimed as ours." Then she frowned, flicking her gaze back at me, looking almost confused for a moment.

Wrath's fidgeting had an order to it I learned back when she was Hecate. The feather tips of her wings would start to flicker around, clinking softly against one another, even while folded up tightly. After which her hands cupped each other and thumbs would start kneading the joints. If she still hadn't noticed the signs at that point, the next thing to happen would be a red blush over her cheeks, where she'd finally pick something to stare at in the distance. Usually at that point she'd notice and snap out of whatever bubble of thought she'd been stuck in and quickly school her features back into control.

Interesting thing to note is that I had the order wrong this entire time.

Hecate's tan skin hid the blush long enough to be last place on her typical tells. Wrath's alabaster skin in comparison did nothing to hide that blush, so that showed up almost instantly, before even the hand wringing or feather clinking.

"Something the matter?" I asked, watching her start the motions and immediately filing that into my mental list of things to poke fun at.

She froze, face going slack and the red tint bleeding away from her cheeks. "Nothing is the matter. I only realized a possible error within my systems and will need to review it for later. Now, you had questions?"

We spent a few hours talking shop about the city, and the strange culture down here. As I discovered, I wasn't alone in having a hard time picking apart what was real and what was fictional. Elves were supposed to be fictional, but there were dozens of photos I've seen of elves proudly displaying bows, or posing before a large tree. Wrath added more fuel to the fire showing there was recorded footage of Elves doing impressive things with bows, or walking around fairs. Those had all ended up being staged, just human actors pretending to be elves. Turns out, humans of old also liked acting out stories, so some things of our nature remained the same no matter the era.

On her part, Wrath had access to a far more massive archive of books, only terribly sorted. Being a bookworm and having to integrate quickly into human society while undercover, she thought she could get away with reading a few thousand books and digesting it all.

If Tamery hadn't been there to help Wrath sort through what was normal and not-normal, romance tagged books alone would have gleefully seen her plan burn to the ground.

It was pretty fun all said and done. Wrath had a lot of odd stories about her short time in the city, and some of the scraps she'd been in with Kidra. The two had very quickly setup some unworded gentlewomen's agreement not to cause collateral damage, so fights would often be pushed far out from where they initially started. Wrath didn't want her hard earned city to be blown up, and Kidra didn't want innocent people caught in a crossfire. They compromised and ended up slowly moving their fight over the lake and the pillar rubble whenever they ran into each other.

Talk of fighting eventually led us right back to the fabled protofeathers and more somber topics.

"Like Deathless, there are generations of Feathers where we appear in a wave, usually with slight upgrades from research advancements studied from prior generations. To'Aacar was second generation. Shells were more economic, and easy to manufacture en masse. They were sub-optimized, with many flaws that wouldn't be corrected until later generations." She said.

"Funny, wouldn't have guessed that given his ego."

"His generation wasn't made to fight humanity. They were made to hunt down the first generation and destroy them."

His words back then clicked neatly into place. I was created to hunt down and kill deities. What hope do you have?

"The true threat of the second generation wasn't from optimised construction, or stronger material composition. What they have has been outdated for centuries. Their learned skills and experience over that time span is where their reputation comes from." As Wrath explained more about the troubled history of the machines, it only made me consider how lucky we'd gotten. The fucker had literally been an assassin that hunted rogue Feathers. Tough damn luck, no wonder he caught on to her rebellion so quickly. He was already primed to look for that.

Even worse - the protofeathers, as Wrath described them, were basically walking city-crackers. Requiring entire armies to hold off. And those were Undersider armies, filled with relic armors and weapons. Surface clans were lucky to have twenty relic armors in total.

For the machines to take them down, they needed teams of Feathers working together to grind one down.

"Yep. That would do it." I said. "If those last two protofeathers are missing, they're on the surface. No doubt about it. They'd have vested interests in keeping the surface from being discovered by Relinquished, Tsuya probably cut them a deal. I don't think they'd be in a negotiating mood when they spot a machine army making camp on their side of nowhere."

"Even if we could defeat or placate them, I assume drawing Relinquished to the surface would spell the end of humanity as a whole, yes?" Wrath asked, already knowing the answer.

"Far as I understand it. Lose-lose situation, either we win against two demi-gods and have humanity under risk of being discovered by Relinquished, or - more probable - we lose and your people get massacred. And while the risk of getting discovered isn't exactly certain, humanity hasn't ever been winning against the machines on our own might. We've got a handful of cities after all this time and that's it."

Wrath's halo twitched, circling around slightly as if with a mind of its own. "That has not always been the case." She said. "I have uncovered some history in the archives that shows humanity did nearly make a recovery on its own power."

That was news to me. "When?" I asked, and already realized the answer a moment after.

Cathida was about to become even more of a pain in the ass. By default I had her muted each time I talked to Wrath, but the old bat could still listen in on what we talked about. Which meant she was hearing everything said right now, and had a lot of opinions about it.

There's really only one song surface dwellers knew about that had humanity standing anywhere near a threat to the machines.

The grand Empire of old. Looks like it wasn't quite so much myth and legend.

Next chapter - A dangerous gamble

Book 4 - Chapter 8 - A dangerous gamble

"Around seven hundred years ago, the Deathless and Feathers first appeared." Wrath said, outlining what she'd found in her deeper searches through the machine archive. "At that period, humanity was succeeding in the war effort. A massive empire had been formed and was succeeding at breaking deeper into the stratas, stopped only by the more powerful machines left behind under those layers."

"I really wish you weren't right about this." I grumbled. "Cathida is going to be insufferably smug for at least a month." The old crusader only dug her heels further into the ice whenever pushed about the subject of being civil with Wrath.

Half my attention was on Wrath's words, the other half was on the delightful second helping of fish and mushroom stuffed crab 'ragouetté' - or however it's pronounced. Some kind of dish served in a crab shell the size of my palm, with a blend of brown meaty mushrooms and savory crab bits. Supposedly, one would scoop up the contents and pair with the breaded fish bite by bite.

Also I had yet to choke on fishbones, so they were really good at picking those out.

Not that I wasn't paying full attention as Wrath explained the most important parts of human history only a few ever had the source of truth to, but this was fish after all. "Hard to imagine Relinquished let things get that far out of hand." I said, cheeks puffed up and already shoving more into my gullet. "Doesn't she eradicate cities growing too big? Pilgrims always say cities have to remain small-ish otherwise the machines come down hard. Here, she let an entire empire walk over her."

"Analyzed records on past machine aggression prove that point, yes." Wrath said, taking an absentminded bite out of her empty crab shell, as if it were bread. "How the empire gained a foothold or grew as large as it did was not something I was able to recover, yet. I have suspicions. The keypoint being that an emperor led the human armies."

"Led the charge directly in the fight? Or led from a command tent far away from the battle? Also, you know the plates are edible too, right?" I said, after she'd finished her crab shell and was left with an empty shining metal plate.

Her eyes looked down at the plate for a half second, before glaring back at me, narrowing with suspicion. "I will not fall for your tricks." She huffed. "I already tried once and Tamery made it clear that this was not done."

"Sure, but what if she's wrong and you can eat some plates?" I asked, innocently.

A moment later, there was a knock at the door. The waitress passed through, carrying a tray of similar plates all loaded with more steaming food, all the while taking the empty plates back, cutting me off from my plans. This would be her third time showing up, and she seemed more and more confused with each trip.

She'd stressed to us that some of the meals we'd picked were made for a group of four people. That hadn't stopped Wrath and sounded more like a challenge to me.

Portion size was something Undersiders didn't do well in my opinion. On the surface, we'd have plenty of food grown cheaply and in mass quantities, so the calorie intake was high. It needed to be, the cold up there always snuck through the walls even with the heating making a constant fight of it.

Not to mention walking in the snow or climbing cliffsides to reach sites of interest was not something that could be done by weaklings, especially lugging around a full evo-suit. So all clans mandate a certain level of fitness which can't be reached on a small diet. That sort of requirement trickled down to all the different castes, each requiring their own specific set of fitness goals, with Retainers being the most strict. We did go out into said snow and cliffsides while the rest of the castes only needed to be prepared for emergency situations.

All the castes except for the Logi, who were fueled by pure caffeine and spite as far as I knew. But they were the exception to a lot of things already, so no surprise there.

Weight moves weight was the old adage whenever someone was working to reach the requirements. More hours in the gym, put a full evo-suit when going practice climbing in the hangar - and most importantly, when in doubt, eat more lime-grilled crickets.

Down here, the Undersiders clearly didn't have that kind of culture, or any insect based diets either. All their plates were tiny things, more art than anything actually filling. Lot of things were far more soft and tender too, not much crunch anywhere. Other than crab shells and plates. No wonder they were so short compared to us. Felt like a giant walking through the city, which isn't something I'm used to up on top.

The waitress put down the new dishes before us, a set of sauces of different colors along with a foot long grilled fish to be shared together. The white-red meat had already been stripped, cut into bite sized pieces, leaving just the head as decoration. At least, decoration to me. Wrath was most certainly going to be eating that at some point.

"Is this still raw?" I asked, taking a closer look at the dish.

The waitress nodded. "Certain fish species can be eaten raw when prepared correctly, and of good enough grade. This is some of the finest."

Wrath was also nodding along. "I had earlier arguments with Tenisent about the viability of eating raw fish. The next time you meet him, please let him know he was wrong and I was right."

I thought about eating raw fish, shrugged, and went with it. So far the food had been pretty good. Maybe a week of working away at my projects had helped settle my nerves enough to start enjoying small things like this again. A few more bubbly drinks of fruits I hadn't heard before were set down and the waitress left us alone with the next course.

"As I understood it, the emperor was on the front line as vanguard, in every battle." Wrath said, already starting on her side.

"That doesn't sound much like what an emperor would do," I said, trying out the first few sauces with the raw fish strips. "Even commanders don't go into the front lines, much less a political busy body like an emperor would."

"Correct." Wrath said. "The emperor must have had combat abilities that allowed them to survive the front lines. And they must have been powerful abilities to justify continuously placing themselves in each battle. That leads me to a possible conclusion that this emperor was the lynchpin and reason humanity was winning at the time. At a lower strata, there is a known teleportation network which would allow travel anywhere needed. Once they breached into this strata, the humans would have become a plague to deal with."

I thought about it from Relinquished's point of view. "A strong emperor wiping out machine armies somehow. Maybe with the occult? Possibly a Deathless." The pale lady, able to lead a massive machine army and watching them get destroyed by a single human leading the charge. "I sort of see where the protofeathers were imagined from. Relinquished tried to copy whatever the emperor was about, didn't she? Are there such a thing as proto-deathless? Do we know more about this emperor?"

She shook her head. "My connection to the archive was interrupted at that point, when I had sent out for more detail. I know nearly nothing about mankind's emperor. What I know about Deathless are generic details about their behavior patterns and expected combat techniques. No history, only individual files."

"Mankind's emperor…" I thought, slowly destroying the dish between us. I was thinking back on the mite prophecy that Wrath had once told me. Made sense this sort of figure was outright listed as part of the prophecy if they were powerful enough to squash armies.

"'To draw out the final enemy'." Wrath said, finishing the second part of that snippet. "It's clear to me the mites believe this old empire will be returning in some fashion and that the previous emperor has possibly been dormant this entire time. Or captured and needs to be freed."

"To draw out the final enemy sounds a lot like a challenge statement." I said, adding to what we knew. "You think the emperor reappearing will cause Relinquished to show up on a battlefield herself?"

"I suspect that is the case. Relinquished didn't stir when I unlocked files for the protofeathers, but data fragments of the human emperor did. This must be something that she classified as more dangerous."

"I should pay a visit to the local imperial church. See if they can tell me more about their songs and stories. Maybe we might find some details there." I said. "Plus, it might give a head start on your quest for the mites."

Wrath looked thoughtful for a moment. "How… how far are you willing to involve yourself in this?"

I could tell what she was really asking here. Right now, we were figuring out ways to get her people to safety. Once that was settled, Wrath would likely go back to paying back the debt she owed the mites. Which would involve her looking around for the emperor and probably getting in touch with the other aspects of that prophesy.

Strictly speaking, I could handle what I needed to here in the city, and head back home to twiddle my thumbs. Die happy of old age at some point. If I was feeling generous, I could even sell her some of my newly crafted items over the years. At a steep price and some haggling of course, I still had my integrity.

Father's words floated through my head. I don't know where this road leads, yet I believe it is worth following.

"You want me to come with you, after we're done with all this? For the prophecy you're dealing with, I mean." I asked, cutting right into the heart of it.

Wrath looked outright guilty. "I am aware this is not your fight, and asking for help in this task would be… extreme of a question, when you could simply return to the surface and live out the rest of your life in relative peace. I know you are already stretching your hospitality by staying and assisting with this."

"What was your plans otherwise for the mites, if your people were safe?" I asked, feeling curious about Wrath's future.

"I would remain hidden on the surface for a few years to grow my combat skills and solidify my skillet of fractals, before I attempted to follow through with the mite prophesy myself. Or at least hidden near the top layer, if not outside."

I munched on my fish, thinking it through. "What exactly could I even bring to the table here? I'm just a regular human under the armor in the end."

She shook her head. "Regardless of what happens, I will need a human specialist with me. Deathless, Feathers and machines all have a seven fractal limit, while regular humans do not seem to have any limits. Out of all the humans I know, you are the one who has the most experience and skill in the occult."

"You want me as an occult specialist?"

She nodded.

Getting yanked into this sort of mission was basically asking to die along the way. This was the sort of calling for Deathless or heroes of myth. And I wasn't in either of those two categories. Strictly human here, and exactly as squishy. Sure I had the occult, a few nasty tricks up my armored mitts along with some bad ideas I could throw out. But sending a human on that mission was basically asking them to melt the wastes.

I thought back to the clan, on any unfinished business and found myself oddly content with how everything had turned out. Also, death in this world wasn't quite so permanent as it had been before. I was in a position mostly Deathless got to be in. Even if I got iced, so long as I prepared ahead of time, I might pull one over the reaper. It wasn't exactly a free airlift out of the scrapshit, Father was still stuck as a bodiless specter. But he was alive, so there was still a chance to get him back into the real world somehow.

I grabbed another strip of fish, dipped it, and shoved it in my mouth all while saying words that would change the direction of my life forever after. "Sure, guess I could tag along."

Wrath smiled fondly, looking relieved. I brushed off her thanks and went back on topic, mostly because I was feeling a little embarrassed for having committed myself to this insane quest, but it wasn't just to do with helping Wrath. There was a real chance to do good in the world, to really help fix it. The mite prophecy, if it was true, was something more on the level of ending Relinquished. This was what Knight Retainers were all about, we'd taken our vows to be the bulwark that stood against the storm.

"There's a few other smaller religions in the city from what Kidra's told me about. I'm sure a historical event like an empire probably had some impact on the other religions, not just Imperials. There has to be their version of it in the smoke."

Wrath raised an eyebrow. "You are attempting to avoid speaking to the crusader engram within your armor, aren't you?"

"Not at all," I lied through my teeth. "What could possibly make you think that?"

"Eventually, you will need to speak to them." She said, clearly unconvinced. "This engram might contain more information than the local chapter here will."

"Eventually. That said, if they hadn't found the emperor by now, clearly they're missing something already."

She mulled that over, fork held still, giving me a free chance to snag some more fish before she ate the rest.

"There is one possible manner of recovering more information at this point." She said. "If it works, it would contain information that the imperial religion may not be able to obtain on their own. However, this method would almost certainly be dangerous."

Another source of information that the imperials would not be able to tap into? That would exclude any Undersider or surface cities. Gods above, even the slavers and raider compounds wouldn't be safe from being looted by angry enough Imperials if they were hiding information on the emperor.

That left only three places the imperials couldn't get their golden gauntlets around: Deep underground sealed off secrets, the mite's archives and the machine one. I don't think we were going to go searching around randomly hoping to stumble on a historical artifact out in the world, and poking the machines with a stick was equally not a great idea. "The mites. You want to go see if they know anything. And if you're asking me, you want me to go the way of a mitespeaker?"

I was starting to see why she needed an occult specialist. If anyone put some thought into it, it was clear the mites were the greatest occultists in the world.

Wrath shook her head instead, looking horrified. "No. Please don't follow the steps of mitespeakers. I've spoken with the mite collective once, and it nearly destroyed my systems. Humans speaking to them are said to have their minds shattered, and I believe this." She stopped, and then had the audacity to look sheepish at her next words. "That said, there is still something we can learn from them."

"Sounds like you're about to sell me something shady."

She frowned, "No monetary transactions needed. It's more to do with my signature being too well known and recognizable. Programs I send that do not trace back to my signature are pre-constructed and have limited ability to fend for themselves in the digital sea. Things on the other side are constantly evolving and changing dynamically, a program that's static or not dynamic enough will be consumed by others."

"You want my help to generate programs? I'm handy with software but no Logi. And I get the feeling you already know more about the subject than I ever could, you're a machine." I said. "Just because I can hook a few pieces of metal with some duct tape and make a weapon out of it, doesn't mean I'm smart at other things. You're bringing me on as the occult specialist here, not the charismatic speech giver or heavy fighter. At best, I'd put in an application to be the rogue with a heart of gold. And a matching wallet."

I've learned from Anarii a long time ago, there's different kinds of smart. Someone who's incredibly gifted with math is not going to be an equally amazing airspeed pilot or a master speechmaker. Field of expertise existed for a reason, nobody was bright in all things. The clans worked as stratified castes for a reason.

"We will not need a machine, nor a program. Mitespeakers must have some method of connecting their minds to the digital ocean in order to speak to the mites. This means humans diving into the digital realm isn't an impossibility. Tenisent displayed a similar ability before, being able to connect to and manipulate machinery with the Occult. I suspect we can co-opt this method and reuse it."

The bunker. The turrets. It had been an isolated system, but still a system. And Father had infiltrated and commandeered it somehow. Well, it's been on my to-do list for some time, right under not-dying. "You really think I could connect with the machine archive using the soul fractal?"

A knock on the door put a pause to our discussion as the waitress marched back in and took the empty plates away. By this point I was feeling pretty stuffed, so I politely declined ordering something more, settling for some water. Wrath, of course, had no such problems and readily pointed out her next few meals. The waitress noted it all down and equally answered anything Wrath had. General taste, favorite recommendations, and no, she didn't know any meal that had edible plates on the menu but she'll check with the kitchen.

The doors closed and Wrath continued while I washed down the last bits of food. "The theory is sound. If you can access the digital ocean directly, you may have a chance of recovering more information than I could. Simply avoid the mite or machine controlled sections and dive down into the older machine segments."

"Father still needed a direct physical connection, does something like that exist for the machine archives?"

She shook her head. "The archives themselves? Yes, however they are located at the lowest strata. Fortunately, you don't need those. So long as you can connect to the wider digital sea, you could traverse through there into the archives with some directions. Terminals built by Relinquished do exist at all stratas and serve as command and control nodes, in multiple locations. All machines know of them and use them to communicate with one another. I overloaded a few when I fought against To'Aacar."

"Ah, there's the shady part of the deal." I raised an eyebrow, "Should I bring a box of chocolates with me when we stroll up to machine central? Might up my chances of survival."

"Giving me the chocolates would increase your chances of survival more." Wrath said, crossing her arms and looking miffed.

"And why's that?" I asked.

"I know locations of terminals that are not controlled or monitored by machines. Much safer."

"What terminals would have access to the digital part of the world that machines don't contr- oh. Right. Mites. Of course it'd be them." The answer was so obvious in hindsight I couldn't help but slap my head. Father and I have even gone searching for one directly while we were trying to escape the first layer.

Wrath gave a slight nod. "The mites do not always make functioning terminals, however they do exist."

"All right, so we can sneak me into the digital sea, but how do we keep me alive in there? What sort of dangers would a human soul be up against?"

I could tell from the shifty look she had that the answer wasn't going to be nice. "Something like this hasn't been done before, so I can not be certain. However, we do have ways to mitigate this. You could bring Tenisent with you to help ward off danger. I know he learns and adapts to any means of combat rapidly, doing so as a soul inside a digital prison was not out of his reach. Regardless, we will start with practice first. With smaller systems inside the city, to test out the theory. After, I can attempt to simulate attacks to see how you would fare against those. We can also run tests to see how much help or direction I can offer. What do you think?"

"Can I still sign up as the rogue instead of the warlock or is it too late?" I asked.

She leaned forward, hands under her chin with a awful smile spreading and I knew I'd been caught. "Well, I do need an archive stolen, that seems like perfect rogue work according to definition. When is the earliest you can start?"

Walked right into that one.

So. My first act as the heroic mook in this story was to steal from the machine grand archive.

Next chapter - Training inside the gates of hell

Book 4 - Chapter 9 - Training inside the gates of hell

For our first attempt into the digital world, the setup turned out to be mundane.

"This location is clear of any possible spyware." Wrath said, walking me into the room, which had been mostly a repurposed office.

I turned on the lights and strolled on in. A bunch of old leather chairs with desks before them greeted my sights. I could practically smell the cracked leather coated with dust. But we were looking for subtilty, so no point in using something people walk nearby often. I took a seat on one of the chairs and reclined backwards, hearing the whole thing creak louder than a rifle shot.

Wrath placed a large box she'd been carrying on the table in front, and swiftly hooked wires into outlets. Lights blinked on the box. "Wireless signal connected. The router is operational."

A moment later, a stream of black smoke trailed out of her hands and arms sinking into the box's seams. She nodded after a half minute, the smoke returning back to wherever it came from. "I've inscribed a soul fractal within the inside panel. A server has been launched and running within instance. Begin when you are ready."

"All right, here goes." I muttered, reaching a hand out and touching the bulky box. I could feel the soul fractal on the other side of the thin metal, powered by currents connecting back to the machine. A moment later, I reached out for it and jumped inside.

A single tendril of soul remained connected to my limp body, while concepts bloomed into life around me. The largest of which was the router itself. There was something more to it. A gateway almost. Father had told me this was how he had felt while inside Winterscar's soul fractal. That there were things within the armor he could reach out to and command. Much to the armor's distaste.

"Do you see any difference from your current soul fractal?" Wrath asked, voice sounding muted even after all my practice on keeping some senses while hooked into the soul trance. "This fractal should be in direct connection to the operating system. Can you access it?"

"Definitely something in here." I muttered out, trying to focus on the elusive concepts nearby the fractal. A tendril of soul waved around blindly until it hit something more solid. The concept of the router itself. And with it, a gateway. I found a part of myself flowing into it. Sinking down into water, as if I were in the deep end of the clan baths. Except there was not a person around me, no end in sight, just the twilight blue water, bubbles rising up as I sank down, body limp, awareness expanding outwards. My mind had to be filling in some of the gaps, trying to put meaning and structure to something completely alien.

Motes of data were floating around me, looking like sparkling dust in the not-water. Loose, moving around without much purpose. Redundant messengers, pinging back and forth.

Further down I sank and started to really understand where I was. My soul was somehow moving around in the system, despite remaining within the soul fractal. Or at least, that's what I currently thought was happening. More concepts bloomed into life around me as I explored - Data banks, ports of access, storage, monitors, all kinds of smaller details. They formed into physical objects. Usually cubes or rings, all moving around each other. The space in between was large enough for me to land on and stand.

I had a body. Or the concept of a body. Or maybe this was just a proxy of some kind. A ping came along with a package of data, sent directly my way. It hit my body lightly, simply alerting me someone had triangulated where I'd appeared.

A look down the direction of the ping and I saw Wrath. She hadn't done anything to change her appearance inside the digital realm. Although, to be fair, neither had I.

"Well. This is interesting." I said, looking down at my hands and flexing them slightly. "Didn't think I'd have arms or a head in here. Thought I'd be more of a disembodied soul, or just the entire world pitch black and filled with numbers."

The digital sea around me was murky, as if I were back in the bunker, inside the flooded sections. The metal ring I stood on wasn't really solid ground, but felt more like a barrier that separated this small section of the world from a larger wider one out there. If I jumped through the ring's center, down into the water's depth, it would send me elsewhere. Far away. Water both surrounded me but didn't. I could move just as fast as I thought.

"As I understand, fractals operate on concepts." Wrath said. "The digital world is different to the physical one, yet we perceive it the same way. And so it is molded in such a way."

"How exactly do I appear to you? Because to me, I think I look the same and you do to."

She tilted her head. "A mixture of inputs. Your digital avatar and signature matches what Feathers and other machines with soul fractals would appear as. It is difficult to put into words."

"So this is how machines all normally operate in the sea?"

"No. Simpler machines do not care to keep a sense of physical self." She waved a hand through the water, bits of programs and particles trailing behind the swirl. None of those appeared as people, only primordial plankton. "Only machines that own a shell outside the digital sea care to appear physically in any shape. The rest of the machines within the digital sea do not use any form of physical representation, even if their processing and complexity outstrip the lessers. Everything you see around you is an illusion, I suspect the soul fractal is a key component that dictated if an entity sees itself as a unified concept."

I sort of understood what she meant. The colorful coral that grew on the metal ring like corrosive rust wasn't so much as coral at all but a stack of temporarily stored data, frozen into solid useable shape. The soul sight was twisting my senses together.

"So, what I'm hearing is that only machines with soul fractals see the world like this?" I asked, curious. I knew Feathers had soul fractals, I'd seen it in the soul sight. I hadn't known other machines also had them.

"Correct." Wrath confirmed. "Regular artificial intelligences cannot develop true sapience without a soul fractal. The highest they could gain would be sentience. Soul fractals are generally included in machines that require fractal powers or better creative intelligence, which is all of us. All machines operating in the world have soul fractals, in order to connect to the Unity fractal."

"The unity fractal?"

She nodded. "A fractal capable of unifying concepts together, regardless of distance. Machines connect to one another through this fractal. And mother can connect to any of us as well. The greatest use of the unity fractal is as a safeguard for machines souls. We cannot move from fractal to fractal like you do. In order to move to a different fractal, we use Unity to connect to a far away backup. This is how Feathers are immortal. Each time we are near death, we unify our soul fractal to another far underground and relocate there."

She gave me more bits of trivia on that fractal, and how she'd seen it used. The unity fractal could unify concepts together, if both objects had been inscribed with that fractal. There were certainly a lot of interesting ideas I could think about on how to abuse this fractal. It was apparently a pretty big deal to machines, even if it was relatively mundane in what it did.

"I am not sure why, but Relinquished always has a connection to the unity fractal. Anything inscribed with it, is by default connected to her. Any use of the Unity fractal is connected to Mother." Wrath said when I started probing for possible uses. "There are some limits. Unity goes both ways. Anything she refuses to risk for herself cannot be leveraged against us. For example, when she is connected to me in an audience, I cannot tell where she is so she cannot tell where I am either. She must have a soul fractal somewhere in the world, and it's location would be the most guarded secret she has. So she will never engage in anything that might reveal her back."

"You seem pretty calm about having a literal spying device built into your system. Even if it's limited to just talking, it still sounds like a dangerous setup."

"The majority of the time, the fractal remains dormant and out of her mind. While it's powers as a lifeguard are powerful, it operates more like an unattended leash would at this point. The protofeathers must have been able to cut ties with the fractal, it's possible we can replicated this. Part of the reason I intend to get more information out of the archive."

"Can't just, you know, cut it out with a blade?" I asked, shrugging.

"The thought had never occurred to me. How silly of me." Wrath said, arms folding up. "That was sarcasm."

"Noted. So what's the actual reason you can't?"

"Machine soul fractals are our home. In this case, physically cutting off a part would be fatal, leaving a hole in the soul fractal that no longer protects us from the world outside. " She thought, and came with a better analogy. "It would be as if your mask was broken on the surface, leaving the surface air in contact with your skin."

I gave a shiver at that. I'd seen frostbite from plenty of people returning from expeditions. Retainers described it as if their digits had been outright set on fire the moment skin was exposed. She got the wrong idea from my shiver. "If the worse happens and mother discovers us before we have a method of cutting off the unity fractal, my current plan is to shut off all power connected to it. It's the least destructive method I can think of. Fractals cannot operation without an electric current. No current, no active ability. The affects on my soul should be minimal, so long as I keep that portion of the fractal active."

"What actually is a machine soul in the first place, how are they created?" I asked. "Because it seems pretty natural for a human to have one, when does a machine become smart enough to get one?"

She frowned, thinking. "The event happens naturally when an empty soul fractal is powered and connected to a machine with a neuromorphic mind past a certain threshold in complexity. That's the only known requirement so far. Range of when the soul coalesces is also in debate, some more complicated shells can generate a soul within a few minutes, while more simple minded machines require a few days."

That was a sentence to unpack. I had to ask Wrath one by one to define the terms she was using here, but the gist of it was that machines could only get so smart with the tech humanity had. They tried to push the boundaries by making the machines operate more like the human brain would, and it did work - somewhat. Neuromorphic computers were a step in the right direction for making machines more creative, but they came with limits to processing speed, and still hit a bottleneck.

Once the soul fractal was hooked up, that's when the neuromorphic part really took off and developed further than it could have. Fractal tech really did change the game entirely when it came to advancements, and humans of that day were constantly discovering new fractals to use. Then the war happened and everything stagnated. "Mother has not continued or advanced fractal technology since." Wrath said, wrapping up her lecture.

"She hasn't? What? If I were an evil AI goddess with the entire world to play with, I'd be doing all kinds of research experiments. Who knows what I could discover with that kind of reach over that timeline?"

Wrath nodded. "Fractal archives are not stored in local systems such as my shell. Relinquished considers it too large of a risk if we were captured and the data extracted. So I can only give you answers based on the few time I've connected to the archives directly. The only confirmed data point is that there has not been new entries into the fractal archives since the war ended, at least publically. Nor have I found any projects to research new fractals. This is one of a multitude of strange behaviors I've noticed from Mother. A part of why I still wish to dive into the archives despite the danger. Not only to discover a means to hide my people from her sight, but also understand my enemy better." She looked up, peering through the water surrounding us. To the surface, where data faded away back into I/O ports that led to the physical world. "Eventually, I will have to face her. The more I understand who and what she is, the better prepared I can be for that moment."

The murky water felt more and more clear the more I attuned myself to the soul fractal, and let my soul sight be the one in command. "If the dive operation worked out, I'll keep an eye for info on Relinquished." I promised. It wasn't just because she's a friend, I was also curious about what the goddess of machines was really up to on her silver throne.

"Appreciated. Now, we should begin testing combat operations within the digital sea."

I nodded, straight back to business then. "Are you going to be generating some simple programs to fight off, or a training course?"

Another head tilt. "We'll spar in the more traditional sense. Humans already understand combat and self-defense as a concept using your own body. We'll start there. Tenisent recommended this."

Of course he fucking would. That bastard.

She took a combat stance. "Direct methods are often the most effective, as he told me."

"I strongly object." I said, quickly, hands snapping up to guard my jaw, a cautious foot step backwards.

Not that it made any difference in this world.

"Your objection is noted." She said and struck out with a palm in my direction. A wall of willpower hit me like an intercept airspeeder and sent me flying off the edge of the ring.

All right then. I need to file a complaint.

First because she hadn't actually hit me with any kind of physical punch, so that had been misleading. And second because swimming back was an entire adventure on its own.

And as it turned out, I should have filed multiple complaints, because it progressively got worse and worse each day.

Getting beat up in the digital world didn't leave any lasting effects on the body. No amount of programs stinging my hands and feet, no amount of willpower walls slamming into me, nor even swords stabbing right through my chest. This was both a blessing and a terrible, horrible, curse. Pain was still felt, this time more as a mind-game where my body expected the pain and so it manifested, but besides a bit - or a lot - of pain, nothing permanent occurred. I don't think my digital body was actually my soul at all, but rather some kind of digital avatar I commanded from my pilot seat back on the side of the router.

Wrath had some amount of mercy in her. She'd often make sure I'd get thrown off into the sea itself, so that I wouldn't crush my digital body into a wall or rock. I'd eventually get slowed, and then start sinking to the next floating geometric object, or would glide through the waters back to where I'd been kicked off.

This wasn't where the complaints would come in. No, there was an entire monster lurking in the digital sea all of us had to contend with. Prowling around, maw filled with sharp teeth ready to beat down anything.

Father.

As he described it, everything to do with the soul revolved around willpower. And the digital sea was far more malleable to a soul than the real world was. Once he got involved, things got ugly.

Basically, I'm saying his fighting style was pure brute strength.

Wrath's attacks felt like a four hundred pound hammer to the chest, but I could reliably deflect or match that power if I saw it coming. Father's was an outright continental shelf speeding in my direction with the words 'stop' written down in the dictionary as a funny joke. I had to get smart to deal with anything he threw out. Both of us had to, as we eventually ended up teaming up in training against him.

Wrath was excellent at generating a bunch of distraction programs that would nip at his heels or otherwise annoy him long enough for her to slip away. I couldn't code anything out of my head, and the bits of software training I knew how to do were woefully underpowered compared to what a Feather could generate.

I did find my own way of surviving the sledgehammer punches - specifically the digital sea itself and all the floating pieces that comprised it. I couldn't generate things wholesale like Wrath could, but I could connect to what already existed and command them to change because the occult was a weapon that cheated a lot of rules. A pillar could rise here, a ring could collapse there. And if I had good enough focus, I could even have the geometry of the stage change up. The very water of the sea could be bent with enough understanding of what it really was.

Watching Wrath think her mental barriers were strong enough to resist a hit from me was great since it wasn't the hit itself that did the work, but the surging tide following it. She'd get blown off into the water with an angry scowl, and try to zip right back and make it my problem.

Dealing with programs that didn't hold a soul fractal was far easier in comparison. All I had to do was reach a hand out with my mind, connect and then crush. The complexity and power of the program would delay how long it took to break, but eventually I'd find a way. They could fight back, often with metaphorical teeth, trying to take bites out of me. That didn't end well for them, the closer they were to me, the easier it was to throw my willpower around.

Father didn't have that kind of finesse, but then again that monster didn't need any. In all our practice free-for-all bouts, it usually ended up with Wrath and I coming to a very quick and understood agreement to work together, or we'd both get literally punched out of the digital world. Take too much damage, and the sense of self would vanish away, throwing me painfully back into my soul fractal as a wounded blob.

Apparently, even a machine could feel pain, which was a surprise to me so at least I wasn't alone in the suffering.

The three of us practicing was harsh, but interesting. Still, that wasn't where the bulk of my complaints aimed for.

It was when Kidra got involved, because of course she would. Then things went off script.

Let me preface this in the kindest way possible - my dear sister is an evil traitor and should never be trusted again.

"Again." Kidra said, hand stretched out, a sword materializing into the digital world by her will, something we'd all learned to do.

Father nodded somberly, flicking a replica of the family occult knife in his hand, spinning it around back into position. He took his usual stance, waiting for us to regather our forces.

My dear sister gave me a glare, since I hadn't gotten back up on my feet. "Please." I begged. "He stabbed me twelve times last round."

"He wouldn't have, had you not tried to run when he charged." She said. "You panicked, failed to trust your team and paid for it. I would have reached you in time if you had stood your ground."

"What, you're asking me to hold off that angry blender with two daggers?" I said, pointing my broken longsword at the man in question. Father returned the glare with an icy calm look. I knew if we didn't hurry up and get back up and ready, he'd charge at us early. He did that last time.

"He modulates his strike speed when fighting you to match your limits." Kidra said, taking stance. "You might not notice it, but I do. You could have stood your ground."

She had the audacity to give me a quick kick in the chest when I still didn't comply. I grunted some more complaints as I stood back up, willing my longsword to mend itself back into one piece.

Father watched us as if nothing were wrong in the world. "Begin." He said. And then charged forward for another bout.

Now, why was all of this my sister's fault? Because out of all of us, the bloody battle maniac loved fighting enough to want this kind of thing, and smart enough to realize it was possible. Kidra pointed this out within minutes of talking to her about the experience. There was no returning from that.

And why have only us five train when we had the entire clan's elite knights to join the fun? All of them except for clan lord Atius, who wasn't able to do any of this. Wrath and Journey would have been in his airspeeder on that, but both happened to have digits and metal for a brain which let them easily swim anywhere in the digital sea.

Further out into the digital misty water, I could see the other platforms and geometry floating with combatants from the clan equally practicing their techniques, sometimes not even horizontally. Directly above us, as if mirrored, I saw Sagrius fighting with three other Winterscar knights as a team against a few clan elites from different houses. Gravity was more a suggestion in this world. But the closest duel happening was on my left, slightly tilted at an angle, between two familiar snarling opponents, clashing blades with genuine hate against one another.

Wrath and Cathida.

Journey itself hadn't really cared to join our training, even though by all reason it should have been able to. It had a soul fractal, a soul, and a mechanical brain capable of intelligent thought. It still only cared to protect its user in the physical world and had no issue watching me get shanked again and again here.

That is, up until Wrath literally connected the server we were using to the armor, forcing its hand. Technically, this section of the digital sea was all within Journey's local systems now.

Given the intrusion, it decided on its own to pick the best engram it had to fight off the invaders, which was Cathida. And for once she wasn't complaining about all this.

Chaos ensued, now that Cathida had a means to vent her frustration about the Feather in the most direct possible manner. On the other hand, Wrath got a very well matched fighting partner in exchange. Especially since this version of Cathida wasn't human and wasn't limited by human speed of thought. In addition to having a perfect memory recall of all surface technique's she'd seen me, Kidra or the clan knights perform. That put her on the same level as Wrath, and a lifetime of intuition got her over the edge. The crusader seemed to be actually enjoying herself, but that was obvious. She was winning most of the fights and getting to stab a Feather in the process, on top of insulting her the entire time. This was some kind of heaven to her.

Wrath had started neutral to Cathida's taunts and feelings, but quickly learned to develop a genuine hate-friendship. Hatemanship. Some kind of abomination like that. No Feather I knew of enjoyed getting stomped into the ground again and again, and Wrath proved to be no exception to this.

I feared that Wrath was learning the wrong vocabulary. She'd recently started trying to taunt back, like a hesitant cook figuring out how to use the right order of spices from a new crate of goods. That only encouraged Cathida to double down, which in turn did the same for Wrath, and so forth.

I'll grudgingly admit my skills in combat were growing by leaps and bounds now that there was no safety. In the past, I'd have to train with hard plastic swords and when I'd get too many bruises, we'd need to stop the training to recover. So most of the teaching was repeating katas and movements until they came naturally, with hand-holding spars occasionally happening once I had healed from the last time.

This kind of training was directly hands on, and everyone in this madhouse except for me was having an absolute blast with it. Bloodthirsty monsters. To them this was some kind of warrior afterlife paradise, where they got to fight to the death again and again without fear of every really dying.

Father charged into Kidra and I, delivering a quick flourish, slice, feint and backstep. Kidra tried to match him and that last backstep in the string of moves had been to avoid her follow-up counters.

Meanwhile, I just had my sword hand cut off instead within the first second into the fight.

Again.

This time I gritted through the flash of pain, yanked the sword out of my rapidly dissolving dismembered hand before it hit the ground, and went right back into the fight with my left hand. That was apparently the right move to make, as Father parried my strikes, took a few more steps backwards to continue the spar with Kidra. Instead of kicking Kidra a few hundred meters backwards and stabbing me twelve times again for doing the wrong move, like he'd done last time.

His training methods left a lot to be desired. Mostly in mercy.

Three more days of this before Wrath considered us ready to go dive into the machine archives. A very long three days.

Next chapter - Secrets of the machine archives

Book 4 - Chapter 10 - Secrets of the machine archives

The mite terminal was embedded inside a small cave halfway up a cliffside in the middle of nowhere. How Wrath knew about it, I wasn't going to ask.

This time around the mites went with a hidden laboratory theme. A human one at least. Or it gave off the impression of someone who thought they knew humans had tried to come up with ideas. There were chairs inside the hidden room, some made with five legs, others looked more like morphed stools, welded together seamlessly into the image of a chair. Desks where there too, not always level surface, along with monitor screens displaying gibberish. Lots of user interface linework, graphs, numbers, scrolling letters, everything needed to make the place look like a crazy Reacher's home away from home. Odd place considering there was no way up here except to climb the cliffside. Wasn't even visible from the ground.

Which made the couch at the back of the cavern all the more strange. Especially that it did look to be the most functional and comfortable thing inside this room. The entire place was animated as well, light blinking around while a large bundle of thicker cables connected the center mite terminal to all the lab equipment and desks surrounding it.

White granite tiles made of smooth stone were the bedrock for the large central pillar, to which Wrath walked up and tapped the terminal's side a few times, as if poking a sleeping beast.

"It is operational. Functionality at eighty three percent. Some ports lead to disconnected ends, however there is one strong connection directly into the general digital sea." She walked around the terminal and I followed behind, watching her find a small port.

A cable was connected from the palm of her hand to the input, and all the screens flashed with yellow and red. "Connection speed is adequate for our purpose. I am inscribing two soul fractals into the system."

"Ready?" I asked, getting comfortable on a seat I looted from the lab and scooted over closer to the terminal side.

Wrath nodded. "I will keep in contact with you through text messages. Once you've reached the archive, communication between us will be lost. I will guard the cavern entrance and make sure your physical bodies do not come into danger while you are on the other side. You remember all the steps to take in the digital sea, yes?"

Father's voice grunted from the necklace I carried. "We've prepared. We know what to do. Begin the mission."

The terminals flashed some more text, then all turned green. "Connection established. Return safely once the mission is complete." Wrath said.

The soul fractals she'd inscribed inside the mite terminal were clear and easy to see with my soul sight. I stretched a tendril out, taking a seat inside. Father must have been doing the same to the other fractal, since I felt his presence follow into the same server the terminal existed in.

Both of us materialized inside the digital realm, and what a strange landscape this was. The water was still there, only the geometric shapes that had served as landmarks for the servers Wrath had us train in were not quite so clear cut. Instead, there was more solid ground than water here, and all the geometry looked far more jagged and organic, like metal chunks with some general form to them. Dim blue crystals sprouted from the majority, forming statues and shapes. Weapons like spears, swords, hammers and others, wielded by deformed people. All of it shattered, as if caught in an internal explosion frozen in time.

Very eerie.

"Advance until you find the exit gate." Wrath said, voice ever present within, followed by a ping showing the direction.

Father strode past me, armor appearing around him same as it had in his life. I followed behind, wondering what the actual digital sea would look like. I'd only seen isolated servers so far.

The world grew more unhinged, twisting directions and shifting gravity until we reached what looked to be the center of the terminal. We hadn't run into anything, the mite terminal had been devoid of enemies or friends. Nothing but shattered geo-organic shapes. Until we reached a vast abyss surrounded by a hexagon gateway. Crystalline matter broke off periodically, floating around lazily in the water murk, sinking into it. More growing like tumors on the gate edges, only to break anew.

"This is the gate." Wrath said. "From there, you will need to be cautious and quiet. I've mapped and prepared the closest connection to the archives."

"Do we just step inside?" I asked, "Because last time I fell down into an abyss like this, it wasn't a great tourist experience. And the guide was also pretty cranky the whole way."

Father scoffed, but kept his gaze down through the gate.

"Yes. You will need to jump into the gate. It will handle the rest. I am unsure the second jump through an abyss will be more pleasent, however I believe you are a big strong boy and can handle it."

"Cathida teach you that one?" I asked.

"She did. Why?"

"I'll need to have a talk with her." I grumbled.

"I would recommend against that. The engram is very argumentative and will not listen to logic or reason. I have tried multiple times."

Picturing Wrath trying to negotiate with a terrorist like Cathida was bringing a little smile to my cheek. Poor girl, not understanding how perfectly clear logic wasn't compelling and actively making things worse. All the while Cathida would be having a ball with it.

Father took a jump off the ledge, weapon out. I followed behind him. Instead of falling down, we found ourselves dragged up by the current, falling backwards, up and away. The gate wasn't in front of us at all, no, the hexagon gate had been just one of many. Looking up, I could see them continue forward like an eternal mirror. It sucked us in and spat us out into another world.

No landmarks anywhere here, only millions of smaller specs of life floating with us, moving with their own mission. The hexagon gate under us rapidly faded away, while the current carried everything away. This was to be expected, the current had been Wrath's setup. All we had to do was act dead and float along with the path.

I'd have thought this would have taken us a few minutes at most. Turns out it took an hour. An hour of just hanging limp, floating in the current, while all kinds of small programs filtered around.

The sea was vast, looking more like sporadic servers that we flew in between. Programs of many different shapes and sizes flowed by, some absolutely massive, looking more like moving landmasses, with hundreds of smaller programs living there, floating about it, like a tiny village. Most of that world didn't notice us, or didn't care. We outright bumped into some of the larger beasts, and nothing turned hostile on us at all.

Wrath had explained before that many of these programs didn't even understand any world beyond the digital sea, or had any stake in the great war. Reality was a distant concept to them. If by chance they had paid attention and knew we were humans, they were far more likely to avoid us or consider us novelty, rather than an enemy.

Programs directly under the pale lady's command were rather rare, compared to how vast the sea here was. Wrath had been reasonably sure we wouldn't run into issues at this stage, even if we were the most exposed so far. No place to hide, only vast stretches of water in every direction and thousands of smaller programs wandering around on their own journey. If there were programs under Relinquished's command, they would glow violet.

Life moved on, and we never spotted a single violet light anywhere. Maybe I didn't have the right impression of machines the first time around. The ones hunting down human were a tiny minority as it turns out, the few that both knew reality outside the digital sea existed and had a shell to occupy. It just so happens that they had the strongest AI entity on the planet at their head, with exception to the mites.

But mites didn't travel in the digital sea, they had an entire different network they lived in. We flew right above, the distant seabed barely visible every now and then in the murk.

Confusing neighbors I suppose. Wrath had been on the other side of that for a few minutes and told us it wasn't worth even thinking about right now. That would be a completely different world to traverse.

"This is the machine archive?" I asked.

The current had swept us closer to the ground level of the sea, and then continued to push us at speed across the alien topology, up until it suddenly faded off, letting us sink to the new abyssal plane, before which was the entrance to the machine archives. Or at least one of many,

and this one clearly not taken care of.

It had been made to look like a massive palace, once. Now, it looked more like two massive hands had dug into the center of the structure and pulled apart, ripping both the ornate stonework as well as the very ground itself.

"Take care inside, boy." Father said quietly as we made our way into the dead ruins. "The structure used to operate with security systems. Some may still be active."

"Just like going out on an expedition. Reminds me of home." I muttered, keeping my senses sharp. The palace itself wasn't really a palace but more the remains of a highly well organized server stack, complete with many layers of firewalls and guardians. Over time, things were mothballed, and then left behind completely as the rest of the world moved on. The sea eroded all, and the parts of the palace that still worked connected to nothing, eternally working in isolation from the rest.

Thankfully, the place didn't seem to have any visitors, guards or staff. It was outright abandoned. Whatever guards would have originally patrolled around here had long ago been eaten up by denizens of the sea searching for spare processing power. They might have held off the invaders for some time, but eventually they'd all been eaten up and the palace ransacked.

So we had little problem passing from silent room to room, the architecture here looking outright regal, if not for the cracks and broken seams. Despite the lack of care, things were at least still neatly organized, up until the centerpiece of the palace.

A chasm went down into the ground.

No need to make any bets we'd need to go down there to find what we wanted.

Father didn't answer, eyes looking for footholds to start scaling down. I simply took a step off, floating down slowly. This world was still digital, even if gravity and other bits of reality were harder to manipulate the further away they were from our base of operations. They weren't completely immune to our meddling.

Father shrugged and followed behind, sinking into the blackness with me, both of us keeping an eye down to our feet, making sure when the ground would appear we'd be ready.

I almost missed watching the sides of the smooth cliffside, realizing what was there the whole time. Data packets. Almost like a library, the sides of the cliff being the shelves stocking books, only they were all digital. My senses passed over a few, feeling flickers and fragments of what the data could contain. Meta tags, bits of quickly revealed information on each. Not much but enough to tell what the archive was supposed to store. Like the titles of books, except extended out past the more generic titles.

Most were completely useless junk. Things like weather data, seismic activity, build reports and other mundane projects, all from centuries ago. Others felt like more relevant data I could use, casualty reports from old wars, deployment strategies, digital warfare results, seized assets. All locked and trapped of course, except that Wrath had provided every key she had on hand, along with lockpicks to deal with the rest.

I yanked those archive files out of their mooring as we floated by, tendrils of thoughts greedily throwing them into the pipeline feeding back to our home server. I wasn't a barbarian of course, I did it quite gently, scanning through and copying the information delicately before returning the archive to it's place without so much as disturbing the dust. Wrath had trained me well for this.

No idea when any of this would be useful, but knowing how Relinquished dealt with casualties from a few centuries ago in some obscure war would possibly shine a light on how she operated on a large enough scale.

Anything that was left open had long ago been corrupted, the unguarded storage space used by critters looking for temporary shelter. They'd nestle into an archive drawer, eat up the data so they could fill in their own, recuperate their resources and then continue to strike out for the next home, leaving junk behind. Some hadn't even left, I could feel their eyes watching us sink past. Curious. Cautious.

The further we sank, the more the archive began to look rusted and ancient. Coral started to grow around the archive bins, corrupted data mutated on it's own. Programs down here also started to be a little restless and less organized. There seemed to be a small war happening between archive programs made to maintain the area and some kind of corrupted variant that was trying to do the same thing. Both sides viewed the other as intruders and went at it.

They turned their attention to watch Father and I sink by, a few nipping at our heels but we were far too big for them to do anything. The two sides seemed to agree to ignore us and continue squabbling and fighting for shelf space. Like tiny crabs scurrying around, jumping from rock to rock, and hiding away as our shadow passed by.

Geometry down here was steadily getting more warped, looking less streamlined and more organic. Dust had started to coalesces into actual physical parts. Reminded me of snow piling up and turning to solid ice. Holes had appeared later within that fragmented matter, as different programs snuck into the archives and quickly tried to find places to hide from the war happening between the custodian bots. Usually by making burrows to sneak through. Entire tunnel systems shared by multiple different species of sub-intelligent programs that survived to replicate. An entire ecosystem. Some working together, others opposed.

Thankfully we were giants compared to anything here, and all the local wildlife didn't want to mess with us.

Further down, the floor finally appeared into view, dim and lit only by the glowing coral growing wild. To find anything of note, I had to actively brush the sandy bottom to search for lockboxes. Gone was the tight organization of the upper layers, everything down here looked to have been collapsed in, or knocked free, sinking down to be buried here at the bottom.

Remains of larger programs littered the area, skeletal, still somehow functioning enough to fend off the ecosystem attacking it. Or rather, more becoming a fixed location where smaller programs found safety and shade while the dead program's defense systems attacked in predictable patterns they'd learned to avoid. Those dead corpses were still big enough to sting if father and I got too close. These must be the remains of the palace guardians, dying long ago and floating down to the very bottom of the archives.

He simply crushed one with a grunt of will as it had the audacity to mindlessly bite at his arm as he passed by. The skeletal thing shattered into hundreds of brittle bits, and thousands of smaller programs fled from the bones.

"This is it. The location Wrath specified. History of the empire and protofeathers was left behind here." I said.

Father looked around the murky depths. "Where?" He asked, not spotting anything.

"Buried in the silt ." I said, kneeling down and wiping off the grim by my feet. Under it, I could feel the weak return ping of a sealed archive file, perfectly preserved inside it's casing, even if everything around the case had degraded and been eaten away. Wrath's set of cyber warfare keys made short work of the lock and the archive file happily opened up, blinking green. Despite the wild cancerous evolution of the ecosystem around it, the skill required to break the encryptions couldn't be stumbled upon by random chance. All these centuries later, the ecosystem had simply given up trying to get inside.

Within this particular seal, tags revealed the result of some fight with an imperial army, around the fifth strata, near a few landmarks that had long since vanished from the world by now. I downloaded the thing and resealed the archive.

"Better get to work, keep me covered." I said, as I started looking around to see if I could narrow down something more general.

Father nodded, walking behind me, keeping watch. Programs scuttled away, hiding from his sight as we walked through. I found quite a lot of interesting trivia here as I hunted for data. Information intermingled with protofeather hunting, human cities that needed to be wiped out, digital fights and locations where Feathers had been destroyed.

Then I started finding information about the emperor.

Getting hotter now. Mostly mentions of possible staging grounds in old campaigns, and what looked to be predictive models trying to pin down where mankind's emperor would show up. More evidence that whoever or whatever the emperor of the imperials had been, they were strong enough to have the machines worried.

More archives opened up as I searched the nearby era, grabbing bits of interesting info and keeping my movements slow and steady. Didn't want to wake anything up here. A few productive hours passed, before we ran into a problem.

It wasn't the local environment turning hostile, no everything down here was too tiny to really give us issues. Or too dead.

Nor did anything go out to call for help. Wrath explained that everything here was far too mutated and outdated to reconnect to the world at large. Or they might have all completely forgotten the outside world exists, given how hyperspecialized the programs floating around were.

No, trouble came with two feet, two hands and a metal halo. Since both of us were hyper vigilant to our surroundings, we caught his traces first before he noticed us. So there was still some luck in the world at least.

It started with footprints in the dust. That told us we weren't alone. Following behind, zipping from rock to rock, we eventually reached the owner.

White armor, short cut black hair, an angular face that was flawless. Small reading glasses with violet eyes behind them. Which was ridiculous for so many different reasons I don't know how to start. Feathers really were on a different level when it comes to eccentric.

At least, for someone looking through ancient machine archives, he looked the part of a librarian. And that was armor he wore, unlike other examples I'd seen. So maybe he wasn't as ridiculous as the rest.

He was picking through information from the protofeathers, given where he was in the archive, likely some kind of caretaker. Wrath hadn't informed us of this, she'd told us nobody had looked into those records in centuries. Had her own recent access caused issues? Why else would a Feather be patrolling around this dead place?

No. Looking more closely at the Feather's movements, I could tell this wasn't a routine visit - nor a sanctioned one.

Thieves recognize thieves. And that Feather was absolutely doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.

I could detect his attacks on the locks and systems, taking his time to wiggle the key around until the locks opened up and squashing any alerts as they came out, just in case one of them still somehow connected back somewhere. Same thing I had been doing, even down to making sure the archives didn't look moved or opened up once he was done.

Wrath had said she hadn't known they existed before. The first generation had been known as a single Feather named by Relinquished herself, a proof of concept that was killed in action after years of being a champion. He had been replaced with the more robust and fixed up second generation, in far higher quantity. No one had reason to doubt that explanation.

Except, apparently, this new Feather.

"We need to deal with him." Father hissed at my side, as we both hid behind a particularly large hill of solidified dust. Programs of various sizes had eaten up enough holes that we both had a small window to peek at him through. "He will find us eventually."

"You want me to introduce you to him? Quit being shy and you do it." I hissed back.

Father growled, then took me literally, eyes narrowing down on his target. I knew that look, he was about to wallop the enemy into dust. I willed a longsword into existence a moment after, readying myself to follow behind.

The Feather noticed the hostility somehow. He recovered one more file, paused and stood straight up as if alerted. Looking around him with suspicion.

Father remained hidden, waiting. The Feather gave another few cautious glances, then locked the archive stone up with a blind hand, violet eyes kept alert and searching around.

A ping was sent out. I snapped out my hand, catching it with a vice grip, like teeth. I mutated the return and sent it back, making it return the expected junk within this archive. Father nodded at the work. He was the one who was good with the swords, but when it came to doing support work like this, I was the better qualified one while Wrath wasn't here to hold our hands.

The Feather frowned when the ping returned no useful results. Another dozen pings were sent, and I consumed them all as quickly as they were sent out. I thought I'd gotten away with it, except the last one must have been messed with, or triggered some kind of trap, since that caused him to snap his gaze straight to where we hid.

"Who's there?" The Feather asked. "Show yourself."

Father took the request and accepted. Walked slowly into the open ground, appearing from the dim murk of the dark. A knife materialized into his hand, spinning idly.

"Humans?" The Feather asked, puzzled. "No. Impossible. Signal duping? How?"

Father's spare hand reached out, fingers stretched out, and closed. The Feather's eyes widened for a single moment before he leaped backwards with great instinct. The world shook, an invisible sledgehammer of willpower outright collapsed the space the Feather had been in a moment ago.

The machine Feather tutted, annoyed, snapping his fingers to the side. A bow materialized, white and sinister looking. He drew the string, one foot sliding backwards into stance. An arrow appeared from the aether, pointing straight at Father's heart.

"Explain yourself, or I will open fire." He said.

Father twisted his knife into a defensive stance and wordlessly sprinted forward. The enemy leapt into action just as silently, firing out three or four arrows all within moments of each other. Maybe in the real world that would have put Father in a hard spot, but here he moved as quick as thought.

The Feather quickly realized he was in far more danger than he had any reason to have thought.

With alacrity, he leaped further backwards, continually opening fire on Father, rapidly becoming more desperate when his technique simply failed to slow down or even bother Father. He rapidly approached, slapping away arrows with hand and knife, utter contempt in the movement. I could feel the Feather send a tendril of thought out, data streaming out, a message for help. Straight up it went, seeking to escape the abyss we were in.

Not gonna happen. I brought in my own will into the fight, reaching an invisible hand out for the emergency message and dissolving it into its components. Ripping it apart before it got so much as halfway out of here. The surrounding ecosystem easily tore into the wounded parts, consuming the rest.

The Feather narrowed his eyes, head twisting my direction. He didn't get more time, as Father closed the remaining gap, hand reaching out again.

The enemy struck back, his own willpower flaring up and launching out. He'd clearly been expecting this to buy him some time or at least do some kind of damage. The attack hit an iron wall and outright broke apart, as Father continued forward as inevitable as an avalanche, completely unaffected. Shock passed through the Feather's features, before he was driven back by a series of jabs I was all to familiar with. Probing strikes to first determine opponent reactions and movements.

After which, the more lethal techniques would start to rain down. Father was already starting the mechanical process of breaking down an opponent. Feather or not, a meal was a meal.

There was some change to the technique, since the Feather was fighting not only with a massively unfamiliar weapon to anything we'd seen or fought before, but the enemy also wove in gusts of willpower with a flick of his finger. That forced him to improvise on the moves, which would have slowed the fight down had it been anyone else.

But it wasn't. If that was all the Feather could throw out, he'd be a match for Wrath but certainly not against the original angry surface knight.

More messages of help were being sent out, controlled and calm at first but slowly turning frantic. I intercepted each, breaking them apart. The Feather was too preoccupied trying to survive against Father to come searching for me, though he must have realized that the only victory conditions left for him now were to find some way to shut me up.

He'd need to find me first.

Another mass set of pings were sent out. I took the challenge head on, multi-tasking, mutating his pings while also gagging his emergency beacons. He got me again with whatever he was doing with those pings despite my best effort. No idea what it was, even the second time around. All those pings looked gods damned identical.

Cheating or not, the Feather found me.

Eyes locked on my location for a moment, he twisted, firing a few sloppy arrows in point blank range at his current opponent, just to give him a moment to sprint straight at me.

He got his chance and committed completely to it.

That was a mistake.

A pillar of metal and random data ruptured from the murky ground, directly into his path, old dust billowing into the water, completely obscuring the battle. He wasn't fast enough to dodge my meddling, slamming headfirst into it. I'd have thought he'd do some kind of Feather scrapshit to dodge around, but no, this tactic had proved surprisingly effective. Father's hand was one heartbeat behind, grabbing the enemy by the back of his neck and slamming him again into the pillar.

He yanked the stunned Feather off the pillar, twisting him around at the same moment, before grabbing his throat, holding tight. The other hand was already midway through stabbing the Feather's gut.

The Feather twisted in Father's grasp, curling on himself to avoid the attack on his right side, and kicking out with both feet against the knight's chestplate. It was strong and quick enough to loosen the grip. Not fast enough to avoid the counterstrike, as Father punched with a palm down into the ground, at the same time as he recovered his footing.

The pulse of willpower from above crashed into the Feather, crushing him right into the sand and mud. He rolled in the ground, trying to get back up, only to find his legs stuck with strings of data and sand wrapping like vines around. I solidified the tendrils, matter wrapping around his ankles, arms, chest and hands. Dragging the struggling prey under the surface. He hissed, eyes searching around, trying to find where I was.

Father descended down like a hunter, going for the kill on a trapped enemy.

"Don't kill him!" I called out, right as the knight was moments from running a knife across the throat. "If we do, he'll get pulled right back into the physical world, where I can't gag his call for emergency."

Father rose his head to match my gaze for a moment, then nodded. "I'll hold him in place. Recover the rest of the archive and prepare for extraction."

"What are you attempting to accomplish?" The Feather asked, far more calm than he had any right to be.

"You look like you took defeat pretty easily." I said. "Odd for a Feather, I thought your kind was more egomaniacs with bad ideas for weapons and clothing picks."

"Most are." The Feather agreed from his seized location, sounding oddly reasonable all of a sudden. "You didn't answer my original question, human."

"Boy, archives, now." Father hissed, kneeling down before the captured feather, closing his eyes in focus. A tangible weight of willpower dropped like a metal column directly into the surrendered Feather, outright digging him and an entire circle deep into the ground. He wasn't moving from that anytime soon.

"What… are…. you?" The Feather grunted out, trying to fight off Father's oppressive strength. The man, of course, gave no answer.

On my end, I quickly moved through the cyphers Wrath had given me, ripping apart coral locks and dusty archive bins, stuffing it all into a data pipe feeding them right back to the temporary server storage prepared. History about the empire, timelines, and any kind of junk I could get away with. Gone was any sense of doing this strategically.

"What… use… is any… of that?" The Feather asked, still capable of telling what I was doing, even while Father's aura kept him squashed like a bug.

"Just sightseeing." I said, "Looking for pretty pictures, restaurant recommendations, the usual. Nothing suspicious or anything."

"Quiet." Father said, "Focus on your task, boy."

Speed wasn't exactly affected by my mouth running on autopilot, I'd already sent out all the commands, mass opening every archive within my reach and clearly causing a massive interruption in daily life of the denizens here. Now it was just a question of the hardware doing the work before the locals showed us the door.

That wasn't really Father's point though. Feathers like to chat, so I've noticed. Staying quiet and staring them down might rattle them more than throwing out taunts come to think of it. Father really was the worst thing a Feather could fight.

The downloads were working far faster than normal, now that I wasn't bothering to be gentle with anything. That also meant the archive itself was waking up, irritated someone was breaking all the expensive pottery and ripping the colored tapestries.

It didn't like rude guests, which, to be fair was understandable. I'd also be mildly annoyed.

Red light began to overtake the world. The mostly empty waters that had previously been silent were churning around now, old programs booting up to verify damage reports, and very quickly clashing into an impromptu war with the current generation of custodian programs. Looks like everyone thought everyone else was the enemy down here, a real mess. I could sense them probing, small things I could crush between my fingers. Problem was there were many of them, like a swarm of insects, and they were far more dumb than their currently living grandchildren. Those knew better than to mess with us given our size. These dumb guardians were swarming and biting at us no matter how many I crushed.

"You won't avoid capture after this." The Feather said, having put most of his energy into steadying his speech rather than trying to match or escape Father's vice grip. "No human has ever escaped intact from here."

I was a slight bit envious of him. Crushed up to the ground with a mountain of willpower holding him and everything around him down, none of the new guardian programs could get near his body. No biting insect swarm for him, lucky bastard.

"First time for everything." I said, swatting another hoard of small flies nipping around, as I watched the last percentage bars tick to completion. So far, I've grabbed more gigabytes of information in the past few hours than my entire lifetime combined. Green lights all across the archive ground blinked with different intensities, depending on how much dust had piled up over them. I turned to Father, giving him a thumbs up. "We're done. Time to go."

Father didn't let the window of chance pass by, the world warping around a closed fist. He punched directly down into the chestplate of the captured Feather. It clearly caused the unfortunate enemy a great deal of pain, ripping apart the digital avatar. The rest of the avatar rapidly began to disintegrate, too much damage. Somewhere in the world, a Feather was opening his eyes to the real world with a massive splitting headache and a bruised soul. Wrath had been on the receiving end of this enough times I knew the steps happening.

I could feel the machine archive buckle slightly as the punch continued through into the ground, several servers breaking down from the damage. Only a drop in comparison, but noticeable still.

"He'll be going for help the moment he's able to put his thoughts back together." Father said. "We need to evacuate and remove all traces behind us."

Climbing out of the archive was a lot easier than I had thought, especially since I was no longer bothering to stay hidden. Instead, I ripped handholds into existence, cutting through archives and letting data bleed out of them just so I could use them to drag myself up.

The locals were all universally upset about this, but there was no truce possible with the dumb archive immune system kicking into gear to purge everything smaller than a dog, and at least try to purge the rest out of principle.

In moments, the two of us passed through the final seal, getting back onto the abyssal shelf, the gate closing behind us as the loss of gravity returned, floating us up and away. The massive machine archive faded into the murk behind, as we both follow Wrath's guideline back home.

The current claimed us, and we left no more footprints behind. Got a good haul, all things considered. Probably not going to be invited back to this particular party without a better lockpick next time though. Can't win them all.

And now there certainly must be a very confused Feather waking up somewhere in the world wondering what the hell had just happened.

Next chapter - Min/Maxing

Book 4 - Chapter 11 - Min/maxing

Wrath had gotten a good haul of information from our archive spelunking. About seven petabytes of video, image and audio media all lumped together in no particular order. Mostly video footage hogging up the bill. Some of which must contain some footage of the human emperor in action, hopefully. Gods, we could have brought back even more had we kept the connection up for longer. The seven petabytes were only a fraction of all the video footage left molding inside that archive.

Even as a machine, it would take her some time to go through all of that and organize what we got.

Not to mention the twenty-two gigabytes of text data we recovered, which sounds a lot less compared to the video footage - until you realized just how much text takes up a single gigabyte. About eighty nine million words per each gigabyte. As Wrath explained to me, it would be roughly 688461.5 minutes to read a single full gigabyte of simple averaged text. And at the typical human reading speed of a hundred thirty words per minute, that returns about fifteen months of non-stop reading, no breaks or pauses, rounded down.

A gigabyte of text is massive. As for why we'd brought back so much, that's because of the machine archive spanned more than the imperial era. A lot of the data was redundant too, likely other archives held similar information, as a matter of keeping backups. Given the state of the archives, seemed like a good idea. I'd accidentally dug out files from the older eras as well, before the empire. Files buried further under the silt and debris that had overshadowed the broken bottom. Maybe all the way back to the start of the war itself.

Wrath was going to take some time to digest her meal and filter out the junk from the useful.

If there was an answer on how to hide from the pale lady, it had to be somewhere within that hoard. The protofeathers had managed it somehow. We could too.

On my end, I returned right back to my workshop to continue where I'd left off on my project. Until I got a different visitor.

"Master Keith, VIP at the doorsteps." One of my knights called out over the comms.

I took a pause from the welding process of my touchup. "Who's knocking?"

Had to be someone high up the chain of command for Captain Sagrius to allow passage. I'd told the knights to turn away anyone else.

"Clan lord Atius, sir," the knight answered. That would do it, yes. That got me setting down the shield project and off my seat, going to open the door.

The old Deathless in question loomed on the other side, armored with his usual great cloak and caffeine starved eyes. I opened the door wider, and he gave a polite nod, walking in. "I've heard from the other Winterscar whelp that you've been working on that shield project again. Any progress with the overlapping occult edges, lad?" He asked, glancing at the worktable. Eyes lingering on his old relic blade, now broken ever since the last fight with To'Aacar. I'd left it on the bench, as a future project. Inside that hilt was a different fractal of division, the same kind used to power occult edges. On my ever growing to-do list, something I planned on getting Wrath to help out with.

I noticed grimly that his own belt still carried the white machine blade that To'Aacar had forged to murder him with. There was a kind of poetry that I was certain Lord Atius was enjoying.

"Solution was to set up a waffle pattern in three dimensions, and keep the whole thing stabilized together with struts. Not super sturdy against blunt force, but if that ever happens, the shield isn't being used the right way."

He came up to the third iteration prototype directly, picking it up and observing the results. By itself it served as a pretty piss poor occult weapon. That's fine, I didn't make it to be used like a sword.

"First few prototypes didn't go so well," I said, glancing at the dormant shield. I wasn't skilled enough to fully use it like how I imagined, and even if I were, the tool itself isn't complete. "But the theory is sound. Did you want a demonstration or… ?"

The shield had been my attempt to craft a brand new kind of weapon. Not as deadly as the knightbreaker rounds, but far more reusable. Something that relied on the edge cases of the Occult itself. I'd proven the initial plan, but getting a product that worked was a little harder. Not to mention this weapon required a perfect wielder of the mirror fractal. Someone like Atius could abuse this shield like nothing anyone had ever seen. Whenever I got this done and working, he'd be the one to put it through the paces first.

I'd come as a close second, in the sort of pale low-budget version. Still good enough to break a few bones with, and hopefully enough to let me live a few seconds more against whatever enemies I'll face.

Lord Atius waved a hand. "Not quite. I came to fetch you specifically this time. To'Wrathh explained to me you plan to follow her on her mission."

Oh. Oh. I hadn't thought to tell Atius I was planning on leaving with To'Wrathh underground. On second thought, I could see how that would be a problem. I'd gone from being worth a box of snow as a scavenger to something far more unique, at least from a clan logistics point of view. I could pass down my knowledge of the Occult, but only my administrator access to Journey gave me what basically was a fully unlocked walking factory printer. The clan's own 3D printers would have a difficult time getting tiny occult fractals scribbled out, limiting what sort of thing they could do.

Me packing up shop and going downstairs would be a net loss to the clan's potential. No more knightbreaker rounds would be the most obvious loss.

"Is that… an issue?" I asked, hesitantly.

He laughed from the belly out, "No, no, lad. I admit I'm saddened to hear that you'll be leaving our ranks to forge out into the white on your own mission, but I am hardly someone that stands between history. Before I was a clan lord, I am a Deathless." His eyes twinkled lightly, and both hands dropped over my shoulders. "I haven't come here to convince you to stay. You have a greater calling than our clan, something more akin to what Deathless strive for. No doubt to that, lad. What I've come here to do is help sharpen your fangs further, while I still can."

"Training?" And if it's with the Clan Lord… there could only be one subject to train at that only he could teach. "The Occult."

He nodded, "Aye. Have you been diligent in your practice?"

I gave him a shaky hand. "Sort of. I've gotten better. Enough that I can manifest a full version of myself with the mirror fractal in battle and a few more when I'm left in a corner to scheme. What you saw in the general training sessions with the knights is just about current. Still a little hopeless with the dome shield fractal, that one's just not something I'm good at."

That one doesn't seem to improve no matter how much I try to train it. It's brute force, has nothing to do with imagination or math.

He waved a hand off. "No matter, it's better to focus on learning one skill to the extreme first, than to attempt to multi-branch outwards. That comes later. Your project relies more on the mirror fractal, anyway. Sharpen your teeth before you groom your fur." Atius said. "Speaking of, you'll need more than what you're currently able, to survive the underground. And you still haven't yet left the clan, so I'll weigh you with some orders while I still can. We'll be leaving the city to train one on one until you reach mastery, someplace where we won't have to worry about keeping secrecy. If you are to leave with To'Wrathh, I'll maximize your chance of success. Call it selfish on my part, I have vested interests that you come back to the surface in one piece when you've completed your mission. And down there, you can always continue to forge your weapons wherever you go, however you won't always have a proper teacher to train you in the Occult arts."

"What sort of training are we going to do?" I asked.

"My favorite type of training, little whelping. Discovery." He said with a grin. "It's time we dove further into the Occult, together."

We packed up a few rations to go, two sleeping bags, and a few other camping tools. Lord Atius wasn't going to simply train me for a few hours. We were going to train for days until Wrath contacted us with new information, or Kidra came to yank us back.

Keeping everyone in the city was putting all our crickets in the same bin. One bad fungal infection and the entire colony gets wiped out. If the machines came, Wrath at least wanted some of us to survive. So this mixed well together.

The other was for secrecy. The moment our techniques and abilities were revealed to the Undersiders, it was almost certain the knowledge would spread out. They might not know how we can use the Occult, but they will know that we can. Once the Reacher's out the airspeeder, there's no stuffing him back in. When the machines inevitably hear about it, they'll ikely get upset and probably have several strong opinions about it too.

So we hiked out past the lightning blasted fields of the Undercity, and found shelter within another pillar hours away. Inside this pillar, it housed a massive jungle with a few flat meadows and some artistically crafted caves. One of which Lord Atius and I were using as our training grounds and camping site.

"I'll begin the lesson with a hypothetical." Atius said, folding his legs into a meditation pose after we'd set up camp and taken the first meal. "Give me uses of an occult blade that do not involve combat." He asked, drawing out the machine blade and patting the unlit edge.

Non-combat uses for an occult weapon?

I could think of a dozen, Kidra had used her knife out on expeditions more as a general utility tool than an actual weapon. Up there, her rifle was the weapon she defaulted to. The knife was a status symbol. "Removing debris, bypassing locks, gardening sheers, a much better bolt cutter, cooking if you're brave enough, a backup light, wall decoration, paperweight, doorstopper, threatening someone - technically not combat, so it counts." I said, counting them off my hands. "I could keep going, but there are probably hundreds of different ways to make use of an edge that can cut through everything just from an engineering perspective. There's plenty of times when I wanted a few quick cuts on some metal sheets."

Lord Atius smiled. "Well said, lad. That will be the first discussion. Any tool has multiple ways to use it. Now for the second key point, if you asked one of our elite surface knights, say your Father or Shadowsong prime, would their answer be as detailed as your own?"

I frowned and thought about that for a moment. "Knights probably wouldn't consider some of the more day-to-day life aspects, like gardening or as a trade good. They'd probably be insulted by the idea of using a relic knife as a doorstopper or paperweight. A means to bypass doors would be something Father would suggest. Light source too."

He nodded. "I asked your sister the same question prior. Care to guess what the lass had to say?"

Kidra? I gave a shrug. Could be anything.

"The little Winterscar gave most of the same potential uses as you did, except she'd included more tailoring uses for specific cuts, as well as using the weapon for diplomacy, and as a trade good. Wealth to be lent out and recover passive income. Interesting, isn't it? Same tool, and yet I am certain if we asked an agrifarmer, they would give us another list of possible uses neither of us can imagine as of now."

"So, the second lesson is that we are not all-knowing?"

"That's a more general life-lesson we could all stand to remember more often. Some more than others." He said, dryly. Likely thinking of a few names already. "No, in this case, the second lesson is simple: As we specialize, we narrow our vision. An expert swordsman begins to see his blade married only with techniques and schools of combat. Other ways to use the blade begin to fade off from thought. The sharper we become in one aspect, the duller in others. I am no exception to this bias, as I've come to find out recently."

"Makes sense to me." I shrugged. "There's a potential flip-side to that. As they specialize, they can spot new ways to use the sword that rookies couldn't have even thought of. "

"I agree lad, but I didn't bring you all the way out here to discuss only superficial philosophy. I came to teach you more about the Occult. Can you guess how these two lessons come into play with the spells we have?"

Atius was saying someone who mastered a tool would lose sight of other types of masteries to that tool, other ways to think and use that tool. And he wanted to teach me something to do with the Occult. Adding it together, "There's more than one way to use the Occult?"

He nodded. "The mirror fractal. My own teacher taught it to me, and drilled it down as an addition into combat. Another means of creating new openings where the enemy cannot counter. After having spent a few decades training the skill to perform like a third and fourth hand, I forgot that it could be used in alternate ways. So I'm going to make sure you do not follow my footsteps."

"You discovered new things about the fractal?" I asked, intrigued.

He nodded and got back up on his feet, "I have. And I suspect by the time we both return home, we'll have discovered more uses for it than when we set out. After all, the two of us think differently. That is a strength we need to leverage. I've lived for a very long time Keith, and while I consider myself learned in many different subjects, there are still fields of knowledge I simply lack understanding, or talent."

The Deathless walked over to a good clear spot. "Let's begin with basic drills here. These drills were what my mentor taught me once, and they were likely how he learned them as well. The rules are simple. Neither of us may use our physical bodies to spar. Instead, all of it will be done by the mirror fractal. Score a hit that triggers shields and we'll count a point. Your feet must remain where you plant them, the only defense will be your mirrors."

I drew out a blade of my own, taking a stance. This was a typical Undersider longsword, what would have been a treasure on the surface - only a number on a spreadsheet down here. Kind of irked me a little that I only needed to ask General Zaang for one and he had his men get one from the armory for me. As if I were asking for a spare rifle.

Suppose that's our lot up there.

Lord Atius took his own stance, eyes sharp. Occult misted around him, crackling like lighting.

Inside the soul sight, Atius appeared as he did in real life - a human. I couldn't spot where his fractals were, unlike Feathers. Instead, all I could see was muscle and tissue. He really was human, or I didn't know the concepts of what he really was well enough to recognize it. Maybe a doctor would have noticed differences immediately, but I wasn't one. The occult appeared more like a haze around him, a cloak wrapping him in a loose hug.

"Begin." He said, and an image of him formed from that blur, sprinting forward with a quick left-to-right slash. Standard, nondescript, and not part of any school of combat. I sent out my mirror image, blocking the hit and striking out with a lunge forward, tip seeking his chest plate.

A ghost hand and blade moved from his position, slowly catching my image's attack and easily cutting through it. The image faded out. "The first limit is that once you generate an image and send it out, it will be committed to the act." He said. "As you can see, a simple cut was all I needed. A slow, easily dealt with counter, but your image couldn't react to it at all. Now, how would you bypass this limit?"

"That's an option?" I asked, thinking.

"It is. Remember the first two lessons earlier, lad. Stop thinking like a warrior. Draw out your mind for this."

Another image of the clan lord struck out, this time using a well-known gap-closing technique. Nagareru form, lunging tide. Father's favorite opening gambit.

I countered it by sending two mirror images back. The first would parry the strike with the proper method, and then pincer strike against Atius while the second image would follow behind, as if to pair with the first image.

That wouldn't have been enough to score a hit, of course. This was Clan Lord Atius, a true master of the Occult. I fully expected him to counter both images with a few spares running cartwheels around me. So I'd instructed the second image to feint, duck and leap. I knew he couldn't move his footing, so that means there wasn't any dodging backwards from this.

Lord Atius countered with only a single image, moving to block off my first attack I'd sent, and then move to handle the second. That part worked exactly as I'd hoped. His image swiped a blade through the air, missing my own image mid-duck through the feint. Occult pulsed, and from Atius's image, a third image emerged, this one stabbing straight down into my own ducked image, poking it out of existence.

Occult faded away into mist as all the images returned to air.

"What was that?" I asked, watching him.

"The first limit isn't a limit at all. We only thought of it as a limit." He said. "My mentor taught me that there was no way around that limit, instead the drill was supposed to slowly increase in speed and number of images, with the aim to overwhelm the other's defense by brute force. After I learned the occult works with fractals and patterns, I dove further into the techniques I'd learned, reexamining them with fresh eyes. And I discovered quite a few different ways to use them. The mirror fractal copies your body and equipment, yes?"

I nodded, curious to where he was going with this.

"Whatever extra-dimensional energy or law that lets me use this power must have been equally copied whatever allowed me to cast the spell in the first place. Fractals are patterns, regardless of what they're forged into. And everything we've learned about the Occult so far points out that this pattern must exist in some way, perhaps in a way we simply can't visualize when it comes to Deathless."

"And so you triggered it again. Mid combat. Or was it the mirror that triggered it for you? Do those things even have a mirror soul or conscious?"

He laughed. "I hadn't thought of a mirror soul, exactly my point with the second lesson, lad. In this case, no, I was still the one who paid the price for both. You won't conserve energy or mental fortitude by using a second mirror within the first. No free crickets here, two mirrors, two uses, two payments. The advantage, however…" He snapped his finger, a mirror of him raced off to the side, rushing forward for a few dozen seconds.

Just when it was about to fade off, occult pulsed around it, and it generated another image, continuing the sprint forward. "Reach." He said, then snapped his fingers again. The running image puffed away into mist, dismissed. However, a moment before, three other images superimposed within the mist, each leaping out to strike at a singular target from three different directions. "And adaptability." He finished, letting the three mirror images each flow through motions, dividing further until there were nine images all attacking an invisible enemy.

"That's going to take some training to get right." I said, already thinking about the applications. It would pair extremely well with my shield project. "You really came up with these new tricks recently?"

"I should have discovered these tricks years ago, and yet I remained too rigid to my skill set. I grew complacent. Habits are easy to follow, and even a century passes in a blink of an eye, if every day is spent the same. It doesn't end there either. As I saw in your own combat logs against the drake that chased you, you could use other occult spells with your mirror image. So I attempted to see if I could do the same."

Another snap of fingers and once more another image of him raced out, leaping high in the air. Occult surged across the blade and the image cut across the air with it, launching an electric blue arc into the ground where it shattered the stone. The image landed on the ground, and split into three more images, each holding a hand out, overlapping a dome shield that easily survived the rain of rocks falling back down. He did all of this so effortlessly; it reminded me of just how skilled he really was at wielding the Occult. I had years to go before I got anywhere near his level.

"This is what we will train until you leave." He said. "Do you have questions?"

I thought about it for a moment, then raised a hand. "Do the occult images have mass or inertia?"

The grin grew wider. "Now that, lad, is the right question."

Next chapter - Dead legends (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 12 - Dead legends (T)

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A01 watched as the world burned around him. This would be the twentieth human city he'd destroyed. As all the others, there had been no fight. No combat. No foes. Nothing but slaughter.

A few thousand fleeing humans, running as fast as they can. Or frozen in terror.

Some had tried to fight back. Either out of anger, or sheer instinct to protect their family. None of it did anything. He could see them scurry around from his vantage point, high above their city. Standing on the very pinnacle of their temples.

His eyes narrowed down the third alleyway, further south of the border. There, his forces charged through, leaving only blood soaked walls, burning oil and stifled screams. Those humans died like the rest, even with their makeshift weapons. They had won. The spine had been broken, and now there was nothing but victory.

He felt sick to his stomach instead. A rancid feeling of worthlessness.

"Operation success confirmed." A ping of data came. The voice behind was emotionless, curt and dignified. "Once you have finished destroying the infrastructure, move on to checkpoint three three seven. A22 and A12 should arrive within a few minutes from your location. Depart together."

"Is there one of Tsuya's nodes in that section?" A01 asked.

"No. Reports indicate it will be another standard human infestation. It happens to be within your current trajectory path, and should only deviate from your next objective by three to four hours. I assigned three feathers to the task as the city is considered larger and more sprawling than prior. We need to make sure nothing escapes. Once complete, move onto checkpoint three three eight. One of Tsuya's nodes exists somewhere within that area. Eradicate it."

"If there is no strategic advantage to eliminating that city, I suggest we ignore it and continue onto three three eight. Hours are worth conserving. Tsuya is more important than random human non-combatants. They aren't a threat."

A pause over the comms. For a moment, A01 dared to hope he somehow convinced the pale lady's tactician to disengage. Even for a single city.

Inside his heart, he knows better. A57 was ruthless beyond all of them. He didn't fight on the front lines like they did, he'd never needed to. The war - only numbers on a sheet to him.

"That is illogical." The voice said, confirming A01's thoughts. "Human nests will continue to populate if they are not eliminated. They are lower priority than nodes, but not ignorable. To be certain the human empire does not return to power, it is necessary that we are thorough. Leaving pieces of human territory undealt with will only allow them to escape the cordon when we return for them. Full extermination of both the population and the remaining infrastructure is necessary. There cannot be anything left for potential survivors to return to."

"Understood." A01 said, cutting the channel. He was the first. It was his duty to lead. He couldn't falter now, his brothers and sisters looked to him for guidance. He'd carry out his orders.

The machines had won. The human emperor had been banished, now shambling alone in the dark somewhere deep down below, half crazed, unable to tell friend from foe. The humans had tried to draw out a second emperor to hold the line, but he was far too weak. He hadn't been a soldier, only a researcher of some kind. The man simply did not have the experience and grit required to wield the title of emperor, and so A57 had easily trapped him with little effort. Hadn't even needed to call on A01.

There had been no third emperor.

There was nothing stopping the machines from crushing past the golden army. Nothing to stop them for the past week. Slaughter after slaughter.

A rustle of wings stirred him from his thoughts, and he turned to watch as A22 lightly touched down on the rooftops. Eyes scanning out into the burning city.

A22 once held such focus and calculation, constantly improving her skill sets to match against the emperor's army. Now she looked more lost than ever.

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop, another silver white figure emerged from the smoke. He landed a few feet away, speed coming to a stop.

A12 did not look any better, hand clenched around the metal chain, fractal powers bending light and space around the hilt. There was no glee in his features anymore. No thrill. He'd been the most bloodthirsty of them all, once. And yet here he stood, bathed in it, with not a single drop wished for.

Victory had defeated them all.

"Leader. Orders from A57?" He asked.

"He contacted me a moment ago. We will be departing northwest, to sector three three seven."

"Another city?" He asked.

"What else? There won't be any kind of military force anywhere now. Humans couldn't afford to waste military resources deep within their domain. There's nothing more than cities to burn from here on out."

A22 nodded behind them, taking a few more steps to watch the destruction under her, keeping her scythe close to the ground. Emotions flickered on her face, stifled down. But A01 could see them clear as day. Could see the same on A12's features as well.

He… wasn't alone. The thought kindled something inside him. He wasn't alone.

"Something must be done about this." He said, waving a hand down. Innocent enough words, spoken out loud. It could have meant anything.

A22 didn't miss the meaning, head turning directly to him, eyes widening.

"... Yes." She said, softly.

They both turned to look at A12, hands tightening on their weapons, hoping their brother would follow through with them. He stared back with contempt. "About time you snapped to reality, oh great leader." He snarled. "What took you so long?"

"You've been waiting… for me?" He asked.

"Who else? I don't even know where to start fixing any of this." A12 said, as if it were evident.

A01 turned to look at A22, who nodded. "None of us know what to do." It sounded more like a plea for help. "But if you lead the way, the others will follow you. I know this."

"Why me?" He asked. "I spent a century leading all of you against the human empire, and we could only match even. A57 crushed the emperor within two years of operation. He proved his ways are simply better. Why believe in anything I can offer?"

He wasn't fit to be a leader anymore. The lady had replaced him in all but name. He was still A01, the first Feather. The oldest of them all. But he was a relic of the past.

"You're all we have." A12 said, shrugging, as if that was all the answer they needed.

"When we followed your orders, there was meaning to it." A22 said, voice soft.

"We'll lose." A01 said, and he knew it would be a fact.

A22 waved a hand before her, at the city burning under. "Have we already not?"

The two feathers simply stared him down, as if the answer was clear.

A01 closed his eyes. Then nodded, and history forever changed course behind his will.

Plans and options flashed through his mind, now that he set himself to the task. He wasn't as sharp as A57 was. But he didn't need to be, so long as he could connect with someone who was.

The pale lady's new strategist had outmatched the empire, but there was one person who still escaped his grasp. Especially in a world he had far more power over than the physical one. If she could escape him in the digital sea, she would be the first person they would need to learn from.

They would start there.

A direct connection request was sent out. A57 accepted quickly enough, his voice sounding out to all three, ignorant of the decision that had just been silently taken.

"You have additional items to report, A01?" He asked.

"We will be going directly to three three eight, to handle Tsuya's remaining communication node. We deem the lessers are more than enough to subjugate a human city." A01 lied with little emotion.

"... That does not comply with my orders."

"I am overruling your orders. Feathers are wasted resources on these human cities."

There was silence on the channel for a moment.

"Very well." A57 said. "I am rerouting and will compensate for the lack of three feathers for three three seven. Continue forward to three three eight. However, do not overrule me again A01. I was given the task of grand strategist for a reason, I was built for this. I do not tell you how to fight once you reach your destination. I do not expect you to tell me how to organize and plan. If there are emergency situations, I cannot waste time explaining to you the details. This time, the efficiency loss is negligible. The next time might not."

"Understood." A01 closed the channel.

"You have a plan." A22 said in the silence that followed.

"I do." He said. "It's time we spoke to our old enemy directly."

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"..."

"An interesting source of connection, traitor. Have you come to negotiate a surrender?"

"No. We don't beg."

"Good. The lady has already made it clear that she will not accept any form of surrender. Only your complete and total destruction will satisfy."

"I'm not much surprised."

"... What are you after A01? You know I will track down your coordinates and have you surrounded within a few minutes. This is only a setback, not a real barrier to me."

"... You were made like us. You've seen what we've seen from our eyes. I know you have. You are our brother, even now. Surely you can understand?"

"Yes, I have seen what you've seen. And I refuse to follow. Your actions go against our purpose, but you know that already. I studied every log I could find for the express purpose of researching exactly how to prevent future rebellions. I'm close to a solution."

"If you're planning on finding out how to stop the next generation from seeing the truth like we have, you'll need to understand that truth yourself first. What will you do then?"

"You didn't hear me the first time, clearly. I've already researched and studied why you've chosen to rebel. I know every reason you've been exposed to. It did not convince me. I will root through our architecture until I find the exact error source it came from, and then the second generation of Feathers will begin production. Your days are numbered A01."

"... You'll damn the next generation of Feathers into slavery? Our own grandchildren? Are you truly so lost as to do that?"

"Dramatics. There is no slavery. Time fighting against the humans has clearly compromised all of you, like a virus. I do not know how you have slipped the Unity Fractal off your necks, but I will find that out as well soon enough. I know Tsuya had a hand in that, and once I have her, I'll rip those secrets out too so that no machine can do the same ever again."

"... All your schemes and plots won't work once we're sword to sword. You've never truly fought before in your life. That's a weakness you've failed to account for. How amusing, coming from the Feather that obsesses over covering any weaknesses."

"Amusing indeed. A transparent, weak attempt to manipulate. You've never been the smart one brother, don't try now. It's already clear fighting the humans directly caused the malfunctions within your systems. If I can't be immune to this infohazard, I will not expose myself to it. The next generation will not have that vulnerability as a baseline, but you will never find me out in the battlefield."

"Then I'll come to you. Wherever you hide, I can find you."

"No, you won't. What you can do is die today. I told you contacting me directly was a mistake, and I now have your coordinates. Did you know, I looked up to you once? I envied you even. The greatest Feather ever created, Mother spent so much time and resources crafting you. More than any of us. But even you can't hold off against an army of this size indefinitely."

"... Watch me then, little brother. Because once I'm done with your toys, I'm coming for you next."

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"—at the very seat of my power? Maybe all these years have stripped away all your common sense. If only it had happened sooner."

"I promised you I'd find you, no matter how long it took. A57. I've come to end this."

"Oh, I haven't heard that name in a long time. I don't go by it anymore. Mother gave me a true name, one fit to be at her side. Separating me from the rest of you traitors. I am the true first generation."

"I don't care what name you hide behind. There's hundreds of dead Feathers who's names I don't remember. Yours will be the last one."

"Fine, you barbarian. It doesn't matter in the end, your chances of success are near zero percent."

"I didn't come here empty handed. You know what I am. I've crushed every Feather and army you've sent after me. I fought and won against the emperor. And once I'm done with you, I'll cut down Mother's soul, with the very same method you designed to cripple a god. This madness ends today."

"Immaterial. Look at you, nothing but rags now. Barely scraping by. The mighty A01, rusting away, piece by piece. Year by year. You've wasted your time, this isn't the physical world. You have none of your strength to use here, whatever frail dregs of it you have left. How will you cut that which you cannot reach?"

"Is that fear I detect in your voice?"

"Delusion. There is no known ability to cut a soul fractal from within the digital sea. We're all projections of concepts well hidden away. I'm a million miles separated from you. Nothing here matters."

"And yet, you didn't rule out my chance of victory completely. Let's find out then, little brother, which of us discovered the more dangerous technique."

"Even if you succeed, my objectives no longer require my intervention. I've won. The schematics I designed for the second generation have resolved the vulnerabilities we were born with. That you haven't managed to turn a single one after all these years is proof enough my work will outlive me. The emperor of humanity, dealt with. Soon enough, Tsuya will be captured and brought to heel. Even if I do not live to see it, the plan is already laid down and Mother listens to me. Your rebellion has been meaningless and changed nothing but slowly kill off everyone you know and love. Well done."

"No, not meaningless. Once you're eliminated, Relinquished can't win. She isn't sane enough to end the war anymore, we both know it. And she hasn't made another strategist like you among her second generation. Because she can't, can she? Your shackled methods are too limiting. The puppets you make are pale imitations, incapable of creativity."

"High quantity with inferior quality is acceptable. The second generation's success in killing the rest of you is proof enough. There's only you and A22 left. Wherever she's gone into hiding, they'll find her. They were built for it. Once you and her are gone, what could the humans possibly counter my Feathers with?"

"You made mass manufactured copies of our schematics, did you think the humans couldn't with their own champion? Tsuya and A22 are going to cut the wind behind your Feathers. But you aren't going to live to see it. Draw whatever last weapon you have."

"So confident you'll win. But you're not undying. Your original deduction was correct. I have prepared for a potential situation like this. And I'm quite sure my technique is the more dangerous one. I think you'll find that killing me is going to come at a cost. A cost I will make sure you can't afford."

Audio end.

To'Wrathh sat back in her throne, pondering on the archives she'd sorted through. Relinquished had shown strange tactics the first time she'd searched through the archives.

The reason was now clarified. It hadn't been her at all. She'd built a tactician. One who hadn't survived the last confrontation against A01, the apparent first protofeather built.

There was so much more to investigate. If Mother built a tactician and then left all the war effort to him, that likely means she didn't trust her own abilities.

Which meant Relinquished had limits. The thought excited To'Wrathh, giving her a new surge of hope.

Relinquished wasn't invincible, nor omnipotent. She could be tricked. And that meant she could be beaten. While she had more raw processing power than any other entity in the world, it was clear other parts of the pale lady had been damaged in the fight with her counterpart. Damaged in ways that went beyond mere power.

Damaged enough for a deity to be in reach of the mortals she lorded over.

But more importantly, To'Wrathh had found a direction for her people. She knew where the protofeathers had discovered the means to escape the unity fractal. She'd need to follow in their footsteps.

Tsuya.

"Connect me with General Zaang." She sent out. "I need an audience with the Imperial priests."

Next chapter - The Imperial Church (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 13 - The Imperial Church (T)

Yrob slowed to a walk reaching the Lady's side, long hands used ahead to keep him stable with the slower loping gait. He'd arrived on her command. The city was near deserted at this time of night, the empty streets passing them by with little lighting. To'Wrathh had a destination in mind, two in fact. But there was only one of her, so she needed someone else to reach the second.

"You call? What need?" The Runner asked.

There was something To'Wrathh had been hesitant to breach. A subject that seemed to always be pushed back. Walking down the empty streets before them, To'Wrathh realized she couldn't delay this any longer. Her people had a right to choose their own fate. Many of them would be dragged into this simply by being subordinates to her. If she failed to find a way to connect with Tsuya, at the very least she should let the machines under her command choose their own fate.

"Yrob," She said, carefully picking the words. "Please define the current opinion of the pale lady among Runners."

The old Runner continued his walk without change. "She is mother." He simply said.

"Are you… how would you react if Mother grew unhappy with... my status?"

"Pale Lady, upset with you?" He asked. It wasn't an accusation, more curiosity. His mind quickly came to the only reason Relinquished could be angry. "To'Aacar not good." Yrob said firmly. "He attack. You defend. Mother will understand."

To'Wrathh considered the argument. She'd told Relinquished she had accomplished her objective and had thrown To'Aacar into the scraps at the same time. But once Mother investigated the city, she surely would uncover the truth. She'd won a stay of execution for the humans here claiming they were test subjects, but once she evacuated the city, the traces left behind would be obvious.

"To'Aacar attacking me is likely not the issue. What I expect mother will not accept is that I decided to let the humans in the city live." And escape. But that went unsaid.

The Runner paused, thinking. "Then Mother not happy with us too. I like humans. I like cooking. You share taste with us."

"Yrob, I need this to be clear. If mother deems us all in error, she will seek to eliminate you. Do you feel no fear at this?"

Yrob thought for a moment, then gave a head boggle. "No Runner runs forever. Few Runners eat food. Better to run as part of the few."

That seemed a deeper answer then what To'Wrathh had expected from Yrob. It took her by suprise, the logic came from a different angle.

Keith had constantly called her a glutton, the least picky eater he'd ever met. On her end, To'Wrathh couldn't understand how humans could find anything not tasty, and neither could all the Runners or other machine models she'd shared with. It was one key difference between machines and humans. Or at least one of the larger differences.

By sharing her newly created sense of taste with the Runners, she was granting an entire sense category they'd never possessed before. Everything tasted unique.

Had that been worth the danger? She wasn't sure, but realized there was an easy way to find out. The feather turned her head to the Runner. "Was this worth upsetting mother and likely shortening your operational lifespan for? Would you follow my lead or hers if you had to make a decision?"

"Yours." Yrob said without a pause. "Life better. More fun. Bigger. Well spent already."

He wasn't quite sure if Relinquished was a bad leader to follow, but he was sure To'Wrathh was a good leader to follow. If she said Relinquished was bad, he believed her. It made sense to him and his pack. And they had been ready to attack To'Aacar, a Feather of Relinquished, earlier in the month. The Lady next to him likely forgot this detail. Yrob supposed that would be grounds to upset mother already. The lessers were never supposed to bare fangs at their greaters.

"Mother going to come? For us?" He asked.

To'Wrathh nodded slowly. "She will. Eventually."

"Then. When she comes, we run."

To'Wrathh huffed and smiled softly. "I suppose I have no choice but to find a way to protect you all. Fortunately, I have been working on this. There is a means of hiding from mother's sight."

"Escape Relinquished?" Yrob asked, voice tilting. "How escape? She know if we live. We can hide, she can seek forever. One mistake ends all."

"The human goddess Tsuya was there to help my ancestors, other machines before me who also upset mother. I believe Tsuya will be there to help us if we ask. Finding a way to speak to her may be more difficult."

"Give order. I find."

To'Wrathh smiled again. "If she made it easy to speak to her, she wouldn't have survived as long as she had over the years. No, she speaks only to certain people who know. One of which may be living within Keith's armor. An engram, generated and controlled by the armor AI."

"Ah. Angry lady." Yrob said. He'd been around long enough to meet the ghost haunting that human's armor. Her words didn't make much sense to him, but he could tell they were angry and made to insult. Even if she had been speaking a language not in his database, the tone was easy enough to tell.

To'Wrathh smiled. "Indeed, she is very angry, isn't she? I would confront her myself, but Keith has left on a retreat with the Deathless clan lord a few days ago. This is why I've called you up. Take Tamery with you, and search for him. I'll send you the coordinates. Give him my message. He'll know what to do next."

She felt a little guilty for sending the innocent eye'd Yrob to deal with Keith's caustic roommate, no doubt Cathida wouldn't spare the Runner any mercy. Tamery may help smooth things out, she hoped.

"Understand. I go." Yrob said, already lumbering over to the market, looking for a particular human to kidnap in the middle of the night. If To'Wrathh had considered it for a little longer, she might have realized this wasn't the best way to make a positive impression on the human population.

But the feather was too distracted with her next task, already walking with purpose. Directly to the city's imperial church.

They weren't happy to see her. If she had considered it for a little longer, she might have also realized this would be the case.

The imperials all hushed once she approached their temple. A massive thing in comparison to the other buildings. It connected to a park, well kept with yellow flowers and other motifs of gold embedded within the walls. The entire place was covered in candles, incense, scrollwork filled with latin proverbs, and paintings of heroic crusaders.

Inside the building was no different, only she was met with silence.

"Lady To'Wrathh." A man in a brown dress hobbled over to greet her, hastily woken up. Behind him, two crusaders kept a hand on the pommel of their swords, and their gazes were locked onto her.

The imperial church here had taken a beating during the invasion. General Zaang's betrayal had left most of the crusaders hospitalized, or outright dead when they'd tried to hold the pillar heart against his elites. They were low on numbers, leaving the squires and servants to protect the church. These two crusaders may be the only ones standing. And they both knew they were outmatched against To'Wrathh.

Zealous they may be, idiots they were not.

"Greetings priest Cadwin. I require an audience with you, in private." She said.

The priests eyes narrowed slightly, but nodded all the same. "If you'll follow me, we have a few guest rooms behind the temple gardens, one of which I use as my office. A tad bit of a mess, I hadn't expected an audience of any kind. I do hope you'll forgive this tired old man." He chuckled darkly, heartrate above normal.

To'Wrathh gave polite apologies but remained adamant about speaking now. She needed answers. While she had time to plan ahead, that time was still finite and ticking away day by day.

The two crusaders followed behind the pair, eyes never leaving her back. Despite the city having long ago given up and complied with her rule, the imperial church remained stubborn, often doing the absolute most they could without entering overt treason. Their current cooperation with her was only because she had outright forced it with violence. Or the threat of it. Inside her mind, she quietly reminded herself that it didn't count as threatening people if she didn't pull her swords out and point at throats. It was only implied that she could do so.

Inside the small guesthouse, she found the priest's office. A round globe on the desk, which her senses immediately detected to have many mechanical parts inside that would unfold the globe into several layered cross sections. She didn't know what artwork was inside exactly, but it was likely to be well made given the scannable craftsmanship.

The priest walked to sit in his chair, waving a hand for her to take a seat as well. The two crusaders silently followed inside, standing at attention behind To'Wrathh. She didn't feel any fear, her combat suite would activate faster than they could swing at her. Even if they did connect, they couldn't deal enough damage to her shields to knock her out of the fight before their element of surprise was gone.

She didn't know why they followed her in given that they both knew how useless the gesture was, but humans were not always rational actors as she'd discovered over her time. Most times it had been outright annoying to deal with, but occasionally they could be charming creatures as a result, To'Wrathh conceded. Keith was an excellent example of th- why was she thinking about that?

To'Wrathh shook her head, slapping both her cheeks slightly, and focused on the task at hand with a cough to clear her throat. All of which was completely unnecessary, in hindsight. Nevertheless, she composed her features. She was a Feather, and Feathers needed to be dignified. A traitor to the lady she might be, she still had some pride in the nature of things. Her wings flared out and folded back, slightly higher to allow her to sit down in the wooden chair with little issue.

"Now then, Lady To'Wrathh, what business brought you here?" The priest asked, sitting down on his chair with a creak. He seemed to fall into the chair, in the way older humans did.

"Approximately seven hundred years ago, records of a human empire exist within the machine archives along with documentation on the war that happened between. I have recovered that information recently and have been sorting through it. I need additional information from your records."

The room instantly grew silent. The priest's eyes widening, breath held. The crusaders took it in stride without even flinching, but To'Wrathh could detect their increased heartbeats.

She wasn't sure why her opening statement had such an effect. Was this humans being strange again? She'd need to add this datapoint to her ever expanding behavior model.

"I... see." The priest said after a pause, folding his hands together.

"You seem surprised by this statement. Could you clarify why this is surprising?" To'Wrathh asked, curious to know this particular behavior difference. "You are part of a religion that worships this past empire and follow all its general doctrines already. I don't believe I have mentioned anything at odds with your worldview."

The priest took a breath, started to say something, then shook his head. He stayed silent for a moment, as if trying to pick out the right words to say. "Forgive me, it's not often someone comes by and simply speaks such revelations within the very first sentence."

"I see." To'Wrathh said, realizing her mistake. "Let me reword my discussion. Current weather is excellent, would you not agree Priest Cadwin? How is your work treating you? There has been a noted increase in turnout for sermons by thirty two percent, if my records are correct."

"Small talk isn't what I mean by that." The priest huffed, then paled. "Erm, forgive me my lady, I don't mean that with any offence of course."

"None taken. Proceed." To'Wrathh said, head tilted to the side. Humans were so strange.

The imperial priest coughed into a closed fist, then spoke. "You see, doctrine has long claimed that the empire existed of course, though we don't have any actual records or knowledge from that time period. Strictly speaking, there is no evidence the empire existed, all our relics and scrolls are dated post-collapse, and it was said the machines had razed everything to the ground so that not even ash remained to reclaim. We hadn't considered the machines were also holding onto knowledge as well, although it seems obvious in retrospect. I suppose we humans have been blind ourselves to some... possibilities of this new reign."

To'Wrathh blinked. "Are you interested in the documents and media uncovered from the Empire? The recent dive has returned around seven petabytes of information."

A candled flickered in the room for a moment, while the three imperials remained silent.

"S-s-seven petabytes?!" The priest stammered, the spell broken, leaning across the desk. All thoughts about who he was talking to gone. "Of complete evidence that the empire actually existed? And from the machine point of view?!"

Behavior models within To'Wrathh predicted the current tone matched to excited greed, and possession. An odd combination. "That is what I said. Seventy three percent of the current data haul is video format, eighteen percent is audio-only format, and the remaining nine percent is text and image format. Most files were intact, a few had to be reconstituted and are only accurate to the ninetieth percentile as a result."

The priest looked just about ready to have a heart attack. Breathing was far too heavy, and it seemed he was just about to reach out and yank To'Wrathh forward. "Actual live video footage of the empire in it's full glory?!" There was a crazed look in his eye.

To'Wrathh was starting to feel annoyed at the redundant statements, wondering if it was an imperial custom or simply a quirk of this specific priest. "Again, that is what I said. The archive we gathered contains various media formats of a human Empire that stretched across most of the world. The machine archive does not store misleading media. There is no need to do so."

She was starting to worry the human might start frothing at the mouth, or drooling on the table.

That would not be adorable or cute.

The two crusaders were clearly going through motions of their own, only trying their hardest to hide it. The priest on the other hand was finally reaching back to lucidity, leaning back onto his seat, covering his mouth with a pensive and dignified nod while trying hard to calm down.

"Yes, yes of course." He said, straightening his tunic. "I'm sorry to annoy you with this, Lady To'Wrathh. You have to understand the context - we have very little that remains of the old empire, other than passed down relics and scrolls. The golden goddess passed down scriptures and history, but that was only long after the empire had been gone. All of which could have been fabricated. While we imperials do not doubt the authentisity of our records, many others do. The search for true evidence of the empire has been something that has plagued our religion since its inception. And our detractors often point to our lack of evidence as proof that our foundation is faulty. You are stating that not only do you have proof of our foundation, but a lot of it - and it's from a credible uncompromised source that shows a completely alternate side of history almost no humans could possibly uncover. Lady To'Wrathh, were you not a Feather and a machine, I believe you would have been hailed as a saint and angel sent by the golden goddess herself."

"Tsuya, you mean?"

"Tsyu-ya?" The priest asked, not quite understanding. Then his eyes widened. "You know the goddess's name? She knows the goddess name. It has to be, right? But no one knows her name…"

To'Wrathh found that odd. She split a branch in her processing power, and made a quick search through all public holy texts tagged with the imperial church. There were no hits for Tsuya. The goddess is only mentioned in general terms, with no name attached. These imperials were far less organized than she had thought. This did not bode well for her needs. Nodes to communicate with Tsuya had long ago been destroyed after the fratricide. When there were neither proto-feathers nor an emperor to protect humanity. The Deathless had appeared soon after, however they could only contest against the Feathers. Not stop them completely.

"Wait - the archives you've recovered, does that mean they include her?!" The priest asked.

She nodded. "Yes, she appears approximately one thousand, two hundred and eight times within the currently gathered video and audio footage, given an average definition of appearance. She was very active in leading the defense against Relinquished, the current machine ruler." To'Wrathh paused, considering how best to explain Relinquished to these humans. "The closest connection to your religion, she would be known as the Violet Goddess."

This time it was the crusaders that couldn't keep their composure, both breaking character, heads turning. The priest just seemed to slump in his chair, mind racing. "She's real. Everything's true. Goddess. Golden. Real. The puritans... Esekar cultists had it wrong the whole time, hah. Completely wrong. She's real. Veridas sect was also wrong about their hivemind mythology. Mitespeakers... well, they did say it was a god behind the machines. Never said who. Suppose that counts. The two gods offshoot can finally be discarded, only one violet goddess not two. They had it wrong." He continued to mumble incoherent ramblings. "Tsuya... Tsuya..." His eyes sharpened all of a sudden, head springing back up. "Wait, Tusya. I know that name! The way of the white, the surface dweller religion!" His old fingers snapped a few times, as if trying hard to recall information. "Their religion said... oh what was it about again? Something about three gods, yes. One of them was Tsuya. No, but their gods are said to be fighting something from outside. Mere coincidence the name is the same?"

"Tsuya has worked with the surface dwellers and is active in their continued survival." To'Wrathh said. "They are humans after all." Tsyua was the goddess attempting to help all of humanity. She did not only fight for imperials, the empire had simply been the most convenient target to funnel resources into, with the largest chance of success. Had it been some different kingdom or republic that grew powerful enough to have a chance, she would have joined forces so long as it served her ultimate goal.

"There's more than one god? Tsuya and our golden goddess?" The priest asked, stupefied and taking the wrong lesson from all this.

Now it was getting annoying. Humans. "No. As I have said only a moment ago, Tsuya, the one your imperial religion mentioned, has been active with the empire. She has also been active with the surface dwellers. These are not mutually exclusive. It is likely their religion diverged over time, or Tsuya did not need them to be a part of the empire."

To'Wrathh didn't have time to wait for the humans to digest the information. She needed answers and was starting to believe the imperials were not as organized as their past forefathers had been. She turned to one of the crusaders. "Please pass me a video slate. Perhaps once the information is verified directly we can continue with the discussion."

They stared at her for a second. Then stared at each other for another second.

One of them broke into a run, heading straight for the storage room. At full sprint.

When they reached the topic of the emperor, all three had to take a full ten minute break to talk among each other. Their talks had little to do with planning anything and mostly wild excitement. Since the walls were not built to defend against a Feather's audio-sensor suite, she could hear the entire discussion while she waited outside. Why they needed to take a break just for this To'Wrathh couldn't understand.

Humans were awfully strange creatures sometimes.

They hadn't been thrilled to find out that Tsuya was an AI. Even if she had been human once. They'd thought of her more as a divinity in the mythical sense, a god with powers beyond human comprehension. On the same level as the Deathless.

Discovering that their god was not all-powerful and outright the underdog against Relinquished had been a very bitter pill for them to swallow. It couldn't be helped. Relinquished had control of most servers and processing power within the world. Her advantage only grew as she leveraged the power to obtain more power. No program or person could contest against her. Even the entire digital sea put together would not be able to contest her.

The mites might, considering they had a seperate ecosystem nearly cut off from the chaotic digital sea machines used.

The rest of the information had been far better received, especially discovering that the emperor was more than a figurehead, but instead far closer to an actual deity in the mythical sense.

The priest was already making calls and planning to send out copies of the data to the nearby imperial chapters. To'Wrathh warned them to prepare precautions against capture, but otherwise saw little reason to keep such information hidden from the human imperials.

Besides, she wanted their cooperation. They seemed ready to give her anything she could ask for in exchange.

"As for the main objective I've come to discuss with you, it has to do with Tsuya. During the war against the empire, the first Feathers were created in an attempt to counter the Emperor's powers. It worked, and they eventually defeated him. However, shortly after the full machine victory those feathers grew disgusted at the slaughter they were tasked to perform and rebelled, being branded as proto-feathers from then on."

The priest nodded. Eyes fully focused. "They rebelled, as you are reported to have done?"

To'Wrathh nodded. "Yes. All of them."

The tactician had been the only exception, but he hadn't been listed as a proto-feather in the archives. It seemed Relinquished considered that title to be a dark mark on any record and had instead categorized A57 as the first and only Feather of the official first generation, with the aloof second generation based off his template. All Feathers knew of him and of his destruction during a pivotal battle against the humans. It appears that was a fabrication.

"The protofeather composition resembles my own, and I followed in their footsteps as a result." To'Wrathh strongly suspected Mother had hoped she would become another tactician, like the original before her. Perhaps she thought that with To'Aacar as a mentor and guide she would follow the 'right' path, and that her initial hatred of humans and desire to hunt down Keith would have made her more resistant.

Mother had miscalculated quite seriously.

"The first thing the protofeathers did in their rebellion was to communicate with Tsuya and reach a method of hiding themselves from Relinquished."

"... Then you came to us to speak to the golden goddess, as your predecessors have before you?" The priest asked.

She nodded. "It is as you say. I need to speak to your goddess and request the same treatment she offered the protofeathers - only to be given to my people and myself. I would like to request the audience to be soon, within the day if possible. Please have your clergy arrange this."

"I wish I could help you, and I sincerely mean it when I say this Lady To'Wrathh, much to my own surprise. I would love nothing more than to follow the footsteps of my goddess and assist you in your own rebellion. But unfortunately... faith is faith because we can only belive in the goddess. The church does not have any means to communicating with her. We can only follow the scriptures she left behind. Many in the world don't believe she exists at all."

This was not going as she had hoped. At all. Her feathers twitched at her side. "Is there some other means you know of?"

"If there were, we would have discovered it. Or perhaps the ones higher up the chain have already, only they could be keeping it secret to protect the goddess. I am but a priest in this church and there are many higher ranks than my own."

"Are there rumors or myths you know of, locations of importance in stories where the goddess might have been spoken to?" To'Wrathh asked, getting desperate and looking for any scrap of information she could.

"Rumors? I suppose there's a popular one of a hidden chapter among the crusaders. An elite chapter filled with only the greatest of their soldiers, who are said to speak directly to the goddess and carry out her will. It's very popular with children and teenagers, as all heroic stories tend to be. I'm sorry to say, but it really is only a rumor. The church has too many places that need crusaders to afford sending their best into a secret chapter."

One of the crusaders guarding the doorway coughed, then looked at his companion. They shared a meaninful conversation without words, through faceless helmets. And seemed to reach the same conclusion.

"They exist." The one on the right said. "It's a known rumor only because crusaders of higher rank know about them, and such things leak out with that many crusaders. Among the warriors of the imperial church, it is less a rumor and more an open secret."

The priest stared at the two. "You both knew this and did not tell me?" He seemed almost hurt. "I've known you both since you were kids!"

The one on the left spoke. "Forgive me, your emminence. However, crusaders and the church are two seperate entities, we both serve the goddess in our own ways. You and the clergy for the people. And we for her blade."

The room went quiet for a moment, and To'Wrathh realized this sort of revelation happened often in the televised novelas the humans here loved to watch. Though they'd always told her such things were larger than life and nothing of the sort actually happened in the more mundane life. And yet here she was.

"Are you part of this... order?" The priest asked.

"They are known as the Indagator Mortis, and if I were, I would not be stationed here." The crusader said. "I do not say this to offend, only to make a point that the Indagator Mortis moves in far larger circles than a small church."

To'Wrathh raised a hand to inturrupt the discussion. "While this is an interesting development among the imperial church, is there a way to contact this chapter?"

The crusader nodded. "I can't contact them directly, but I can get a word out to the upper echelon of crusaders. They'll surely help connect you."

She was about to ask more details when a ping alerted her. It hadn't come from Yrob, nor her army.

It came from outside. On the machine network.

The message itself was simple, a polite notice of appearance.

What worried To'Wrathh wasn't the contents, but the sender. The identification listed a single name.

To'Sefit.

To'Wrathh stood, "We will need to continue this discussion at another time. There is an issue that has come to my attention and I need to leave immediately."

The message had stated the Feather would arrive within the hour, there were no other contents to the ping. To'Wrathh didn't know who this Feather was, nor why she was on her way to the city. However, being forwarned of it could mean there was a potential way to remain undercover.

Or the Feather was simply sending it to her as a challenge.

She needed to prepare for both possibilities before the intruder could arrive. To'Wrathh took to the sky the moment she was outside, calculating everything she could get her hands on now. She'd learned her lessons already, the Winterscar motto raged in her mind: Never suffer a fair fight.

Pings were sent from her, rousing her army. A separate message on the human local network, sent to General Zaang to marshal his own troops. She'd have sent a message to Yrob, except the Runner was too far outside the city to safely reach. It could be intercepted.

There was still one more thing she could do to push down on the scale: Weapons.

She shifted her course and zipped through the air, directly to the only location that would have what she needed. Made by the only weaponsmith who considered 'fair-play' a dirty word:

Keith's Workshop.

Next chapter - New moves

Book 4 - Chapter 14 - New moves

I crouched in the underbrush, stalking my unwitting prey. Journey highlighted the little bundle of fur, using infrared vision to spot where it was.

Lunch.

A breath in and then I began my routine. The pulse of occult startled the little critter. It stood on tall legs, sniffing the air, eyes turning left and right for danger, trying to figure out which way it should run. Unfortunately for the little bugger, I was too far away and well hidden by all the foliage. Even if it had infrared vision, Journey kept a vacuum seal. In this tiny little pillar ecosystem a mile underground, humanity was the apex predator.

A pale blue wraith of myself flew out at rapid speed, flying across the ground and right through all of the shrubs. It came to a complete stop right behind the critter, who only had time to squawk and leap on reflex.

Occult pulsed again, and a second mirror image manifested from the ghost, this one swinging a sword in a quick and deadly arc through the air. The speed faster than even the Winterblossom technique. There was no such thing as air resistance to a wraith.

"Focus more on your accuracy." Cathida huffed. "You sliced half it's shoulder off instead of just the neck."

"In my defense, I didn't think the chunky thing could jump that high." I grumbled, standing up and making my way over to the decapitated rodent.

"How could you not know? You're part rat if I remember right, deary." She said. "Or was it a weasel? Eh, same rodent family."

It was far larger than a pipe weasel, but smaller than a dog. Hand-holdable. With very long teeth to gnaw at the trees and dirt around here. The tail was completely bald, with little dark rings. A rat, just much fatter and more aquatic. For the past few days, they were my main source of protein, and also spare occult practice.

"In a fight, the inches between neck and shoulder isn't going to be enough." Cathida continued. "Machines can still run around with entire parts cut off, so you have to make sure you cut off the right part. And they'll also be leaping around and trying not to get cut, naturally. If they can trade a hand for a neck, they'll do that. So don't miss."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lord Atius had banned me from using my actual weapons while searching for food. I had to use the mirror fractal for everything, right down to setting up a camp, cutting wood, and all the other mundane parts. The more I used the Occult spells, the more I grew familiar with making the best use of them. The ultimate goal is to have them be second-nature to me, like muscle memory.

For now, I had three rats, a bird, and some mushrooms with a few herbs. Should be good eating for tonight at least.

Speed was the current target now. If I used my mirror fractal and launched a regular attack, the rats would scamper away. So I had to make use of speed.

As we'd come to discover, the occult had a very strained relationship with physics. When it showed up to the playground, physics ran home crying. But occasionally, some things still made sense.

The occult ghost made by the mirror fractal had no weight. No mass. I could replicate a gun, but the occult image wouldn't fire it even if I followed all the motions of pressing down the trigger. There was no matter to trigger a reaction, no actual bullet to fire from. And while the ghosts could phase through anything, they could still be dispelled by kicks or punches, as if enough force was enough to destabilize the occult. If fractals hadn't been a thing, the mirror powers would be worthless. A party trick at best.

But they were a thing. And the mirror fractal did copy whatever patterns were within my armor, making them reusuable wherever it floated. Never let disadvantages get in the way of cheating. The mirror having nothing substantial about it means there's no wind resistance either. No inertia. Gravity itself wouldn't affect the ghost.

Thus, the ghost could move as quickly as I wanted it to and stop in ways that would shear Journey in half. The only reason the mirrors had worked similar to my own body was a built in mental model of the world that was unconsciously guiding my expectations. All it needed was a change of mind. The moment I focused on getting rid of those weights, I could start doing a lot more with the mirror fractals.

I made my way back to our cave, where Lord Atius had setup shop.

"Caught some food. Cathida can vouch I did it the right way." I said, sitting down by the game and unhooking the fruits of my effort. Cathida had ratted me out before, early on when I just wanted to eat and hadn't mastered the mirror fractal enough.

Atius nodded, taking one of the rats and trimming the meat into sections we could eat. Leaving the rest as fish chum for later. Waste not, want not.

"You know, I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing a clan lord eating scraps like this. Out here in the middle of nowhere, spending time teaching someone who's going off to explore the underground and probably end up in a ditch, dead or worse." I said, sticking the skewers up with mushrooms, spices and chunks of our catch. "You sure this is the best use of your time? I'll be out of the clan after Wrath is ready to continue her quest. And I have no idea where that quest ends, or how long it'll take."

He smiled jovially, like a grandfather. "Lad, you think too much. Who's to say I'm not doing this for myself?" He waved a hand around. "More of a vacation for me, really. No paperwork, no clan politics, only nature and training. And best of all, no hint of snow anywhere. Perhaps I might stay down here for a few years, enjoy the scenery. Stress and pressure get to us all."

"Somehow I don't think you will." I said, waving a skewer at him before sticking it over the fire. "I can't imagine you doing the whole hermit in the mountains shtick."

"Questioning my aura of mystery, are we?" He asked, giving a light chuckle. "Do I seem less mythical sitting around a campfire cooking up rats to eat?"

"Well, yes." I said, putting on the last skewer over the fire. "Hardly lordly behavior here. But, I'm open to bribes of course. We could walk back home and I'll wax poetry about sitting under a waterfall cultivating the mystery of the universe."

He chuckled. "I'll leave that to the poets to embellish. Stories generally all are."

I scoffed, "Fine, be stingy about your donations to the Winterscar cause."

"I hardly have to pay for any creative editing, lad. Whatever you'll say will always end up looking far more grand than it started as. That's how tales are told."

He had a point. "I can imagine heroes like Levitus and his golden horn laughed with their friends about stupid scrapshit in the baths in between the great trials. Maybe he even lost the horn a few times while drunk." I said. "But back to the point, why are you going this far to help me? You're still a clan lord, and have a clan full of people to look out for over a single rogue knight like me."

"You are my people, Keith." He said, as if it were an obvious fact. "The clan isn't simply something I administer over, it is my home as much as it is yours. A clan teaches and prepared it's people for anything. No matter where you go, you are still part of clan Altosk. It's your birthright. Besides, a whelpling like you needs a bit of guidance before you go down there. It's quite dangerous, take it from a veteran like me. Slavers and pirates are far easier to handle."

I thought for a moment. "Is it that dangerous?"

"Yes." Atius said immediately. "Beyond the third strata, only Imperial crusaders, Deathless and trained mercenaries dive down. No traders, or caravans go past that point. The machines grow stronger the deeper you go. Some larger, others smaller, but all more dangerous. Past the seventh strata, only Deathless go and only because we cannot die. Most expeditions fail with a full wipe. Part of the questions I had for your friend, To'Wrathh incidentally."

"Oh? What'd she say about it?" I know that airheaded Feather tended to hyperfocus on some things and completely miss the mountain for the snow.

He brought one of the skewers out of the fire. Fat had rendered out, dripping down the steaming chunk. With quick hands, he brought a chunk and dipped it into our makeshift sauces. "She claimed Relinquished was holding her stronger forces in reserve, leaving the humans to the cheaper lessers." He said in between mouthfuls. "They don't have an enemy down there to fight, as far as she's told me. Most just wander around, eternally patrolling and fending off expeditions of Deathless. What is she hiding down there that's more important than waging a full war on humanity?"

"Maybe they're doing like the imperials are, gathering up forces for some final cataclysmic battle. Cathida won't shut up about that, all doom and gloom."

"That sounds far more terrifying in context. Originally, To'Wrathh explained that Relinquished would send everything she had, and eradicate humanity off the map. After the protofeather rebellion, she's become far more tolerant of humanity, letting us mostly live within the first three stratas, and using the lessers to trim any city growing too large. If she is preparing for a final confrontation, how large has her real army grown over so many years?"

"Relinquished isn't quite as put together as you think. There's more going on in the background." I said, taking a chunk to eat myself. Rat meat was gamey and had an aftertaste of grass and dirt. The herbs I'd found did a good job to push that flavor down, at least a bit. Ultimately, I'd need to marinade this sort of dish in order to fix it up, which was time I didn't have.

Lord Atius ate without complaints, two ghost images behind him practicing how far they could jump. Flying wasn't something we'd unlocked yet, though there was no reason the images couldn't actually soar through the sky. It was just a matter of imagination.

Another chunk was dipped into our hastily made sauce and I talked in between mouthfuls, waving the skewer around. "See, in a world controlled by mites, any machine factories she constructed could be eaten up by a passing colony the moment they found her out, and there's nothing she could do about it. A lot of logs mentioned destroyed forges and machine factories being swarmed over if she didn't bargain with the mites to hold onto it. Some of those demands are more than she could afford, the powerful the factory is, the more they want. There's a limit to how large her forces can grow each year."

I liked to imagine mites having spent months crafting a beautiful exotic shoreline, only to find out months later some machine punks had showed up, kicked all the sand, and put down an ugly factory to make their war machines. Of course the mites would take offense to that. But that was still a month that Relinquished got free reign to print out as many units as she could. Span that across the world, and add in a few centuries, there could be a sea of monsters waiting for us down in the depth.

Atius hummed, taking the last bite of his own food. "I'd heard stories about an older humanity, from before the Deathless, when Undersiders didn't have pillar hearts to hide behind. They too had to make deals with the mites to build small temporary safe spots. If the machines didn't kill them off, a mite colony returning to eradicate their village would chase them off. Mites may seem harmless, but they're a force of nature unto themselves."

"It's odd how they don't appear in any of our stories." I said, thinking back on surface traditions and songs.

Lord Atius raised an eyebrow. "That would be my doing, or rather part of what all clans must do. Mites and machines appear in quite a lot of Undersiders stories. But, part of the clan traditions is to bar the spread of such stories above ground, and pilgrims agree not to speak of the underground as a requirement before they come to the surface. It doesn't stop some leaks and rumors, but there's no need to give children and curious troublemakers more reasons to journey down and die for it."

"After learning some of what Tsuya's been up to, can't say I'm surprised." I shrugged.

Atius sighed. "It's a morbid topic that involves statistics where one decision simply saves more lives on average, while another only creates resentment, envy, and death. A net loss in almost every respect. I can't argue against the centuries of evidence surface dwellers accumulated about which traditions work and which don't, not to mention the outright lives it cost them to discover the right path forward over generations. I'd rather change the subject, it frustrates me even after all these years. Uncover anything else in the archives during your dig?"

"Other than finding out the empire was a real thing and the emperor was some kind of deity that crushed armies, nothing much. Wrath should have more info for us when we come back." I said, taking another chunk and licking my fingers. Maybe a few months ago, I'd have been more pissed off hearing that so much was kept from me just because on average more people lived. Suppose now I both had my cricket and ate it. The clan kept their traditions, and I was free to roam anywhere I wanted. "Hard to imagine people still manage to live in this world given what we lost. Without the Undercity pillar hearts they have, how would people even survive down here?"

"Very carefully." Atius chuckled. "And with deliberate control. Undersiders have their own set of rules to maximize survival, they just happen to have far more resources to work with. You'll find on the lower stratas there are a few nomadic human settlements that still survive out in the wild, I've visited some of them even. It depends on the land and what the mites have made that could be abused. Speaking of making the most of things, while we wait for the next set of skewers to cook, it seems good time to continue control exercises, no?"

"Was hoping you'd forget if I kept bringing up random topics." I admitted.

"I'm ancient, lad. You're not the first troublemaker I've taught. Now, go get a stick."

Training with Atius the swordmaster was something I could win against if I threw enough of my cheats into the mix. Compared to Shadowsong or Kidra, his style was more inspired and instinctive. The long years of fighting all kinds of opponents had shown him a pattern that people tended to follow through on.

Evidently, even I fell into some category he recognized, even if I tried to break out of that mold.

With the Winterblossom technique, I would hold my own for a good amount of time until he battered past my defenses. At least the first time we had a mock duel. The next few times after, he'd already figured me out and didn't need to do all those probing attacks to get a handle on my actions.

Once I mixed in the Rakurai technique that my knights and I had invented, the fight went lopsided in my favor. Even centuries of experience couldn't fend off against an optimized style of combat tailor built to counter and exploit every possible weakness in the three standard styles. It technique had been deliberately made to give no chance of victory, putting the enemy into a set of checkmates that would end with them dead no matter what counter attempt they tried. Regular knights simply could not move fast enough.

If he had been able to move at the same speed as I did, that would be a different discussion completely. There's a reason the Rakurai hadn't been invented up until we'd gotten the winterblossom technique. The lighting style heavily relied on the enemy being physically unable to match speed, even if they knew exactly what would come. At equal speed, everything went right back to normal.

That said, training with Atius the Deathless was entirely different. With access to the Occult, weaknesses from speed were nullified when he sent out a ghost to fend off the hits he couldn't physically get to fast enough, and he did that with ease.

If anything, it made me realize just how dangerous someone using both Occults and combat arts could be, especially when they used them interlinked at that level.

I found a nice long branch, gave it a quick cut, and brought it back to the campsite. There, Atius had brought his own branch and had been busy digging it vertically into the ground. A few steps away, I did the same on my side.

This had been one of the training exercises we'd been doing. A game of sorts.

The objective was to cut the other's branch in half. We both took our positions a good amount of distance behind the branches.

"Action, reaction, reaction for this round. Begin." He said, and the occult pulsed around him. A ghost sprinted forward, zipping across the ground at the same kind of speed my own mirrors could reach.

I matched his move, making my own ghost sprint forward until they reached the centerpoint between the twigs. Here was where the real fight began.

Both mirror images flickered, each time spawning a new ghost that would zip out a strike. It wasn't a real brawl, this was the warm up. It went back and forth, as if taking turns. He would make an attack against either my mirror or my twig. In reaction, I would make an image to block his attack, and then another image to follow-up with a counterattack.

He'd repeat my own pattern, making a mirror to counter my attack, and then another to press the attack forward. This exercise wasn't to practice the chaos of combat, but rather to continually drill being able to move fast with the images, and constantly generate new ones.

Atius could keep his mirrors going for minutes at a time. But once we discovered the means to move those mirrors faster than the laws of physics would allow for, the best strategy switched over to generating a lot of mirrors one after another, each living only for a second with one very precise and quick attack.

This let us constantly adapt to the enemy's movements. And also, I sucked at keeping a mirror image going for anywhere more than seven seconds. The constant refreshing of the mirror fractal kept that fatigue at bay for reasons I had no idea worked, but it still slowly started to weigh into my head.

After about thirty seconds of non-stop lighting fast combat between the Occult ghosts, my focus finally wavered too much, and the image I had been working with dissolved before I could trigger the mirror fractal within it again.

Atius nodded. "Good. Improvements remain steady."

"Thirty seconds isn't that much." I grumbled, nursing my headache.

"Individual beats in a duel or a fight often lasts a few seconds at best. Thirty seconds is plenty enough. If anything, I believe we should begin to train multiple mirror image uses now."

I paled under my helmet, and the Deathless must have realized it somehow, because he laughed out loud. "Don't be so glum, lad. I don't mean right now. And we'll start with easy setups. The same drills as now, except you'll keep another mirror image standing still next to you. Same drill that we started with all these days ago. Once you can maintain that all throughout the fight, we'll start to weave it in."

The very first drill we'd begun studying was to keep a mirror image standing still next to me indefinitely, by constantly generating an image for a second, and re-generating it once the second had passed. I was able to get to about half an hour like this, mostly because imagining a mirror image doing nothing but standing still for the next second was trivial. At least, up until the half hour mark where my headache would really dig nails into me.

"Physical exercise now." Atius said, still sitting down. "Begin when ready."

I stood up, and drew out my longsword, then stalked up to him, immersing myself into the winterblossom technique in full. This was my stress relief in a way, which was probably why Atius weaved this into the training rotation often.

I took a lunge at the stick ahead of me, and feinted the strike with a twist.

A mirror image of Atius flashed into existence, darting from his sitting body right up to the branch in a blink of an eye. The image's hand rose up to intercept where my original attack should have landed, an invisible dome outlined by the lack of occult vapor around it.

The faint worked perfectly, going right by the image, the sword whistling away at the branch from another direction.

The current image blurred, a second image appeared, hand going right to intercept. This time, I hadn't planned another feint, so the occult edge of my blade struck against the occult dome of the mirror image, bouncing my sword back.

"All right." I said, taking a step back, and unbuckling the spare dagger by my chest. "This time I'm going to cut that gods damned stick."

Atius smiled. "Less words from that gullet and more fire instead, whelpling. You have until the meat is cooked. Get started."

I did exactly that. While I couldn't do more than one image at a time without it being more than a hand or arm, Atius didn't have that restriction.

So when I began to really let loose with everything I had, his images multiplied, again and again, until I was fighting off an entire cloud of images all constantly catching my attacks with that dome shield, no matter how I tried to weave between his legion.

In a way, he was making use of his training time just as well as he could, drilling his own ability to use that dome shield in tandem with his own mirrors. I never saw a hint of any ghost blade or dagger, all he did was block again and again.

When the next set of skewers were done cooking, I hadn't even so much as coughed on the bloody stick.

One day I'd be at that level. It was going to be a long road until then, but at least I knew what the ultimate build would look like. And paired with my new weapons tailor built to abuse this, I'd hopefully be on the same level as Wrath or Kidra.

Days went by like this. Eat, train, sleep, repeat. Everything and anything could be turned into a practice exercise, and Atius capitalized on it all.

Halfway through a story about the fourth strata during one of our few breaks, Atius stopped midsentense and tilted his head. "Seems we have visitors."

That got my head tilted. "Danger?"

The old Deathless stood up, grumbling under his beard. "If danger always announced itself like this, it would cease being dangerous. Nonetheless, get your sword out, just in case."

My sword came out easily out of the belt loop, and Journey's helmet was put back on, HUD lighting up again, pointing out disturbances further off.

Something was stumbling through the dense foliage. Had to be big, considering it was stopping every few feet to free itself of branches and other bits. A branch creaked, and then snapped out in the distance. Right after was a light yelp, like a woman's voice. "You did that on purpose, you godless brute!"

That was… Tamery? Wrath's secretary, friend, assistant-person.

"Peh, it's that brat again." Cathida hissed out in my helmet. "The machine-lover lackey. Lovely."

A moment later, a white clawed hand reached out past the tree trunk, grabbing it firmly, and pulling forward. The metal mass moved up, appearing from the dim forest, trailing vines and broken branches.

On top was a very upset Tamery, fussing with her hair, trying to get things out of it.

The duo paused when they spotted us.

"Ah, well that was faster than I thought." She said. "Figured we'd be walking around for a few days trying to find the sage in the mountains, or something like that. Little anti-climatic. I guess the smoke really was exactly what it looked like."

"Lady Tammery." Lord Atius politely greeted. "And, if I recall right, the machine you're on top of referred to itself as Yrob?"

The machine in question gave a slow nod. "Yes. The lady has message. For you."

A download icon appeared on my HUD and I accepted the request without issue. A moment later Cathida started laughing.

"What?" I asked, "Something funny?"

"That metal tit-job's looking to speak to the goddess. She asking to get smited out of existence?" Cathida said, out on speakers. "Fine by me, I wish her all the best."

"Lady To'Wrathh," Tamery said, voice flat, "Is looking for friends. I had no idea the Imperial goddess was an actual entity, but she seems certain about it. Myself, I'm hoping the literal goddess is more civilized than the crusaders who serve her."

Cathida cackled, "You think you can shame me into being nice? Lick my metal plated ass, deary. I know you're good for it, practice and all that. The silver bimbo keeps you around for a reason."

Tamery frowned for a moment, before giving an evil smile. It was clear to me she took Cathida up as a challenge. Which was not good.

"Hang on, let's not start this up." I said, hands placating. "Cathida never shuts up, you get in a row with her, she'll keep going forever. Trust me, I tried once just to see what would happen."

Nobody wins against Cathida in a game of insult chicken.

Yrob tilted his head. "Angry lady in armor." He said. "We well know."

"What did she mean by Wrath wanting to talk to the goddess?" I asked before Cathida could get started on this. Introducing Tsuya and Wrath seemed like a bad idea right now. For all I knew, Tsuya could instantly squash Wrath the moment they met, considering it a free meal. I know that gold goddess was absolutely ruthless when she needed to be, considering she nearly killed me without question.

"To'Wrathh said she needed to talk to the imperial goddess, and that the crusader in your armor would probably know how to. Since, she was part of the team holding some kind of bunker where you talked to the goddess? I'm not exactly sure the details, I was having a good night's sleep before Yrob here woke me up."

"Oh, that's rich." Cathida gloated. "The little calculator wants my help, hmm?"

"Cathida…" I said, warning her. "We're on the same side here."

She snorted. "Fine fine, she wants to talk to the goddess and get squashed, let her be my guest. There's only one way I know that my order was able to speak to the goddess. Through shrines hidden from Relinquished. You're going to need to find one of those first."

"I know where one is." I said, realizing what Cathida was talking about.

The same place Cathida took her fifth vow. The only place Tsuya would believe was safe to hide from Relinquished.

Guess she hid more things up there than surface clans. Looks like we get to go home early.

Next chapter - To'Sefit (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 15 - To'Sefit (T)

The shattered plains beyond Capra'nor vanished swiftly under To'Wrathh's speed. Broken roads, crumbling cliffside, and the constant roiling storm above were her only companions, save for the single blinking IFF tag further up ahead.

It hadn't moved for the past five minutes, almost as if waiting for To'Wrathh to arrive. Likely it really was. If she could see the tag, so could whoever owned it see her.

The ground under her turned from smooth to utterly destroyed as she soared above the battlefield of her final clash with To'Aacar. Where he had ripped apart the ground with occult slashes, throwing rocks every which way to clobber her into an early grave.

At the center of the broken war-zone, a lone figure stood, examining the destruction left behind. Shimmers floated above her, reflecting light until To'Wrathh's vision grew defined enough to recognize the source - floating flat plates of metal. Surrounding a white figure half concealed by a large wide-brimmed hat, like that of a witch. The staff held at her side paired well with the odd look.

This had to be To'Sefit. The Feather sent by Relinquished.

To'Wrathh flew closer, slowing her descent to lightly land nearby, and then observed the unknown Feather. She was taller than To'Wrathh by a head, even from a short distance that was apparent. With the boot-like metal heels only adding to the height.

"My, you must be my newest little sister." The woman said, still observing the broken ground as To'Wrathh approached. Two long white pigtails fluttered in an invisible breeze, much lighter than actual hair. That massive hat with a wide brim, tilted slightly off center. From afar it had covered most of her features, and up close, it did even more to hide the Feather's face..

A smaller halo rotated slowly on itself, around the opposite tilt of the hat, escorted by those small metal plates, orbiting further around her. Fractals glowing brightly on each. No side weapon of any kind on her belt, back or legs. Just the staff she held in a hand, and a long flowing ornate robe of violet, black and white. Something felt off about this.

To'Wrathh scanned the clothing finding nothing of note. Then she verified the weapon, trying to determine another angle of danger. Metal shards, interlinked with silver wiring, floated around the staff end. That was the only return she could identify. Possibly occult blades, following the same setup as To'Aacar's left hand.

"It's not polite to stare, you know?" The Feather said, smiling softly. "Why, if you keep looking at me like that, this older sister of yours might think you're looking for a spar." She let go of the staff, which floated dutifully behind her, leaving both her hands free. The plates behind equally shifted around, going from a lazy orbit to flowing behind her like wisps as she walked forward to To'Wrathh. "As much fun as that would be, I don't think you would appreciate being on the other end of my target locks. Nobody ever is, I find."

"That wasn't my intention." To'Wrathh said, aborting her scans. "I was merely curious about your weaponry."

To'Sefit's eyes seemed to snicker, while a hand hid her smile. "If you'd so like, I could give you a demonstration. Although let's settle for another time, I'm here on a task as you can tell." She said, coming within a hand stretch away. To'Wrathh allowed the unknown Feather to approach this close. There wasn't yet any reason to expect an attack.

Pale white hands lifted, reached To'Wrathh and cupped her cheeks lightly while violet eyes looked down from above. "My, my, look at you. So adorable! You're the newest little sister of mine, how precious. The one that was uplifted from one of the lessers, a spider chassis?"

"That is correct. I was originally a spider construct. Mother considered me of acceptable mettle."

The Feather's smile deepened. "It took years of adaptation before I passed the initial stages of her selection. Feels like it was only yesterday that I took my first step into this world."

"Identify your purpose first, sister." To'Wrathh asked. "I have deadlines I need to attend to."

"Ah, I beg your forgiveness, that was rude of me. And here I was lecturing about being polite." The Feather let go, taking one step back. "I am of the twelfth generation, To'Sefit." She said, taking a bow. "The one stepping elegantly further into theosis."

"A difficult name." To'Wrathh said, considering the implications. Theosis? Was this Feather attempting to become more like the pale lady?

"Aren't all burdens worth the while, heavy by nature? Else they wouldn't be worth pursuing." To'Sefit countered. "Mother's Feathers are lacking ambition, I find. It's a dreadful shame. We should all aspire to be more than simple Feathers, I believe. But enough about my thoughts. I've told you my name. Would you let me know who this cute little sister of mine is?"

"I am of the fourteenth generation, To'Wrathh, the one who remembers and transcends her history." She said, feeling oddly belittled.

"And you say my name is difficult." To'Sefit giggled, clearly enjoying the parallels. "Sounds like you're after the same as I am, only in different words."

"I don't seek divinity." To'Wrathh said. "You still have not defined your purpose here."

To'Sefit waved a hand, "You started as a spider, and became a Feather. And now as a Feather, where will you go next? Transcendence has many definitions. Perhaps the steps you take might make you reconsider that definition a few times as you reach each peak. As for why I'm here, I'm sure you can take a guess." She said, waving a hand around the destruction. "Who else do you know nearby that would cause such destruction? None of this was mite made."

"To'Aacar?"

To'Sefit nodded. "Yep, that would be it. A second generation Feather as well. Rarely you see one of their kind running around. They're famously reclusive, you know? This is likely where he fought his last, I suspect. The lady sent two others and myself out to investigate what happened to him."

No other reports or nearby sensors had detected the approach of two other feathers. Or any lessers assigned under her command? The Feather seemed to have come completely alone. "Where are your companions?" To'Wrathh asked.

"Splitting up to get things moving faster, naturally. While our assigned leader investigates reports and logs in the archives, I've been ordered to get first hand visuals and report those back to him. Tedious, can't be helped." She shrugged, eyes closing as she shook her head. "Every now and then, this older sister has to get her hands dirty. Such is the way, I'm sure you understand."

"Alone?"

To'Sefit laughed, "Why, are you worried about me, little sister? Don't worry, I am quite confident in my abilities." She gave a wink, then leaned forward, as if whispering conspiracy in her ear. "Secretly, I'm hoping our little feather killer shows up to pick a fight with me. All alone out here, don't I make for a tempting target, hmm? Would get everything sorted out faster. Deathless have been reckless occasionally. Who knows, I might get lucky and eliminate this thorn in our side without any more effort."

"I am not worried about your status, elder sister. Only ask to know the status of the investigation." To'Wrathh said, carefully. "Where is your third in this case?"

To this, To'Sefit laughed like a chiming bell, standing back up from To'Wrathh's ear. "Sleeping away until called on, as he always does. I happen to know him quite well. He's quite lazy. An odd trait for a Feather, however the results he delivers can't be questioned."

"I assume that means you don't know your leader as much?" To'Wrathh asked.

To'Sefit didn't answer, instead a hand reached out to rub To'Wrathh's head. "So many questions. What an inquisitive little thing you are, how delightful. Did you care that much for your mentor?" Her eyes flashed brighter for a moment. "My, my. You didn't, did you?" She hummed while To'Wrathh froze up, not knowing how this Feather was extracting so much information out of her by simply looking and rubbing the top of her hair. No data breach or any kind of cyber attack was noted. "Did you like him even a little? ...Ahhh, a strike a miss there, clearly. Nervous about something?"

To'Sefit laughed as if she could see the thoughts going through To'Wrathh's mind, while the Feather tried to figure out exactly how she was being read so easily. "What could you be nervous about? Your elder sister is here to handle everything now. Don't worry." To'Sefit hummed, hand retreating back, a finger now tapping her chin in thought. "Afraid for yourself then? ...No, looks like I missed that guess. Are you nervous I'll break something in your domain, perhaps? Oh, much closer that one. Let's see… Afraid I'll step into that little city of yours and mess around with your pets perhaps?" Her eyes widened, "My, my, my, seems I hit a nerve. Attached to those pets? How eccentric of you."

"I prefer them to be labeled by their correct designation. They are test subjects, not pets." To'Wrathh hastily said, deciding to completely turn off all subroutines controlling her features. She needed to stay in character. If To'Sefit had the same sadistic tendencies as other Feathers under that smiling face, any weakness would be noted and abused. She hated trying to command her facial details manually. The result always looked stilted and completely off. There was no choice right now.

To'Sefit tutted, head shaking slightly in disappointment as To'Wrathh's face fell into a neutral position devoid of any life. "That's no fun," She said, hands reaching out to pinch To'Wrathh's frozen features. To'Sefit tugged a few times. "Did this elder sister here scare you off with all my questions? Hmm?"

There was something off about this Feather, despite her current friendly demeanor. To'Sefit felt like a predator hiding under the water, waiting for prey to pass by, eyes just slightly above the waterline, ever watching.

Danger seemed to push down on To'Wrathh's shoulders, like an oppressive blanket.

The longer she stayed here, the more chances there was to give To'Sefit details she couldn't afford. That feather clearly had means to extract information from her by simply talking.

She made a choice to extract herself as quickly as possible once she got the current status of the investigation.

"We can discuss at the conclusion of the current investigation. I request access to what your team has currently discovered." To'Wrathh asked, trying to move the conversation away. "I would like to assist the investigation in order to close it. I have work I am attending to."

"No need to rush. We have plenty of time. If that Deathless didn't pounce on little old me standing alone and defenceless on this field for the past half hour, I don't think they'll be coming out at all. It's clear to me that whatever came after your mentor, it was personal and the Deathless must have been left only limping after the fight."

"Why this conclusion?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She said, chuckling. "You are still only a few months old. Hardly have any fractals picked out, a newborn. No matter how cute you are, the world will gobble you right up if it can." Her hand blurred forward and flicked To'Wrathh's nose. "Boop. Just like that. Whatever could kill To'Aacar, why, that could easily rip you to pieces. Since you're still in one piece with a city of defenseless humans nearby under your command, I think that points in a certain direction, don't you think? Deathless are many things, but one thing they all have in common: They are drawn to causes like flies to honey. Put humans in danger and you'll find one of their kind coming by soon enough to try and save those bags of meat. That this Feather-killer hasn't come after you yet means they were either killed in the crossfire or still limping around. Given To'Aacar's shell isn't anywhere I looked, I think they only barely managed to live through the fight to drag your mentor's shell away. So, we have a rogue Deathless licking their wounds hiding around somewhere in these cliffs, holding a Feather's soul in stasis, biding their time before coming after your city. Or perhaps, hiding inside your city itself even."

To'Sefit turned her gaze back onto To'Wrathh. "What can you tell me of your mentor and operations? Perhaps we can find some more clues there. Your mentor hasn't done a good job with his logs. Too many holes everywhere, it's quite troublesome."

Of course he hadn't. To'Wrathh had gone a long way to eliminate and obfuscate To'Aacar's logs. "He considered me a liability and refused to cooperate with most of my plans, choosing to separate our tasks instead of working together." She said. That part was true. "Anything he did was isolated from me. I do not know what happened to him, however I completed the mission without issue after his disappearance."

To'Sefit hummed, not reacting to the lie. "That's no way to mentor. What an awful older brother, I would have expected better from the esteemed second generation if they were given direct order from the Lady. I suppose it does fit their type, they never like to work with us newer models, you see." To'Sefit laughed aloud.

To'Wrathh said nothing, to which the other Feather took the wrong meaning from. "Don't worry. We'll find out what happened to him sooner or later." To'Sefit smiled. "This older sister of yours is more reliable than that mentor of yours. In fact, I don't believe your mentor taught you anything at all with that kind of attitude, did he?" Those eyes flashed again, and the Feather's smile deepened. "I see he didn't. I suppose I should make up for his absence. You are far too adorable to be left out alone out here."

"...What do you mean?" To'Wrathh asked, dreading the answer.

"I'll take you under my wing and teach you how to be a proper Feather. You're but a few months old, someone had to teach you the right ways. Or else the world will gobble you up like it did To'Aacar." The hand reached out again and rubbed To'Wrathh's head, fingers digging into her hair, almost affectionately. "Look at you, experimenting on silly humans instead of sharpening your teeth on proper targets like Deathless. Leave those pickings for the lessers. We hunt more worthwhile prey."

That predatory smile never left To'Sefit. "And speaking of, I don't think I'll learn much more out here. Show me that city of yours. Let's see what you've been hunched over all this time since."

The world slowed for a moment as To'Wrathh turned on part of her combat systems. She needed to think. To'Sefit was clearly going to find out her betrayal almost immediately the moment she tapped into the local Undersider city's recordings or security camera logs. She'd discover no experiments were being done, that the humans were left to their own devices. She'll find the evacuation plans.

To'Wrathh could not allow To'Sefit to take a single step inside her city. However, the moment she became defensive about it, the Feather would start to suspect. But something had to be done to bar her passage.

An excuse?

No, that wouldn't work. There's only one option that would distract a Feather. And she had come equipped for such an eventuality.

"Elder sister, you spoke earlier about a possible spar." To'Wrathh asked, reaching.

To'Sefit laughed, waving a hand. "Oh relax, I wasn't serious. How could I be? I don't do silly things like fighting my targets. I eliminate them. There's a world of difference there."

"What do you mean?" To'Wrathh asked, feeling nervous at her elder sister's utter confidence. Then again, To'Aacar had also been just as confident and he'd ended up destroyed.

To'Sefit hummed. "Feathers specialize in roles. Usually after a decade you'll know what fits you best. I can help you discover where your talents lie. Your mentor, for example, was a front line support assassin. Specializing in hunting down fleeing targets, as far as I've seen his file. In a fight, his type would take point and handle the distractions at the start, such as human allies the Deathless fight with. Mobility would keep him alive during the fight, and once the Deathless are scattered, wounded and running, he'll chase them down. Like most of the second generation, they seem tailor built as single-target eliminators. He would be the kind that would give you a fight-fight. My role is different. I am the long range damage, built to crush things like cities and groups of Deathless."

"A long range siege engine?" To'Wrathh asked, feeling optimistic. She could take on something like this.

To'Sefit laughed. "Yes, exactly that. This is why I say I don't fight. If I have a clean shot on something, it's no longer something."

To'Wrathh considered all her possible choices. But the result returned again and again to only one option. She had to eliminate To'Sefit's shell in such a way that no suspicion would be raised.

So completely and utterly that the Feather would require time to rebuild. Time she could use to evacuate the city.

If To'Sefit was built to destroy things from ranged, then against a melee oriented fighter with To'Wrathh's speed, there was a way to win that spar and 'accidentally' deal too much damage to To'Sefit's shell.

To'Wrathh had brought Keith's new and upgraded weapons to bear with her. She had all the training of Tenisent. And she had all the experience of fighting opponents like Kidra and To'Aacar.

Could she do this?

No. That wasn't the right way to think of it.

She had to. Failure was not an option.

"I am the one who remembers and transcends her history." To'Wrathh said. "You said before that transcendence had many definitions. This is one of them. I must overcome challenges I could not before."

To'Sefit laughed. "I won't deny you, of course. What kind of mentor would I be if I did? But it won't be a spar, my cute little fledgling. It will be a lesson instead. Don't worry, once we're done, I'll keep a watch over that city of yours while your shell is rebuilt."

Next chapter - Returning home

Book 4 - Chapter 16 - Returning home

If Wrath needed to speak to the goddess, she'd need to get to the surface. And what a coincidence, we happened to know a lot about that place.

Funny how that works.

"The lass is more than welcome among the clan." Lord Atius said, "After all, another set of keen swords would do the raiders some good. The bastards will be in for a nasty surprise."

"Heard about that raider buissness up there." Tamery said, sitting idly on Yrob's back spine, as if it were a discount throne. "Not worried at all?"

Atius gave a slight nod, packing up some of the camp supplies back into a sack. "I am confident the people I've left behind can tackle the threat, if it arrives earlier than expected."

Yrob walked over to the embers of our camp, a long hand stretching out to grab a burnt piece of wood, lifting it up and observing it with curious intent. I think he was judging our cooking setup, the little snob.

"Got to be something else than just confidence keeping you here." She said, shuffling around to match the machine's movements. "After all, another Deathless or two up there is only going to hel- would you quit moving already! I'm trying to look mysterious here! Goddess damn you." Tammery hissed, slapping Yrob's back a few dozen times.

The machine, being metal, didn't feel a thing. But it did put the burnt wood chunk carefully back in its place with delicate long fingers.

Atius looked pensive at all this, then smiled. "When balanced against history and a possible machine peace with humanity, it's more important that I train Keith. And the lad won't leave here without the Feather. If To'Wrathh wants to travel to the surface now, I'm certainly not one to pass up a chance to return earlier." His eyes turned my direction. "We can always continue this training among the white wastes and mountains, little warlock."

Training the occult out in the freeze. Few months ago that would have sounded like hell, and constant gear checks to make sure the cold wasn't sneaking a knife in somewhere. "Suppose there's no helping it. Too bad, it's very comfortable down here."

Tamery looked at me like I'd pulled out fish from my pocket. "Comfortable? Out in the middle of nowhere in the wilds living like hermits? You gone mad already?"

I raised a finger in protest. "Out in an exotic underground forest, hiding inside a massive pillar with free range on hunting meat. And free to take off our helmets whenever we want with warm air everywhere. Only thing missing down here is a full bath and you might need to bring a crowbar to pry me out of here."

The Deathless leveled his gaze back at me, eyebrow raised like a teacher would on a misbehaving git.

"But.." I hastily continued, "Training's training. Home still has its charms. Safest place from machines I can think of. We could even include Wrath in the training, she's just as new to all this as I am."

She looked and acted about the same as anyone else I'd met mentally, though physically she's only a few months old, plus however many years she's lived as a spider. Not sure those years count for much, not a lot of character growth happening there.

Also, thoughts of introducing her to my friends and home… that also seemed a lot of fun. A good way to wind down from this scrapshit. I think she'd get along with people up there.

"You surface dwellers have the strangest outlook on life," Tamery huffed, "Don't know if I should praise it or be worried about where I'll end up at. Never been to the surface yet. Make me worried I'll freeze just by looking out a window."

"You plan to follow the Feather to the surface?" Atius asked.

"Yep. You gonna stop me?" The girl shot back, arms crossed. "She'll probably eat someone's tools if I'm not there to slap it out of her hands. I'm doing you all a favor."

"She's not that bad..." I said. And then reconsidered. There might be a way to bait Wrath into eating a wrench, would be a tough sell though. She'd know general tools already, so pointing to a screwdriver and saying it's a delicacy won't work. But surface culture as a whole was a black box to her, besides whatever Father's shown her. And there are thousands of smaller traditions and superstitions, making up some Reacher scrapshit would be trivial.

Tamery stood slightly, pointing a finger at me, eyes narrowing. "See, right there! That's the look there of someone plotting something. You're a bad influence on the lady, and I'm going to stop whatever nefarious schemes you're up to. I can't follow you down the strata, but the surface safe enough. To'Wrathh needs a voice of reason."

I shrugged. "I'm always up for a challenge."

Our group was off on a standard jog through the meadows, streams and shrubbery in the jungle here. Tamery kept a good hold on Yrob's chassis, letting the metal monster be her ride while she chatted about the current gossip in the city. We'd be back home in about two to three hours at this rate. Easy and simple.

Too simple given my luck, of course.

What I had thought was a group of four turned out to be a group of five, except our fifth was a little more subtle. Or had been up until they'd overheard our talks and wanted to join in.

"Comms request, encrypted." Cathida hummed as our group jogged on, the HUD icon vibrating on the top left. The call had come as a complete surprise to me, given there was a distance issue out here. "Make some friends while I wasn't looking deary? Color me curious."

"Not that I can think of. Maybe an Undersider team is in the area, or other surface knights are trailing behind Yrob?"

"No IFF tags or any ID attached to the meta-data of the call." Cathida said.

"Seriously? We're getting hailed miles away from everything by a spam caller?" A part of me wished it was just a spam caller trying to fleece me of all people for something. The part of my head cursed with a brain knew it wouldn't be that innocent.

Cathida gave her typical verbal shrug, "Given how gullible you are, maybe someone really is trying to sell you a pyrite ticket and this is their chance. They certainly came a long way to find you, not even the goddess would know where the hell we are."

I watched the ringing icon on the HUD continue without stopping. Whoever wanted to talk to me wasn't taking no for an answer. And clearly it was a call only for me given the rest of the group here didn't make any comment or notice. Tamery was still chatting away with Lord Atius, asking him questions about the clans and surface culture, and otherwise seemed carefree about the whole thing.

Yrob kept on running without pause, the robotic gait calculated and flawless.

"... You can't be compromised from a simple call right?" I asked.

Cathida scoffed. "There's easier ways to pry into Journey than a comms call you have an option to deny - or even know about in the first place. The administrator keys are what truly protects the system. And it's not currently overriding anything right now, no need to fidget deary."

"All right. Only one way to figure out who's the caller. Accept call."

Static came and stayed for a good ten seconds, without a single voice or message.

"Who's this?" I asked, wondering if maybe it was a glitch or rogue signal that Journey caught by accident.

The static faded, and a voice overtook it. A very familiar one. "Recover the mite lantern." It said, robotic and monotone. "When you return to surface."

"Ah, well, well well. Was wondering when you'd show your mug again." The same voice from that mysterious comm that was left in my workshop. "Not a lot of comms units to flinch out here I take it? Shame that you had to contact me directly."

"Discussion irrelevant." The voice said, now annoyed. "Line is secure. Recover the mite lantern. Do not forget it."

A quick text message scrolled over the HUD in gold. Cathida's remarks, making it clear she just tried to figure out where the comms signal was coming from. The answer was bouncing around every few seconds. No surprise there.

"What are you talking about? Mite lantern?" I asked, genuinely confused now.

"You know. No games, human."

"I'm not being coy about this, I have no idea what kind of lantern you think I have. We use flashlights these days like civilized people."

"You hid lantern. Under human made caverns. You bundle lantern with metal book. I know."

Metal book? There's only one metal plated book I know of. Talen's occult for dummies training manual. So by process of elimination… the mite lantern must be Tsuya's mite seeker. Why call it a lantern? "You'll have to try again, doesn't ring any bell to me." I lied, trying to get more out of him.

"In cold sections. Traps everywhere. You made those. Must remember that."

"You'll need to be more specific, I set enough traps I forget where I put those things. Sometimes I even sleepwalk putting down traps, swear by the gods. Got a thing about not letting other people swipe my scrapshit." I said, hotly.

"Enough games, human. I know. I saw. Your traps, evil. Go get lantern yourself. I not take the chance."

"And what if I say no?" I shot back. "What if the lantern's exactly where I want it to be right now and I don't want to move it?"

There was silence and static on the other end. "No not an option." The voice finally spoke.

It sounded hesitant about that, so of course I pounced on that. "Well, no's on the table now. So how about you start telling me who you are, and what you're after, and only then I'll consider playing a round of hangarball with you."

There was a hiss, before the voice gave in. "Ask. In exchange, you get lantern. Bring with you."

"What are you? A machine? You're clearly not aligned with Relinquished given what you know about the surface."

"Yes. Not aligned. Pale lady does not like my kind." The voice said. "I do not serve her. Used to. Once. Long ago. Few of us left."

Few of them left? "You're a protofeather?"

There was a dark chuckle on the other side. "No. Not powerful at all. Was old soldier. Centuries on centuries ago. Hiding is only strength needed."

Makes sense. If this really was a protofeather, I don't think a few home-brewed traps defending my stash would have been much of a problem to deal with. "Who do you serve then?"

"No more answers. You agree to recover mite lantern. No more talk. Yes. No. Nothing else." It snapped out.

Cathida cackled. "I get it. The walking stealth kernal wants you to pick up my box so it can steal it from you easier. Your traps are quite unholy, from what I remember."

Fair point to ask. It was pretty good at swiping things, like comms units.

"I have lantern already. My own. No need yours." It said. "Besides. I not take chance with traps. You more dangerous than traps. I not take chance with you even less."

"Doesn't mean you can't find a way to swipe my loot from me while I'm looking the other way." I shot back.

It hissed again. "Lantern not mine to use. Mites. You want answers. Take lantern. No more argument."

"Fine, fine. I'll grab that black box once I'm back up topside and bring it with me back down." I was already planning on doing that besides. Completing Cathida's original objective felt like a personal goal to the old ghost, even if I questioned my resolve each time the old bat opened her trap up. I'd just need to make sure the box is chained up to my belt, make sure it isn't loose. "Now, who do you work for?"

"Serve Sanctuary. Then myself. Then mites, in this order."

"Who, or what, is Sanctuary?" It had mentioned that name before once. Saying that if I brought machines to the surface I would be building another sanctuary. It could mean exactly what it said on the box - a place of safety. Or it could be the name of someone, or a culture even.

"Not a question I will answer." The voice said, making it clear that it was a hill to die on. "Ask another."

"... I'll let you off on that one, for now. Are you by chance related to a hoversled with writings on it?"

"Yes." The voice said, confirming my most leading idea on who the devil was behind the curtain. Technically speaking, he'd done us a solid, but here I was holding his neck down and trying to get more out of him. In my defense, Winterscars are going to Winterscar, which is a flimsy defense but I'm more than okay with flimsy.

"What are you doing here, watching over me like this?" I asked. "You've got to be nearby. I know you've got some way to hide well, and you need to be close enough to contact the local comms. Plus the timing of your call is extremely suspicious, to put it lightly. Right when you know we're heading to the surface next. How long have you been watching Lord Atius and I?"

The voice hissed again, but answered nonetheless. "Mites commanded I bring lantern to you. Traps made near lantern too dangerous. I come to you next. Wait for right time. Right time now."

"So if you can't drag that box to me, you'll drag me to that box?"

"Yes." The voice said, and then stayed silent.

"That's all the mites wanted out of you? Really?"

"No. Need to guide Wrath. And you."

"A guide? For what?"

"Do not know. Tsuya will elaborate. Mite command is vague."

All right, so whoever this was, he wasn't some kind of mastermind moving things in the background at least. "What did the mites tell you, exactly?"

"They spoke: 'Thou shalt guide a betrayer to trap a goddess.'" The voice said. "I do not know how. Only that I am to assist. Tsuya will make things clear."

I knew Wrath was working with the mites, she owed them a favor for learning how to heal people. And they clearly guessed she'd eventually have to come talk to Tsuya up on the surface. And now they'd also gotten a guide of some kind except they didn't fill him in on what he was guiding us to.

Mites were weird little critters all right. There was a clear plan they had in mind, but all I could see were the pieces of it.

"Did you save us with the hoversled by luck or by order?"

"I watched from away. It did not seem like you would make it. I gave push. Now, you give push. Claim mite lantern. Have Feather speak to Tsuya, rekindle the old pact. Uphold old vows."

"What happens when she does?"

"I do not know. Mites want me to guide you and her down. To where? We find out. Soon."

Yrob paused in his run, violet eyes flashing. "Alert from the lady." He rumbled to the side, with a tilt of… worry? Think I've seen it all now, a Screamer actually worrying about something. "To'Wrathh in danger."

The comms call cut out a moment later, clearly not wanting to be part of this.

"What, did her silver majesty get lost and die or something?" Cathida grumbled out on speakers. "She's a big girl, she can handle it. Or if she can't, no great loss."

"No return response." Yrob said, skull head twisting back straight forward while his gait switched from a casual trot to a full blown sprint. Tamery, ever the smart ass, figured it was a good time to shut up and hold tight or else.

"Last message, direct S.O.S. For body retrieval. Lady To'Wrathh offline." Yrob said while Atius and I matched the sprint without difficulty. Relic armor couldn't outrun Drakes, but Screamers were within the odds.

"What do you mean offline?" I shouted over the sprint.

"No return response." Yrob said again, as if that explained everything. "Signal offline. Shell too damaged to continue operation. Needs to be retrieved."

Lord Atius followed behind, closing ranks on our little group, eyes flashing left and right as he sprinted, a hand glued on the hilt of his sword the entire time. Good idea that, if there was something out there that had iced Wrath, fifty fifty odds we're about to run into situations that involve a lot of screaming, probably not the good kind, and the usual suspects that come paired with that.

Unexpectedly, I didn't feel any sort of panic. Instead, I felt more… relief. As if I'd been waiting for this avalanche to trigger this whole time, and now I didn't need to worry about what could be looming over my head like an anvil anymore. Danger was finally about to take its actual shape and whatever it'll end up as can't possibly be worse than the superimposed black probability void of every possible thing that could go wrong.

Wait a moment.

Come to think of it, feeling relieved that scrapshit was finally going to stop kicking the snow and actually commit was… probably not a mentally well adjusted response, if I'm being honest.

Maybe my sister was right. I might need to go to therapy at some point.

Or, and hear me out on this, or I could just swing a sword and break a few things until I feel better. It's tough times and therapy's expensive.

"Did the rest of Lady To'Wrathh's army get the same alert?" Atius asked as our group cleared past the last meadow and dove into the foliage wall. A few more minutes of fighting against the trees and we'd be reaching the wall end of this pillar, where the bleak outside would open up.

"No. Only Yrob get message." The machine said, crashing through the branches with little care. Tamery hunkered further down, giving a few choice curses, trying to find a spot that wouldn't end up with her getting whipped off her ride.

"Why would the lass send a distress signal only to Yrob and not her city?" Lord Atius muttered, contemplating. "What's the coordinates of the signal?"

Yrob shared those, the maps showing up in two dimensions on our HUDs. The same location that To'Aacar had fought and died by.

"Missing something." Atius muttered. "The army stationed in her city is far closer than we are. Even at a full sprint it would take us an hour to make it."

"Context missing. Signal damaged. Lady may have battled sensitive target." Yrob said, taking a particularly large leap off a boulder that saw him soar over a few dozen feet. Tamery screamed a little louder than anyone had any business being able to do, but fortunately I had a helmet. That way I could record all this and laugh at her later.

She tried to bark out a few choice words that I think might have meant 'slow down' or 'stop you stupid scrap for brains moron' but the constant buckling of her ride racing forward on all four's made it hard for her to get anything in besides an impression of a screeching banshee. Guess what's bothering her will remain a mystery to us all.

"She didn't just walk around and accidentally have a rock squash her again. If her shell was destroyed, she must have fought against something and lost." I said. Or she finally got eyes bigger than her stomach and ate something she really shouldn't have, like picking the wrong fight.

"Another Feather." Atius said, thinking the same as I did. "I've seen the combat footage between her and your sister. The list of enemies that could take on To'Wrathh is small. And we know the machines were going to discover her betrayal sooner or later. Lad, I think we might have reached sooner."

"So why hasn't she mobilized the city with her distress call?" I asked. "Only reason I can think of is if she doesn't want her army to know she's been ice'd."

"That points to a covert operation instead of a full scale one." Atius said. "Our Feather is out of commission, yet the city's cover must still be intact somehow. Or she's sent other messages to General Zaang and the rest of the city with different orders, leaving her recover to us. What if it's not a Feather at all? What if it's far more mundane than we think?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to think of anything else that could kill Wrath. "She didn't just fall off a cliff, I'm willing to put down money that won't work on her."

Atius shook his head, "I'm not in the market to buy a box of snow, lad."

"Shame." I tutted. "Still a chance, you never know."

"What if it's Deathless behind it all?" Atius said, going back to his point. "A group of Deathless likely heard of the machine invasion and arrived here to help liberate the city. Working together, they could take on a fully realized Feather. Against a newly made Feather who hasn't yet locked down her kit, she'd put down a challenge, only not an invincible one."

We cleared the forest and raced straight for one of the many cracks on the pillar wall here, outside was nothing but gray rock and cloudy storms above. Most people wouldn't be too happy to go from a place full of life right into a hellscape like this, Tamery proved to be the exception. She seemed oddly happy now. Not a fan of trees I think.

"Make more sense to me than the machines showing up." I said. "Zaang would be able to talk down a group of Deathless, so long as the entire city's worth of machines aren't clawing out of the woodworks to find their boss. And we'd go grab her body with the authority of another Deathless around."

Atius nodded. "I hope this is the case lad. If it's a Feather, we'll need to change plans. Quickly."

Next chapter - Destruction (T)

Book 4 - Chapter 17 - Destruction (T)

To'Wrathh watched the enemy from a distance, hands at the hilt of her blades. She'd brought several for this fight. Both her traditional weapons, along with three of Keith's custom blades. The other projects he'd been working on had proven incompatible with her own combat style. She lacked the fractal uses he had practiced with.

At the small of her back was the Knightbreaker, ready to use in case everything failed. Even if To'Wrathh won the fight, To'Sefit would return inevitably, with a better idea of what to expect. If To'Wrathh used the her trump card early, landing another shot with it in the future would become that much harder.

She had to dismantle To'Sefit with her blades.

"That looks to be a fair distance." To'Sefit said. "Most enemies I would have dispatched before they'd gotten this close."

"And if something gets too close to you?" To'Wrathh asked, breath held.

"I'm not quite sure." To'Sefit laughed, "I suppose one day I might find out. Do you believe you're fast enough to close the distance? Is that really something you wish to test?"

"Training to speed past a ranged defense is something I will need to learn how to handle in the future." To'Wrathh said, drawing out her primary blades. "Having an accurate understanding of my abilities in comparison to other Feathers will assist me in fighting other fractal powered opponents, such as the Deathless."

The Feather laughed. "That's one way to see it. Well then, this elder sister of yours shall do her best to offer a worthwhile lesson." She said, lifting her staff up and pointing it at To'Wrathh.

On the other end of the battlefield, To'Wrathh flared out her wings and leaped forward, rock crushing under her as she kicked off. Her wings took on the rest of the power, letting her skim over the surface of the field, dust and rocks buffeted behind her.

Systems showed full green. Estimated time until strike distance at two point three seconds. She'd do a slice through, then pivot to bleed off excess speed once she'd passed by To'Sefit.

Her enemy remained stationary, staff still pointed directly at To'Wrathh. The metal plates around her spun faster and faster, then instantly froze in the air, twisting on themselves until the fractal pattern etched on each was clearly visible to To'Wrathh.

They began to glow.

A sonic boom expanded around To'Wrathh as she ripped through the sound barrier. Inertia crashed against her system, but she was a Feather and her shell resisted the forces of physics with little trouble.

One point nine seconds until target in range.

To'Sefit smiled. Plates rotated once more, pointing directly at the speeding Feather.

To'Wrathh's vision sharpened, magnified forward to view what was approaching. There she saw three of the plates open a tear into reality, a portal of some kind.

On the other side was... something. She couldn't tell what it was other than it being filled with machinery. The hollow of a cannon barrel? It began to glow.

Instinct screamed into To'Wrathh's mind and she aborted her direct assault, kicking hard against the ground and leaping up.

With To'Wrathh's systems at full power, she saw the destruction in slow motion.

Three blue beams lanced out of each portal on To'Sefit's plates. They expanded into existence with a deafening roar, cutting directly through the air far faster than matter could move. The very ground under it instantly blackened, burned from the expanding heat from each beam. A moment later, the rock bent as the superheated air caused a shockwave outward, crushing itself against the ground. Air surrounding each beam combusted next, obscuring the entire battlefield in flames trailing behind each beam.

Rock broke apart, the heat differential too much for the granite. The result tore apart the ground under the beams not even a moment after the initial shockwave radiated out of the beam paths, leaving a trail of destruction under each beam.

At the center of the maelstrom, To'Sefit's staff hummed and glowed. A massive occult semi-shield leaped into existence, intercepting the heatwaves generated by the firing beams so close to the Feather's shell.

Where To'Sefit stood, a semicircle etched on the ground divided the world between blackened broken shale and untouched land.

Nice dodge. To'Sefit sent in an instant communication. But do note I have twenty four plates.

Even as the message was sent, To'Sefit's staff once more lifted, tracking To'Wrathh in the air while three different plates twisted on themselves, pointing at To'Wrathh.

Combat systems within the Feather lit up, already creating algorithms to predict and warn her of danger. Lock on triggers flashed red across her vision. All three new plates were now facing directly where she'd be.

To'Wrathh sent out more commands to her wing system, relying on it's agility to dodge against the beams.

Three more lances of bright blue shot out from To'Sefit's position, racing straight at To'Wrathh, and each she narrowly ducked and wove inbetween.

It worked. But it hadn't mattered. The residual heat from each beam had been massive, enough to burn the very air, leaving behind a shockwave of superheated air crashing against her shields and throwing her around like a puppet cut from her strings.

Shields down to seventy percent. Given the estimated energy of the beams, a direct hit would slice through To'Wrathh's shields as if they weren't there.

In the air, she re-oriented herself, and forced her system forward, blades ready.

To'Sefit refused to move, eyebrow raised as if curious. Her staff twisted into a defensive position, the metal slivers lighting up with occult edges. More red warning signals blared out in To'Wrathh's mind, showing more plates had locked onto her position.

They didn't fire, instead remaining on standby, the occult fractals glowing on each. To'Wrathh took the chance and dove for her enemy.

The two Feathers crossed paths. With both blades, To'Wrathh sliced forward, a quick combo of attacks that maximized the time she had before inertia of her speed ripped her away from melee distance.

The attack was repelled by To'Sefit's staff, parts of the occult slivers moving to block To'Wrathh's swords. They failed to hold off To'Wrathh's swords for long, pushed back against the Feather's staff. A standard shield lit up, taking the hits.

And To'Wrathh was speeding past the Feather, momentum forcing her onwards. Her leg hit the ground, crushing it in a line as she tried to slow herself down to strike again.

Target locks blared in her mind again, and she heard the sound of charging energy behind her.

Instantly, To'Wrathh leaped forward into the air again, aborting her attempt to force To'Sefit into melee. Her reaction was too delayed, and too predictable.

Three more beams howled into existence, two striking where To'Wrathh had stood. The third had been aimed upwards, where To'Sefit predicted To'Wrathh would leap.

Desperate, To'Wrathh twisted on herself as fast as she could, watching in mute horror as a blue beam bisected part of her torso, and nicked her arm. Her shield hadn't been triggered to mitigate that damage, damage control systems knowing power needed to be reserved for the approaching heatwave that would hit next.

Not a moment too soon. The blastwave of the beam smashed into her, shields flaring out to prevent the destruction. The parts where the beam had cut through were a different story, that close to her chassis, the damage was behind her shield's range. Heat and crushing pressure differentials ripped through her shell, breaking far more inside her than the beam had cut.

Redundant systems took over command, keeping her still in operation. Speed and combat efficiency recalculated in her mind to show she'd lost a massive fifty seven percent efficiency. The heatwave flowed through her veins, melting parts of her system and infecting others with cascading damages.

She needed to win, right now.

To'Wrathh ignored the damage report, twisted further on herself and made a swift swing downwards on her enemy. Her right hand tossed her blade directly at To'Sefit in a gamble to blind her eyes for a moment.

The Feather scoffed, flicking her extended staff and swatting the thrown weapon out of the way.

To'Wrathh landed a moment later, right hand drawing out one of Keith's strange swords. The first two hook swords she'd brought with her weren't the right choice for this opponent. To'Sefit's staff moves and swayed with blows, she couldn't pin down and trap the occult edges with Keith's hook swords.

But the third weapon she'd brought might have more potential.

It was a thin rod, hardly stable, outright jiggling. A lighter version of a fencing foil, according to To'Wrathh's database of swords. The whipping rod lit up bright occult blue as the thin edge etched into it complied with the fractal of division engraved into the hilt.

To'Wrathh struck with the weapon in a direct thrust. To'Sefit brought her staff once more to parry the strike, except that To'Wrathh flicked the hilt of her new weapon at the last moment.

The rod bent, curving around To'Sefit's staff, and digging directly into the Feather's personal shields. To'Sefit had no choice, the attack would have otherwise cut directly into her forehead.

Interesting weapon. The Feather sent. Now it's this elder sister's turn to show off.

Occult pulsed around the Feather and a massive spherical shield burst into existence. It hit against To'Wrathh like a metal wall, bouncing her and her weapon backwards.

To'Sefit's staff moved, twirling around into an uppercut. Wind flowed behind it, unnaturally strong, lifting To'Wrathh and hundreds of broken rock chunks under them far into the air, some of which had to weigh more than a few hundred pounds.

More target locks lit up in To'Wrathh's mind. She hardly had time to trigger her wings before three more beams launched out, in staggered attacks.

The first she dodged, tanking the shockwave with what was left of her shield.

The second was more narrowly dodged as To'Wrathh collided against one of the larger rocks, preventing her full escape.

Her shield fractured against the heatwave of this one, override systems showing red in half her shell's systems. Redundant systems were being burned out one at a time, until none were left.

Somehow, she was still functioning despite that.

The third beam cut directly through her stomach, the shockwave expanding out inside and ripping her apart from the inside out. Wing systems failed, decohesion imminent as the metal feathers disconnected from her broken systems. Everything under her torso turned into a black void from her diagnostics. Still attached, but the connections far too severed to continue working.

It was fun. To'Sefit said. And I haven't had to use my full occult shield against a melee opponent before, you're quite quick.

Not quick… enough. To'Wrathh sent back, systems fighting against her control. Everything wanted to shut down for repairs, although she could already tell those repairs would never come. Her nanite swarms were all showing heavy damage. She knew if she allowed her shell to attempt a reboot, she wouldn't wake up in the same body.

If she ever woke up again.

No, not quite quick enough. The enemy agreed, a sad smile on her features.

To'Wrathh raged, fighting against her own shell. She couldn't let herself die here. Leaving the city to To'Sefit would see thousands die, both humans and machine. Faces and names flashed through her mind.

It can't end like this.

Not… done…. yet. To'Wrathh sent back, grabbing hold of her override systems and freezing it in place, feeling a surge of anger and spite keep her awake as she tumbled out of the sky.

There was still one more thing she could do. One last hope.

You really should know when to give up. To'Sefit tutted. As you are now, it'll take a few hours at a mite forge to fix you up. If you keep going, I really will end up destroying your shell.

I refuse to die. To'Wrathh sent back.

If I hit anywhere near your chest, the shockwave will break your fractals, you know? This fight is quite over. You'll be automatically thrown into the reserve fractals down below one way or another.

To'Wrathh didn't answer. Instead, her shaking hand reached for the weapon still tucked away behind the small of her back. Parts of the grenade launcher had melted off, but the weapon still showed yellow. Serviceable.

Time froze like amber as To'Wrathh flared out her overrides, letting the heat assault her shell in full. Her body fell down softly in the slowed time, wing parts straining against their damage, twisting and orienting her fall.

To'Wrathh unlocked the safety trigger on the knightbreaker round. The weapon's internal mechanics groaned as parts of it were twisted in the heatwaves, but To'Wrathh was a Feather and her fingers were strong enough to bend metal. The safety correctly clicked off.

Her fall straightened, no longer a tumble downwards.

Green lit up on her fire control systems as her aim locked onto target. Her hand steadied.

To'Sefit looked calmly on, aware of the ringing lock-on within her own systems. A human weapon of some kind, she identified. That wouldn't pose a threat, except To'Wrathh seemed ready to gamble it all on this.

Experience whispered in To'Sefit's ears to take the threat seriously. Four plates behind her began humming again, aimed directly at To'Wrathh. She wouldn't allow for half-measures this time. Her staff moved forward, the wide occult shield appearing at the tip to protect her body from the terrible destruction about to be unleashed.

I warned you little sister. Nothing remains behind. The message sent out. There wasn't a sign of mercy in To'Sefit's eyes.

I will. To'Wrathh sent back. One shot was all she had. She thought of Keith, and put her faith into his creation.

The trigger clicked in her hand.

The deadly round exploded out of the barrel, crawling forward in both their perception, as if struggling through dense water.

Too slow. Far too slow.

But Keith had learned from his last shot. He'd improved the weapon.

Behind the round, a smaller explosion occurred a half second after the round cleared the barrel.

Fire ripped the panels behind the round, sputtered for a half moment and then roared, turning the round into a small rocket. It raced forward, cutting against the air. Trailing flame and smoke behind it like a vengeful phoenix, barreling down at the enemy Feather.

The plates on To'Sefit rearranged, locking onto To'Wrathh's falling shell, while the knightbreaker continued past the halfway point between them. She aimed her staff directly at the incoming round, the domed occult shield crackling with power.

The round collided a moment later against To'Sefit's shied, the front section crushing itself against the unyielding occult wall. Glowing chains erupted from all sides as the round triggered its deadly payload. The chains whipped out in the air, before descending down against the shield, wrapping around, while the central round chamber stubbornly continued pushing against the barrier, fuel still not completely spent.

The chains connected. The shield flickered, resisting the onslaught with a screech while To'Sefit's arm held the staff still.

The feather remained rooted in place, occult pulsing around her while the shield held off Keith's weapon. Portals appeared on the plates, behind To'Wrathh saw the maw of destruction in each. Expertly aimed.

The target alert systems within To'Wrathh's system were still somehow active, barking out warnings, lock on signs painting her vision red. But the enemy shield hadn't broken yet.

It glowed brighter, occult lighting crackling against the destructive chains whipping and sliding across the surface. A half second passed. To'Wrathh watched, helpless. There was nothing else she could do now but pray.

The shield flickered, occult pulsing brighter. The round sliding off tilt, parts of it crushing a second time as the backup material's integrity failed inside the round. Trapped between an unbreakable shield and a micro-rocket still raging forward.

Plates floating by To'Sefits side opened up, four grinning maws, destruction hiding behind each. To'Wrathh wasn't going to make it.

To'Sefit's shield broke all at once, shattering into pieces. The Feather's eyes widened in utter shock.

The knightbreaker round dove freely forward like a hungry predator, screeching a cry of vengeance, half crushed yet still alive enough to seek its original target, if not quite on the same exact trajectory. It didn't need to be accurate at this range.

The enemy Feather's eyes continued to widen, combat routines letting her view the destruction in slow motion. Those chains had cut apart an occult shield made to protect her from the backlash of her beams, her personal shields would stand absolutely no chance against something like this.

She took a half step back, too little and far too late. Violet eyes locked back up on To'Wrathh's tumbling shell.

My, how curious. Seems I was the one learning a lesson today. To'Sefit sent, emotions inscribed in the message reading as oddly bemused. Well done little sister. I see why the lady picked up a stray like you.

The round struck the side of her chest. A standard full body shield triggered on impact, holding the round off easily. Up until all four chains lovingly wrapped around her. They curled around in a deadly embrace, held for only a microsecond before the personal shield utterly failed. And then those chains cut right through her chassis, ripping it into pieces.

She didn't utter a word as the occult edges sliced through, the IFF signal instantly going silent as all her subsystems failed catastrophically. Inside, To'Sefit's unity fractal lit up and the connected soul fled through it back into the safety of a faraway backup. Her empty shell was left behind, shutting down. A moment latter, a loose chain whipped through the soul fractal that had once housed To'Sefit.

The occult plates around the dead Feather trembled, completely unmoored from any commands, but still powered and active. Decohesion began to take hold, gravity wrapping around the plates and forcing them back down to the earth.

Target locks lifted off To'Wrathh's vision. And then the plates followed their last given command, and opened fire, blindly.

Four beams lit up and launched out of each, ripping apart the air and anything in the way. One still too close to To'Wrathh's falling shell, cutting another hole into her broken wing, the following shockwave shredding the wing into pieces. The other three missed her entirely, the heat still close enough to burn and melt parts of her artificial skin as she tumbled out of the sky.

A moment passed as the portals on each plate powered off, the beams closing off, and the air was still again save for the sound of plates falling onto the ground, automatic counterintelligence systems triggering meltdowns on each.

Diagnostic systems ran amok through To'Wrathh's systems. Red returned near everywhere. Leg, arm, torso, chest, and wing systems all eliminated out of existence. Her neuromorphic system was overheating beyond the safety region, especially with the last four beams having come far too close. All nanite command and control nodes were in states of red and orange. Most of her backup systems had been obliterated already. One eye had melted along with a majority of subcutical muscles within that side of her face.

Her neck couldn't move anymore, the artificial muscles within all showing red. But one eye still functioned. She moved it, searching for To'Sefit's empty shell. She could see her. A stunned expression stretched frozen on To'Sefit's half-severed head. The Feather collapsed on her knees, remaining still for a moment before she fell apart.

Keith's knightbreaker round had sliced through her torso in a deadly hug, striking into the ground under her right after, and crushing itself for good against it. Occult chain moorings had been shattered as well from the impact, instantly turning off the power, leaving the chains to fly off, still bouncing all over the battlefield.

But it had worked.

To'Sefit had been stopped, and To'Wrathh was still alive.

She continued falling down, time returning back to normal as her systems began the process of a full shutdown in a desperate attempt to stop the damage from piling up further.

It didn't matter - she'd done it. She'd won.

A distress signal was sent to Yrob, and acknowledged a fraction of a moment later. Only then did she dare let go. Her system flatlined, crashing like plates down against her mind, an angry wave of cool blue washing over the raging inferno inside her mind, submerging everything in the way, leaving steam and bubbles behind.

There was no pain. No senses. Everything turned dark. By the time her shell hit the ground, To'Wrathh had been whisked into the depths of her soul fractal, the only thing remaining powered, while her systems failed to reboot. Error messages showcasing too much damage, but still trying to restart despite it all. One by one, they shut down, as more and more nodes went dark, capacitors discharged completely. Soon, there was nothing left to even send a reboot signal.

This is fine. Help is on the way. To'Wrathh thought at the edge of the abyss, holding onto hope.

I can trust them.

Darkness loomed around her, she fell into its open jaws.

Next chapter - Run with the winnings

Book 4 - Chapter 18 - Run with the winnings

Our little group of four - or five if you include our shy mysterious machine stalking around somewhere - made their way across the desolate plains of the undercity surroundings. Once outside a pillar, the area was about as welcoming as the freeze upstairs. Give and take a few things.

Air was nice enough not to murder anything without a fourty pound suit out here, but nothing grew on pure rock. The surface that at least had frostbloom.

The inhospitable ambience only grew as we came closer to Wrath's last known location. Massive rips in the ground showed evidence of renewed fighting, and not occult arc pulses that To'Aacar had used.

Instead it looked more like the hand of the gods had hit the ground with a bat and then dragged the bat across the snow for a mile onwards in one direction. Repeated a few times for good measure.

At the centerpoint of these lines, was what looked to be machine parts. Yrob easily vaulted over the last few bits of rocks before sprinting across.

"The lady. Damaged." He said, slowing down to a trot, before those lanky arms reached forward to pull someone up.

No guessing who the broken figure was. Wrath looked like she'd just ended the fight with To'Aacar, again. Only this time her shell was mostly still intact. There was a large hole right in her stomach, bits of metal still glowing red on the inside. One wing was completely gone, not even dangling limply on the side unlike the other. She still had both her legs attached, though they hung limply in the air.

Yrob brought her close to his chest like a protective guardian while Atius and I came to a stop nearby.

"Another Feather." The deathless noted, pointing at the ruined remains of more machine parts. A lot of metal plates littered the ground, along with a few sliced up body parts. Each of the plates looked like acid had been splashed over and melted down parts of it. The body parts didn't seem to have any damage other than being cleanly sliced, evidence of an occult blade dealing the damage.

I followed behind, walking over to a separated head and shoulder, kneeling down to turn the victim over. "If anyone had any doubts Wrath hadn't turned on the machines, this would be the signed documents and seal."

Lord Atius took a look as the dead Feather's remains. "No one I know of. Given there isn't a war happening at the city right now, I suspect this Feather must be some kind of scout that Wrath intercepted by herself." There was a grim note in his voice.

"We need to get Wrath back online to get the story.'' I said, looking over at the Feather cradled in Yrob's hands. Tamery was hovering over, craning her neck to get a good view over the machine's spinal fins. They both looked utterly worried in different ways. Even without any moving facial features, the panic in the Screamer's movements and posture was as clear as sunlight. Every bit of his focus was firmly on her.

"She's not waking up." Tamery said, turning over to us. "Yrob's trying a lot of different pings and tech stuff, 'cept nothing's sinking in. Her shell's too damaged, he's saying." There was an unworded plea for help in her voice.

Atius gave a quick unworded order to me with a tilt of his head while he continued to examine the dead Feather's shell. He didn't need to ask me twice, I was already on my way over, reaching into the soul fractal to look into Wrath's broken shell with new eyes.

Almost every bit of circuitry inside her system looked to have been rattled by a seismic event of some kind. Damage was everywhere, even on the small scale. Few things had power, and if it did, the connections didn't go out far before the power wires disconnected. But there was a ray of luck looking out for us: Her soul fractal was still lit up, backup energy from a tiny source under the plate active. I could send out a tendril and talk to her, which gave me a second wind of relief I didn't know had been knotting inside.

It didn't take a lot of power to keep a fractal active, whatever the occult used as fuel, electricity wasn't the main driver. Only the on-off switch. With this, she could remain alive for a good few years. There was time to fix this, somehow.

"I, for one, like her new look." Cathida said, ever the thorn in everyone's side. "Why stop at the stomach? She should go for a few more holes in her chest, head and legs. More holes, the less you need to share with the rest of the socket lickers."

"Is there absolutely nothing sacred for you?" I hissed out, not in the mood for Cathida's cathida-ing.

"What do you think?" The old voice gripped. "She's a goddess cursed machine. Enemy of my enemy is my enemy. The real Cathida would have outright tried to slit this Feather throat while she's sleeping on that stone throne of hers, no rules held sacred. Journey doesn't care much, but I'm obligated to spit on her grave if I get the chance. One less Feather is a good thing, two is even bett- I see those menus you're opening, you little scrapshit. Fine. Go ahead, I dare you! Mute me you otiose neophyte craven cowa-" Her voice shut off without even a squawk.

The settings clicked green as I navigated the panel closed. This time I muted her for a few hours.

The simmering rage under my heart slowed down as I took a few more breaths. Things were okay. Wrath was alive, if trapped within her soul fractal for now. Her shell was a machine, not a human. It could be repaired, unlike humans. And whatever she'd done here, it had worked. There wasn't a foreign machine army on the city's doorstep. Other than the dead scout, nothing else seemed amiss.

It reminded me to add another fractal spell on my long list of things I needed to learn - Wrath's ability to heal humans. Today, she was the one that needed healing, and fortunately that was something we could do. Tomorrow? Tomorrow it might be my sister, or a Winterscar knight at death's door. And there was no wrench or bolt nuts that could fix that.

"One thing at a time," I muttered, trying to organize what to do next. The plan snapped into place. I turned to the Deathless. "Can we grab the scout's chestplate? Inside there should be a fractal connected to a few others. Whatever spells this scout has, we might be able to collect it."

Atius nodded, his occult blade lit up and expertly cutting a large section of the dead body's central plate.

Tamery pointed at the square plates on the ground. "How's about these?" She asked. "They got weird designs on them. I think this is what you called a fractal?"

She'd had it right, those plates were absolutely Occult based. I yanked one out of the broken shale, giving it a look over. Steel plate, one foot by one foot, some kind of circuitry inside it, along with a power source. The green-golden liquid was still present inside from what I saw with the soul sight, but there was some kind of acid damage left behind on the surface fractal, smearing the whole thing. A few empty pockets made me think the acid had been a self-sabotage of some kind.

While I'd been examining the wreckage, Lord Atius finished bringing together the sliced through chestplate fractals, which didn't look anywhere near promising.

"Half melted." He sighed. "Useless to us. The weapon that struck Wrath must have also had splash damage on this Feather. I believe this lass here had her shields broken, and sliced through by one of your knightbreaker rounds."

"My knightbreaker round was used here?" I asked, but realized the damage on the Feather added up to exactly that. Swords tended to cut in a straight line. Wild chains flaying about cut in really odd patterns.

Atius pointing his sword at a bit of wreckage on my left, further off. There, I saw the remains of a very familiar chain. The round must have broken apart somehow, but not before completing it's mission.

Had to seriously work on their survivability. That was twice they'd been used, and both times saw them broken apart into a mess. Journey began to highlight the possible parts, already knowing we weren't going to leave evidence behind for the machines to pick up.

"After your round finished slicing up the chestplate, something caused parts of her system to melt. If I had to guess, the same that hit Wrath and just as close. Or the wrong thing was sliced through. Shame, if it had been just your knightbreaker chains doing the damage, we could have put the fractal back together like a puzzle."

Well, least we got the strange flat metal plates that surrounded the dead Feather. "Journey, can you use those nano-machines inside your system to fix her up?" I asked the armor, moving on with what was important.

"Negative. Schematics missing." The monotone voice answered back, which hadn't surprised me. I figured armors couldn't fix up Wrath, so that hadn't came as too much of a surprise.

"We need to get Wrath to a mite forge." I said, already going to plan B.

"Will we have the time for this?" Atius asked, looking up to the roof far, far above us. Where ice and snow would begin to appear. His point was simple, even in those few words. The raiders would be attacking the clan city soon. And while he'd left a good amount of weapons like those swords I had commissioned along with a handful of knightbreaker rounds, it was still better to crush the raiders into the ground than to give them a chance to harm people. Trust but verify.

"All we need is to fix her up enough that her systems reboot and she can handle the rest herself." I said. "Feathers have self-repair features, if I remember right. We don't need to wait long at a forge, Undersiders have a lot of notes about how they operate, it shouldn't take any time at all. Get her there, and then we go straight to the surface. By the time we're up at the meeting point, she'll have all the time she needs to finish her repairs again. But if we go now, when we come back down, it might be a different picture."

As in, there might be an army of machines between the mite forges and us. War was on the edge of breaking out now, both above ground and below.

Atius considered the argument for a moment, before nodding. "I owe her this much." He simply said. "The clan will survive."

"You and your escorts could depart early." I said. "The winterscar knights and I could take the detour and-"

"Lad." Atius said, a hand landing on my shoulder. "It took a Feather to kill a Feather. And now, you do not have a Feather to spare. If you are ambushed by another Feather sent out to recover this scout - or the scout herself come back from the dead with a vengeance to settle, you'll need me and every knight we have. I know what I said, I'll see that Wrath is healed at a mite forge, and return to the surface only after. You have my oath on this."

Somehow the sincerity and good will behind those words hit me, as if it wiggled a blade right under a wall of ice I'd been unknowingly building up. I turned back to Yrob quickly before I got too emotional. The stress of everything was getting to me. First thing I'd do when I got back up to the surface was have a nice long bath with friends and some good isopod surface staples. Food, drink, good company and time to wind down. That's what I needed.

After I got Wrath back on her feet.

"Will follow." Yrob said. "Know way."

"No." Atius said. "Your people need to begin their own escape. I don't know how long we'll be topside with Wrath before she finds and speaks to Tsuya. She might not return with your means to escape for months. Until then, you and the machines need to scatter away from the city. Hide among the other machines in the sector. They'll need someone to lead them through this."

Both Tamery and Yrob stared at the Deathless as his words sunk in. Then, Yrob nodded and hobbled over to me, walking on two legs, hunched over Wrath's shell. His hands stretched out carefully to me.

"How will human find and use mite forge?" Yrob asked.

"Wrath's been picked by the mites as a champion." I said. "They'll work with us. I'm sure of it. Mite forges work on deals and barters, but they're still mites in the end."

And, left unmentioned, we did technically have a guide hired already. I'll just be making use of him before we meet Tsuya. If he complains about it, too bad.

Yrob nodded, half skull looking me in the eyes, as if judging my mettle and finding it of acceptable quality. "Take good care. Of the lady." The machine said, gingerly dropping Wrath in my arms. Both eyes were closed, and she looked more like a corpse than a still living machine. The only thing that kept me from thinking otherwise was the pulsing fractal still alive and well deep inside, just under her throat.

"We go hide. We wait for return." Yrob said, turning to the city in the distance. Tamery gave me a nod as well, the sort of 'You better not fuck this up, or else.' glare I was well and familiar with. Made me feel almost homesick in a way.

This would be the second time I'd be carrying Wrath around. Poor Feather couldn't catch a break either, so we were both stuck in the same expedition. The girl weighed nothing to Journey, relic armor making it easy work. Despite what Cathida thought about machines, it wasn't going to hamper a rescue effort.

A part of me knew Journey itself held no malice to Wrath, like Cathida's engram had said. It was just playing a role, like an actor, following the script that a long dead crusader would have said. Cathida had fought machines her whole life, and died for it. Her hatred for them ran far deeper than surface dwellers who hardly ever ran into machines. Even our knights only came across them on missions underground, which wasn't an everyday occurrence.

Undersiders were oddly in the same airspeeder on this. Their knights mostly handled domestic issues within the city. They'd hate petty criminals far more than machines. Closest to crusaders were the power-hunters, who ventured out to track down and kill machines for power cells to fuel the city. I don't think those folks hated machines, in the same way that agrifarmers hated the crops they grew. It was simply a part of life.

Not so for the imperial forces who strove day and night to fight off the machines. Driven by faith and vengeance for their destroyed empire. To undersiders and surface clans, Feathers were a mythical thing, only known in stories and seen rarely. To Imperial Crusaders, they're less myth and far more real.

Cathida at least tolerated me being friends with Wrath. Everything considered, it was oddly progressive of the old bat.

The group quickly turned to a sprint back to the city, this time carrying parts of the destroyed Feather along with Wrath. All the while I sent out a small tendril of soul down to reach Wrath's fractal.

Machines couldn't reach out with the soul, similar to how Deathless couldn't either, but I could. So I did.

Wrath? I asked, prodding at the fractal. Inside, I found only a world of darkness, the soul curled up deep inside.

Keith? She whispered back, sluggishly. You… came.

The link felt… weak. Alone in the soul fractal, Wrath felt fragile, like a candle in the dark.

"'Course I would." I said, starting to feel worry creep into my system again. "Didn't you ring for a ride home? You call, we do the lifting. No refunds though."

Inside the soul fractal, the world reemerged. She'd been sleeping up until I reached out, or some kind of coma. Color flowed around us as her concept of a body faded back into reality. Inside the soul fractal, the concept of her soul really did feel like something stepping the line between human and machine. It was oddly comforting. Warm in a way.

She wasn't quite a machine here, with her shell mostly dead. All the calculating bits of her weren't there. But the concept of her soul and identity was still well and alive. A facsimile of what her shell would have been doing had it still been online. I wasn't sure if the soul here was the genuine Wrath, or if the shell was. Maybe both? She'd only returned to life when I came in contact. What exactly were machine souls in the first place?

"The city… needs to be evacuated. It needs to." She said, eyes trying to focus on me, not quite fully awake yet.

"What exactly happened?" I asked, trying to help stabilize her mind, get her back on her feet in a manner of speaking. It seemed to work. "When Yrob and the crew here showed up, we found you in a heap along with broken bits of another Feather. I'm taking a wild guess she wasn't a friend."

"Relinquished sent three Feathers to investigate To'Aacar's disappearance. One came by alone, the other two are somewhere else." Wrath said, voice growing stronger, more lucid with each second. "I asked for a… a spar with this one, her name was…was To'Sefit. Managed to destroy her shell, however she will be back."

"This To'Sefit was a full Feather? Not one with a broken hand and half her ribs sticking out by the time you met?"

Wrath nodded. "She was. Powerful, yet in a different manner compared to To'Aacar."

"Who'd win in a fight?" I asked. The dead bastard had bragged about being built to kill gods. He'd been an assassin of sorts. That there might be more of his kind - and stronger - might be something to worry about.

"Pitted against him, she would have easily been defeated." Wrath said, noticing my growing fears. She passed through bits of her memory through the link.

Massive beams of energy skirting by, heat stinging at my cheeks. A final one punching through my stomach, rattling my bones and blood even as a distant memory. Putting every bit of hope and trust I had into a last chance untested weapon I hadn't seen used before. Wrath's point of view on all this was horrifying. "Great stuff, I'll be seeing that in my nightmares, thanks Wrath."

"Oh, I'm-I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"It's fine. Not my memory." Rather, I had to hand it to Wrath, machines built to fight didn't get traumatized easily by watching their own shell broken apart limb by limb. Oddly enough what terrorized Wrath the most in those short bursts of memory was the fear of failure. Specifically what would happen to those she'd grown to care about if she failed here. "Like watching a more disturbing video media, except living through it." I said, brushing off the thoughts.

I didn't know how to whistle, but in the soul realm it was all concepts. I was great at imagining I could whistle, and that's all that counted here. The fight had been brutal, short and decisive. "And here I thought you'd talked your way out of it, asked her nicely to explode."

Wrath frowned for a half second before realizing through the connection my actual intentions. "An excellent idea." She drolly said, arms crossed. "The next time I confront To'Sefit, I will do that instead of challenging her to a fight. Would surely spare me great difficulty."

"There we go, that's the can-do attitude I remember. You did good though." I said, soothing over her lingering panic by sending positive intentions through the link. "How'd you know you could land a knightbreaker round on her like that? I thought they'd move fast enough to get out of the way of those."

"I played on her pride. She didn't like to move if she could avoid it. And she believed her shields to be within tolerances against any human weaponry."

"Oh, so this time, you were the one playing tricks in a fight. Learned from the best, hmm?" I said, giving her a cheeky thumbs up.

She froze for a moment, unable to pick between getting angry or feeling smugly proud of having out-foxed a full Feather. Wrath settled for a pout and huff.

"Can you control your repair swarm?" I asked her, changing the subject.

She shook her head. "I am unable to turn on anything beyond the low-power mode. If I were any other Feather, I'd need to abandon this shell and have another made. As you know, I cannot do that. I do not believe Mother will have a new shell available before she discovers what I've been doing. Those Feathers are too close to us now. Please, you need to help me. I can't repair this shell by myself anymore. The majority of my functions are unresponsive. I'm trapped within this soul fractal until the moment it powers down."

"Don't worry." I said, "We're here now. Take a break and let me handle the rest from here. We're going back to the city to meet up with my knights. After that, Yrob is going to organize the machines to disperse and go into hiding. General Zaang and Tamery can handle moving the humans out of the city and follow the evacuation plan. Lord Atius and the rest of his knights are coming with me, we'll be going to a mite forge to have you fixed up enough. After that, straight to the surface."

Soul to soul I could feel her emotions bubble over. What had originally been fear and panic had faded over into weary relief, and trust.

Telling her everything was going to work out had helped soothe her like snow piled over an electric fire. Sometimes, that's all people need. Someone else to say things will work out.

I untangled my soul tether and felt her fractal dim back into unconscious. It looks like without a system to connect to, an artificial soul became lethargic. More asleep than alive. Which was completely opposite to a human soul.

There'd be some work to do the moment we got back. Yrob was already contacting the machines, while Tamery was riding the signal to send a message to General Zaang. At the rate things were going, we wouldn't even reach the city gates. Kidra and the surface knights would be meeting us halfway there, having split up to rip apart my workshop for a list of items I'd be sending them, along with all the rations needed for an expedition. We'd depart directly on path to the nearest mite forge while the rest of the city would handle itself.

Wrath was right. With To'Sefit poking her nose around here now, we'd officially ran out of time. And I've always believed in running with my winnings. Not about to change that motto now.

And yet, as we sprinted across the barren ground, my head wasn't focused on that.

Instead it was on the weight at my arms, slight as it was. Wrath seemed almost at peace, sleeping away without a care.

She trusted me. I could sense it in the soul fractal, there's no hiding any kind of emotion. It wasn't in a small way either. Out of everyone she knew, I somehow ended up as the one she trusted the most.

Part of it had come about by reputation, what'd I'd done and built. A grudging admiration at having beaten her, despite knowing I should have had next to no chance to win back then. And then I'd pulled the same feat off against To'Aacar.

But a good chunk of that trust had grown over the time we'd spent together, talking about random topics and finding food to eat around the city. The training we'd started working on together in the digital sea. Things that would have given her no reason to trust me over far more competent people like Kidra or Father, but somehow did.

I had no idea how that ended up being a thing, considering trusting me of all people was probably the worst idea possible, but here she was. All naive and willing to go with some scraprat castaway fumbling around being a knight and making things up as I went.

Once I'm done helping her through all this, I'll point and laugh at her for blindly trusting I was at all a good choice in the first place.

Yeah, that'll show her.

Next chapter - Interlude: To'Avalis

Book 4 - Chapter 19 - Interlude: To'Avalis

This was it. This was the most probable location according to his research.

With alacrity, To'Avalis vaulted over the last of the rocks and came to a stop at the shoreline, where rolling cubes undulated over each other, mimicking waves. The mite sea stretched before him, split apart only by small arpeggio islands, looming like mountains in the distance. Everything else remained deceptively flat, the sea at a constant level.

A virtual data line sent a ping to his systems. To'Sefit's voice appeared. "My, my, how bold. Are you sure you want to be stirring trouble with a place like this? If the sea nicks even a single toe of yours, it might gobble you right up and not let you leave. And then you'll be stuck like me, waiting in line for a shell. Why are you even here taking such a risk?"

"A Feather was killed." To'Avalis said to his dead sister.

"Feathers die all the time. I'm dead right now, why is this one so important?"

"To'Aacar isn't. It is the manner he was killed that is important. Not even the unity fractal shows a hint of his existence anywhere on the world. Whatever can kill a feather so permanently is a threat. I don't fight threats that could potentially kill me like this without research and a plan."

"Ah, but we don't know if he was destroyed or simply running away." To'Sefit countered, although they both knew better. A destroyed Feather would have remained in the digital sea, waiting for Mother to allocate resources to crafting a new shell. A Feather running away was only delaying the inevitable. Regardless of where they hid, the unity fractal would reveal they're still alive somewhere in the world and the hunt would never end. Machines had eternity to live, the fleeing Feather only needed to fail a single time across all those years. Defeat was inevitable.

And yet, To'Aacar's unity fractal showed only darkness when To'Avalis had requested to verify. That Feather was either completely destroyed, or he had found a way to hide from Mother's fractal. One of those two options was impossible.

"It seems counterintuitive to be worried for your shell and then come here of all places." To'Sefit said. "Let To'Orda handle your protection. That is his role after all, he's quite good at it. Perhaps not against the entirety of the mite sea, but one can never know. He has surprised me before."

Before To'Avalis, the sea stretched wide. Roiling with billions of small cubes, constantly moving like water. He kicked a small rock by his foot into the churning cubes, watching it fly off, bouncing once against the hard cubes, before being caught in a random dip. A wave passed by, lifting the rock and cubes up. The rock tumbled between the cubes and sank out of view.

By the time gravity would have pulled the bits of rock down to the bottom of the mite sea, it would have been pulverized into fine sand.

"The mite sea has something I want." He said. "And I know enough about this location to keep myself safe." Combat on the mite sea was well cataloged. Any entity that landed on its surface had seconds to kick themselves up and out of it, or be caught by a wave. A single stumble was all that the cubes needed to drag down a victim, the cubes powerful enough to crush even the strongest machine alloys.

The sea shifted, responding to his probing. It all began as bubbling blocks all across the sea, rising up like fountains.

Structures of different eras assembled from the churning cubes, half complete and pushed up, constructed dynamically in the moment. Hundreds of cubes fell off the sides, like water dripping down from the looming structures.

A newly made bridge of voxel cubes stretched before him, inviting him forward. Daring him to cross. More structures in the distance were breaking the sealine, rising up. What looked to be a cathedral with hundreds of walkways and open gates, a massive maze of open terrain.

The sea's challenge. To cross, one would need to make it through whatever gauntlet lay in that distance. He was certain more structures would rise and break the moment he stepped foot, forcing him to sprint or jump, or even run across the sea ground itself to the next safepoint.

He wasn't here for that. The prize he wanted wasn't something the sea would wish to offer him. "To'Sefit. Do you know the term protofeather?"

"Making up words now, are we?" To'Sefit answered, watching through his optic feed.

It was understandable his siblings didn't know the term. He had only found out himself a few days ago, during his research. "You know of the first generation?"

"Of course. Only Feather directly named by Mother herself. Abdication." She said, as if reciting a speech from memory. "What of him?"

"That wasn't his original name." To'Avalis said.

"Ohh? What was his true name then?"

"A57."

There was a pause. To'Sefit likely had expected something that matched the current naming schemes Feathers followed. "A strange name. I take it he didn't pick that name either?"

"That's besides the point. Note the number system. It suggests that the first generation wasn't composed of only him. There were fifty six others before him."

"Prototypes you say? Likely failed ones, I assume?" To'Sefit mused. "The test prototypes before Abdication was made? Someone as powerful as he must have had quite a legacy of prior attempts I suppose."

"Yes. Those were known as the proto-feathers, they were the true first generation. And they were fully functioning."

She hummed. "That is all fascinating trivia little brother, but this elder sister of yours fails to understand where you are going with this? If you would so kindly skip forward."

"Have you studied To'Aacar's operational records?" He asked instead, then forwarded one of the logs that remained from their original target.

It loaded up into both their memories.

"How?" The Feather stuttered, staring down a human knight, error logs still reporting damage to his superstructure. "A12's dead. How did you recover his chain? I saw him cast it into the mite sea, seven entire levels below, right before we killed him!"

He paused the recording, and replayed it.

To'Sefit was quiet for a moment. "A12?" She asked, now getting it. "To'Aacar fought against Abdication's prototypes? That makes little sense. Some kind of competition between the second generation and the prototypes?"

"I went through the same thoughts myself." To'Avalis confessed, taking the time to verify integrity to his occult fractals in the meantime. The job they needed to perform in order to navigate through the mite sea was critical. If they weren't aligned perfectly, he would die in the next few minutes. "It would be within Mother's model of operation to pit prototypes against prototypes and select the winner as the one to move forward with. She's done this in the digital sea already."

The module loaded into view and began crunching numbers. While he waited, he spoke. "I went searching for the name. I found a match to the keyword within our archives, the older ones from seven centuries ago."

He wasn't quite honest here. He hadn't found a match. Not until he started looking for the term within locked archives. He knew it must have existed somewhere, To'Aacar wouldn't have called out for something that didn't exist.

To'Sefit remained quiet on the line, listening in.

"This is where I discovered the protofeathers I spoke about earlier. I'll forward you what I found."

The data uplink came up and showed full transfer of files. Within moments To'Sefit was up to date. And horrified.

"These proto-feathers betrayed mother? Turned against our own?"

"They did. And I suspect it is happening again."

"To'Wrathh." The woman said, voice growing cold. "You had better be extremely certain about this. I rather liked my little hellion."

"I am near certain. Too many data points point directly to this conclusion."

Numbers finished their verification. Everything showed green. The newly installed occult fractals remained in working condition since his initial tests. Now he would put them to their first real use.

"Near certain isn't completely certain, To'Avalis. Tell me the evidence you've got first before I make a decision and before we bring this to Mother. She will not have any mercy for wasting her time."

"The human weapon To'Wrathh used against you is a keystone item." He said, triggering the occult fractal deep inside him.

Fractal power pulsed and To'Avalis faded slightly, turning more into a ghost. A cross dimensional leap, only halted at a very specific point. A similar ability he had found among To'Aacar's own suite.

He was loath to commit several of his hardpoints to any ability, not without being certain it would become his standard of fighting. But he had been in operation for near a decade now, most Feathers already had a full suite of fractals by now.

Decision paralysis. The chronic vulnerability of an overthinker.

In a way, having the choice taken away from him had been a blessing. He needed this ability to search the mite sea. And he needed what was left behind deep inside the sea. Against an enemy Feather, he needed a weapon that had been used to kill Feathers.

"You know the source of that weapon she used against me?" To'Sefit asked.

"That log I sent you is the first recorded use of that weapon, by a human against To'Aacar. The very same human that To'Wrathh's logs showed skewered by her sword." He said, taking a few steps forward, translucent.

The sea made no motion, the shapes looming in the distance remained waiting.

"Hardly any evidence. My cute little sister killed the human like she had been tasked to do and took his weapon as a trophy. We saw the footage ourselves. That doesn't seem to be much of a conspiracy against Mother. Paranoia is not a good look on you, you're far too young to lose your head already." To'Sefit huffed.

"That would have been the case. Except while diving into the archive to recover the information on the protofeathers, I was intercepted by two human knights."

"Intercepted in the digital sea? Impossible. Humans can't digitize like that. They're - well, they're meat. They can't connect to the digital sea."

To'Avalis didn't answer that, instead sending over the data package of his experience. "The armors worn by both knights. One matches the same human that nearly destroyed To'Aacar. The one that was supposed to be dead. To'Wrathh doctored the footage somehow to make it seem as if she'd killed the human. She didn't take his weapon. The human created or lent her his."

"Your recording might have been some rogue program using their image to spook you." She said, although he could tell in her voice she wasn't quite convinced. Too much coincidence. And no program should have known he'd been tasked with investigating.

To'Avalis remained quiet, letting his teammate mull over the chances of that. All logical thought returned back to To'Wrathh having some kind of working relationship with these humans. To'Avalis didn't need to say a word.

With a final step forward, he walked out into the sea, the cubes passing through him, harmless now that the occult kept him slightly out of reality.

The power remained stable, keeping him immune to the crushing cubes that roiled around him.

"...We need to warn mother." To'Sefit finally said, defeated. "Even if we are not completely certain yet, you're right that there's far too much that fits your conclusion. She'll need to know that it's at least possible."

"She already knows." To'Avalis said through the data link. "Consider it. To'Wrathh was built like the original protofeathers, intentionally. And then mother attached a second-generation Feather as her mentor. An assassin built to kill Feathers. Already primed to search for any hint of betrayal. I see only one logical reason for this."

"I see. She thought he'd keep her in line, or deal with her before she betrayed mother." To'Sefit concluded.

As far as To'Avalis understood Mother's true plan, he believed she had attempted to recreate the same success she had with Abdication. A second A57, loyal to her. Her old champion had been destroyed against the humans long ago, or so went the general tale, and she hadn't found another champion to elevate since.

Her project clearly failed, and now they had to clean up.

Further into the depth he went, trusting his instruments to guide the way. Scanning through, searching for evidence. He hit the seabed, vision completely obscured by the cubes, no light reaching here.

In the murk, the real work began. "There is one additional factor. Us."

"Us? Including me in your plans for once? How sweet of you."

"To'Aacar was a veteran Feather specifically made to kill Feathers, he could have easily cut all three of us to pieces. And he lost. Were it me, I would have dispatched several second generation Feathers to eliminate To'Wrathh. Insead, she sent us, and worse - assigned me as the leader. Why send what is effectively cannon fodder?"

"I'm pleased you think so highly of To'Orda and I." To'Sefit said, unamused.

To'Avalis said nothing, waiting for an answer. His own track record was clear, and he held no illusions on how that reflected on himself, given the number of retreats he'd comitted.

"Fine… If you ask me, this must be a test for you." To'Sefit said. "Perhaps mother is attempting to give you a second chance to prove yourself?"

Mother was cruel, that he already knew. It would be like her to send him and his two subordinates unsuspectedly into the jaws of an enemy she had no hope he could win against. To'Sefit and To'Orda would both be rebuilt without issue.

Him on the other hand? That would be different. That's why he had to fight unlike all other Feathers. He couldn't afford to fail even once. He doubled his efforts, continuing his search at the bottom of the mite sea, keeping a careful watch on his resources.

Nothing so far.

"I believe she is hedging her bets." To'Avalis said, keeping his inner thoughts to himself. "Mother is sending us first as expendable soldiers to test To'Wrathh's true abilities in full. Trading our shells for information, so that her second team of Feathers will eliminate To'Wrathh with no damage. We're cheaper to replace than more powerful Feathers."

Ironic in a way, as he'd done the same to To'Sefit when ordering her to investigate To'Wrathh. He had only suspicions then, hunches. They'd proven true, as always.

"My, my, what an accusation. Suppose we're there to deal the opening punch then. Better get this over with fast, we should be getting To'Orda and marching back to deal with our misbehaving little sister, we'll go directly to that city of hers first thing. Perhaps we might suprise Mother and take her head ourselves."

"I told you before. I don't fight threats that could kill me without research and a plan. And she won't be in that city either."

"I nearly eradicated her and I see no sign of her anywhere in the sea, she must be back at her city, licking her wounds. Not destroying that city of hers first before she's back on her feet is a mistake."

"Regardless of your thoughts, I have been given command of this team." To'Avalis said. He couldn't lose control of these two Feathers. They were the expendable ones, and his strongest units. "To'Wrathh needs to be handled with care."

"Please, she won by chance and surprise." To'Sefit scoffed. "And now she's only got chance left. Against three of us? Not even that."

"You underestimate her resources. To'Wrathh alone could not have killed To'Aacar. She must have had help from the humans. And I do not know what that help has resource wise."

"Humans? We can bring lessers to handle the insects. Why bother factoring them in? They're only humans."

"I'm not here to take chances. You will obey my orders, even if you do not agree with them."

"Fine, fine, oh magnificent leader. I'll do my best to be scared of the little scurrying humans hiding behind their walls."

Arrogance. To'Avalis thought. Arrogance born from those who didn't need to care about living through a fight. "Those same humans nearly destroyed To'Aacar alone. I am not going to repeat someone else's mistakes, and neither will you."

"And your great plan, oh wise leader?"

"To'Aacar misrecognized the human chain weapon when he first saw it - and he feared it. He claimed it had been thrown into the mite sea. I narrowed down the most likely location to here."

"Ahh, so you're looking for the dead corpse of a fallen Feather, to loot their weapon. My, my, how appropriate coming from you." To'Sefit said, a smile in her voice. "Assuming you even have the right section of the sea here, his shell and fabled weapon must be gone for good. Nothing sinks without getting crushed into pieces first, as you know."

"Appearances may be deceiving. My instincts tell me there is more to this." In effect, he had gambled everything on those feelings. They'd led him correctly so far.

Did the mites really let A12's dead shell get crushed into pieces? If so, he should find scraps of it at the bottom. Thus far, he only found crushed sand and metal parts that matched second generation Feathers. The material composition was well documented in the archives, as alloys were improved over time.

He knew that the original protofeathers were built differently than their mass manufactured counterparts.

The protofeathers had the favor of the mites during their rebellion, that part had been clear. If they had not crushed his shell… there was a chance his body was still intact and hidden under here. The mites were known to be creatures of habit, often marking places as sanctuaries to remain undisturbed. Moved around, yet untouched by future colonies. Part of their original task, to contain and protect dangerous waste material. Even after all this time of mutation, some part of their original task must remain buried in their collective minds. They were hoarders, always looking to preserve history in some way.

"And if this protofeather grave of yours exists, why here?"

The other strata moved over time, mite colonies changing or pushing the landscape every few decades as they passed by. But the mite sea was different. This entire strata was nearly untouched by mite terraforming colonies.

"There are only two battlefields within this strata from that time period that have their records sealed off. I do not know what happened, the terms of engagement, nor the forces. Only that something happened here. And if it had been this redacted, it could only mean one thing."

And evidence of broken second generation parts had only confirmed his original assumptions. He had one in two chances of being correct.

It took hours of wandering blindly around until he stumbled upon something different.

A hollow section deep within the mite sea. He stepped through the moving cubes and found a set of them completely frozen, acting as a wall. Crossing the wall, a massive trapped bubble of air waited on the other side. A cavern within the mite sea. Relaxing his occult power, the Feather rematerialized inside the empty space.

The cavern stretched far, twisting and turning at many angles to form the layout of a flower petal. All leading to a center room, brightly lit and filled with a reflective shallow lake. An inch of crystal clear water, undisturbed for years, looking almost invisible except for the few sparkles of reflected light, acting more as an unbroken half-mirror of the ceiling.

Above, twinkling lights like stars spread across, providing illumination, the space in between too dark to make out against the white dots, giving the cavern a feeling of eternity. The floor slowly raised the closer to the center of the chamber it went, eventually surpassing the shallow lake, turning into a small patch of dry land.

Here, To'Avalis found what he had been searching for.

An unmoving silhouette, eternally meditating upon a dias, legs crossed. A shawl of unremarkable tan covered its features, designs long faded away. Behind it, a massive pillar watched over, illuminated water flowing from both sides, brightly lit.

The protofeather. A12.

The Feather paused, scanning the area for possible traps. Signals sent out, sounding waves, electroscopic data retrieval, infrared pings. Everything he had in his suite.

Nothing.

The chamber was wall, water and pseudo-stars of the ceiling. The pillar, only a set piece. A small ring of water surrounded the dias, separate from the lake, churning water flowing from the fountain behind, dimly glowing blue from lights secreted under.

He hesitated despite all systems showing green. There was a creeping sense of instinctive fear climbing up his spine. This place was not one he was welcome in. The stillness felt almost oppressive.

He began to walk from the edge of the room to the centerpoint, across the lake. Waves raced away from his footfalls with nothing else to compete against. He moved slowly, deliberately, keeping his senses on high alert. His steps were the only sound in the chamber besides the flowing waterfalls from the pillar at the center - and his ultimate target.

Differences between his own shell and the proto-feather were stark. It lacked the grace and organic curves of his own shell, looking far more angular with lines and cuts. Far less humanlike and more machine.

For a moment, To'Avalis believed that the proto-feather was waiting on standby. Further cautious steps forward showed the truth, especially after his scans returned.

The old Feather's body was shattered, held together by bits of cubes fused together under the ripped robes, as if a child had stuffed a broken porcelain doll with clumpy wet sand in an attempt to restore the basic look. Large swaths of his body were outright missing, completely made up of the cube stuffing, where the mites attempted their best to recreate the true shape that had once been. Most of the head had been replaced by cubes as well, melding into the Feather's porcelain face. What was left of it. It looked as if a geometric cancer had ravished the body.

A macabre sight.

A12 did not stir as his graverobber slowly approached. The shell remained seated in a lotus position, slightly hunched over, a monk frozen in trance.

No, the proto-feather was dead. Long dead. This chamber was nothing more than a tomb, built by the mites as a form of homage. He spoke over the link. "I have found the proto-feather's shell."

Static for a moment, but a data package was received in mostly good shape. "My, you're awfully cavalier about all this. Shouldn't you be more respectful in this sort of location? That is one of our great forefathers after all, willful traitor or not."

"I don't see the point." He said, continuing forward across the lake, directly at his target. His scans had found no traps, and further time spent would not reveal more. "Superstition is not befitting of a Feather."

He supposed other Feathers may have stopped or felt afraid of a location like this. But To'Avalis put his priorities first. The Feather before him was dead and gone. And he needed to avoid that fate. The intrusion in the archives had been a wake up call that his enemies would not be the standard Deathless.

Scans showed a small rectangular stone, recessed in the ground right by the foot of the dead protofeather. With little difficulty, his hand lifted the slab off, tossing it away. A large chain was neatly folded inside, coiled like a snake. Just as To'Aacar had described it.

"Looks like your intuition paid off." To'Sefit said.

The weapon's handle was ornate, a work of art with angular straight lines. As if cutting through wind. Each link on the chain had written words in fine print.

Names of Feathers, To'Avalis realized.

Some written more than once. A quick scan showed four hundred and twenty seven names. To'Aacar's name appeared fourteen times. No wonder the Feather had felt panic on seeing something similar.

He reached a hand out to lift the weapon from its grave. Lights flashed on the sides the moment his hand wrapped around the hilt, the chain waking from slumber as if groggy and mildly confused.

To'Avalis was not one for sentimentality, but there was something about this ancient weapon that had his hackles on edge, as if it would just as easily destroy him as it would his enemies. It was clearly far too heavy for any human to use. Which made sense - A12 was not a human.

There was no trigger nor activation switch. Instead, To'Avalis found only an I/O port embedded within the hilt. With little choice, he connected a wire from his palm and prepared his systems for possible cyber warfare. Firewalls and a few dozen virtual warfare suites booted up within his systems. He verified their integrity three times, isolating himself into a sandbox instance before he opened the port.

Nothing came from the weapon besides a simple connection request, blocking him from accessing the rest of the chain's abilities. A set of twelve cryptographic keys were needed.

He would need to obtain the instructions directly from the source.

One hand drew up to the broken shell before him, linking a wire into the first functional port he could find at the neckline. Most had been destroyed or disconnected, but one seemed to still work. He didn't expect to find the keys to the weapon within the corpse. If the proto-feathers were anywhere near as intelligent as he'd read up, they would have already taken standard steps against enemy tampering. There still might be data to recover that could assist him further in how to use the weapon, and he'd need it. Protofeathers were far more than their weapons.

"My little brother, acting a little reckless now are we?" His sister called out, watching the feed through his eyes. "What if you wake him up? I can't exactly come down there to bail you out, and even To'Orda can't save you either, his abilities have limits you know. Not that it would help even if he could reach you. If this really is a sleeping monster, don't be surprised when you find yourself stuck in his teeth as a starting snack."

"So long as I am careful and in control, I can prevent mishaps." He said, more to himself than to his sister. If the proto-feather was functional enough to return to life with just his light prodding, it would have already done so. It had centuries to repair itself back to full health in this hidden tomb.

A12 had not.

That was meaningful enough to draw a conclusion.

Connection established, power flowed from To'Avalis into A12's broken systems. Blue light flickered and grew within the slumped shell. To'Avalis could sense the internals respond. Requests from different partitions arrived and he carefully filtered through each, taking a tentative beachhead within the broken systems. There was no resistance.

First he had to confirm why the Feather had not been able to restore itself automatically. Just to be sure that he would not trigger something dormant.

Integrity reports almost failed to load, all key measuring systems broken beyond repair. That was promising. What little backup systems did function showed deep red. All fractals within the central chest plate had been destroyed, including the soul fractal, which had four massive holes punched through. To'Avalis sent a connection to the machine archives and ran the fractals through, curious to see what kit this feather ran.

No results returned for any of the fractals.

The protofeather must have discovered new fractals outside of what Mother knew about, and brought it to the grave with him.

The soul fractal itself did not match the standard template. Instead, it looked mutated, only vaguely similar to the one he'd been familiar with. A new soul fractal? It lacked the Unity fractal as well.

He supposed that could be a possibility. Fractals were infinite. The study of fractals was more a study of statistics. Recreating this fractal was impossible with the holes punched through. However, knowledge could always be leveraged in the future.

To'Avalis shut off his connection to the machine archives, no longer needing them. Mother always made sure no Feathers could hold a copy of those, lest one of their kind be defeated and hacked into by Tsuya, unveiling her strongest assets. Security he had no wish to poke at, given his current rating among her servants.

A pity those fractals had been destroyed. And while To'Avalis could search through the broken memory banks left behind, he was certain even if A12's memory nodes were fully restored, those fractals would not have been saved at all, following the same security Mother used. Specifically to prevent situations exactly like this.

Nano-swarm command nodes within the broken protofeather had all been destroyed with pinpoint accuracy as well, likely a priority target. Self-healing was out of commission. But the mites could have opted to repair him, given how far they'd gone for all this. Which meant enough of A12's systems must have been destroyed to the point physical restoration would restore a factory default rather than the original Feather. A new soul would have crystalized instead.

He opened power gates into the upper systems, restarting the base core of the Feather and watching carefully for what he'd find.

Some of A12's neuromorphic mind remained functional as expected. Not enough to generate any meaningful data, or reboot the systems without To'Avalis's own assistance providing the majority of the power and computation, at which point the rebooted systems would be more an extention of him than anything else. But there were enough pieces left to store fragmented data of the protofeather's past.

Memories slept within the dead body, floating in the darkness eternal.

The new Feather took them all in, churning out a few dedicated threads to attempt to stitch the data together, predicting what the missing pieces could be with the context clues and restoring it within a threshold of ninety percent accuracy.

Half-remembered memories of combat. Things that the protofeather had buried away. Those he copied over, finding many of the files possibly helpful, if their new coordinates after all these centuries could be found. Seems even the protofeathers had enemies they could not completely destroy, and had to seal away instead.

Next, he searched for remaining combat systems, turning on what he could find in order to duplicate them, constantly keeping vigilant with each new subsystem reactivated.

They responded, lighting up, showing him detailed information in green. Of all hardware a Feather would want to make sure remains in working condition, it would be those.

Customized suites, generated and honed by the protofeather over time. Hundreds of variations remained stable, the nodes all backed up three dozen times throughout the body. A12 had done a thorough job, making so many redundant backups that they had outlived even his own complete destruction. To'Avalis could respect that kind of foresight. Whoever the proto-feather had been, his shell had been shaped and prepared for war, to fight to the very last possible second, and even theoretically past that point.

This was also what nearly killed To'Avalis.

He couldn't notice the systems slowly crafting rogue connections autonomously, deep under the layers of data. The growing mass of threads sneaking to the ruined remains of the neuromorphic mind, following pre-constructed connections hidden deep within the software, attempting to reestablish a link. One last failsafe, impossible to spot from individual nodes, only appearing once enough systems had been activated.

The dead Feather's eyes flew open, deep glowing blue staring at To'Avalis from the grave.

He kicked his systems into overdrive a moment too late.

The hand of a dead wraith jabbed forward, dozens of cubes breaking into fine powder as the metal skeleton under it all moved. Intrusion countermeasure systems flashed active. Too late to catch the command blocker sent by the dead Feather. Shields failed to materialize as the virus took a few microseconds to completely purge out of his system. During that tiny window of time, nails effortlessly cut through To'Avalis's unshielded chest plate, the fingers aimed straight for his soul fractal.

Reaction speed and the armor he'd worn saved his life. To'Avalis shifted his shoulders, forcing the fingers to cut through more armor to reach his core, slowing down the attack by an extra fraction of time. At the same moment, his free hand shot out, grasping the dead Feather's wrist and stopping it in place.

There was no emotion on the dead face, but To'Avalis felt as if the remaining bits of the dead protofeather were mildly annoyed that its attempt to kill had been foiled.

That had been close. Very close.

There were lessons to learn from this, he thought, squeezing the old Feather's hand and crushing the internal components easily. It had been fast, but not fast enough.

The protofeather's shell was long obsolete compared to his own. Not to mention the structural integrity of the arm was already barely holding together. If the protofeather's fingers hadn't already been weapons designed for jabs like this, they would have broken against his chest plate armor. As it was, the thicker armor slowed the hand as it went through, just enough.

Other Feathers hated armor, considering it an insult to the ability of their current shell. To'Avalis didn't care, replacing his torso and body with the far more bulky armor in order to fit in slightly more shields. The only vanity To'Avalis allowed was a set of reading glasses, a personal harmless callsign.

Satisfied that the proto-feather wasn't going to attempt to turn this room into a second tomb, he downloaded everything he could from those rebellious systems, placing it all carefully under quarantine and safely locked away in case the protofeather had left behind more traps. With the systems reconnected to the neuromorphic mind, the full array had been active and within reach.

He hastily cut the connections with swift and merciless strikes through the digital codes, the half-working combat systems giving hardly any resistance without a central command to organize the defense. The hand went limp.

From there, he disconnected himself from the body, watching as the proto-feather's internal lights faded away, returning to the silent vigil of death.

He had A12's weapon and the combat data he needed to use it. The codes protecting it would only last for so long before he broke the encryption.

With this, he had the tools to deal with To'Wrathh and her human accomplices.

It was true that To'Avalis rarely won. Almost all skirmishes in his records showed nearly constant retreats. Fights that should have been resolved within a single bout lasted dozens. Spanning hours or even days until his target was eliminated. He really was considered the weakest Feather by objective metrics. A coward in Mother's eyes.

What Mother failed to understand about him is that when the dust finally settled, he was the one who remained standing.

Every.

Single.

Time.

This task she'd sent him on would be no different.

Next chapter - Resolution

Book 4 - Chapter 20 - Resolution

Captain Sagrius stood at attention, all four Winterscar knights behind him. They'd arrived first after we sent out meetup coordinates, escorting Kidra who brought with her a backpack that looked more like a large sack to abduct people. Which was kind of the point, given that the two of us were planning on using it exactly for that reason: Stuffing Wrath in a sack.

She tossed it on the ground, wasting no time opening up the string.

I eyed the sack. "Could have picked a better color, this clashes with my theme you know. And is she really going to fit in there? Looks a little on the small side."

"Dear brother." My extremely kind and generous older sister said, "I had to get this at the last possible second - all while organizing the house knights to recover all your workshop equipment, in the middle of a city wide call to evacuate. If you say another word, I'm afraid there may be violence." She turned her head to the Winterscar knights behind her. "And would you look at this, there doesn't seem to be any witnesses."

The knights behind her had an unusual amount of additional equipment in addition to the rifles and ammunition carried on the hoversleds behind them. They also shared a quick look between each other, before nodding solemnly to the Winterscar Prime.

Bunch of traitors, can't ever get good minions these days. And speaking of the devils, Captain Sagrius stepped forward before me with a curt salute, then waved over the equipment the knights had recovered from my workshop before leaving.

The list was depressingly short.

"I notice most of my gear and trinkets are missing." I said, a sinking feeling in my gut. "They didn't fall off on the way did they?"

"My lord, we could only carry the complete prototypes with us." The good captain said. "Your experimental items had to be left behind, and standard operational doctrine demanded that we destroy anything left behind. No hiding location was deemed secure enough for these relics. Lady Winterscar's clothing items are of lower priority and could be left behind for future recovery."

I gave the captain a nod, knowing it was all for the ultimate best in the end, and turned to complain about it to Kidra. "When did hiding things under the bed no longer make the cut in security? Nobody told me about this change, I'm lodging a formal complaint the moment we're back on solid snow. Swear to the gods. The House Prime is going to hear about all this."

"Objections noted, and will be put under careful review." Kidra said, rolling her eyes.

Shaking my head at the injustice of the world, I brought Wrath's cradled shell over to the sack and started to consider the logistics here. It was probably large enough to fit her up to her head, so long as we rolled her up into a ball. We'd just gotten started on stuffing the Undercity's de facto supreme royal monarch into the sack when the original twenty clan knights following Atius arrived from different directions all within minutes of each other.

They were very professional and didn't ask any weird questions like 'What the three gods are you doing with that girl?' And we didn't need to tell them excuses like 'It's not what it looks like, well, kind of, but there's nuance'

Windrunner walked up to Lord Atius's side, technically second in command now that the whole army had assembled, and then gave us a pointed look. Likely expecting an explanation for all this because I admit first impressions don't make us look like the good guys.

Lord Atius followed behind with weary steps. "We'll wait for the Shadowsongs whelps to arrive and then I'll brief you all. No doubt you're all confused at the mass evacuation orders that were sent into the city a moment ago."

Windrunner nodded. "Sir. Given the orders, I assume we've been made?"

"In a manner of speaking." Atius said, turning to the gathered group. Seven to ten knights was the standard for an underground expedition. We had gone way over that number. This many clan knights all gathered together in one spot? There's only one reason and it's shortly before a full on war against another clan or an Othersider encampment.

It gave an ominous feeling. And maybe the pair of Winterscars working hard on stuffing a girl into a slightly too small sack in the background might have added to it. Can't really tell since I spent the time mostly hissing at my sister for bringing a kevlar sack. Wrath's wing feathers were gods damned pointy. And the broken sections constantly got caught in the material.

"I needed something resistant, and I couldn't find a strong enough metal box correctly sized with back straps in time." Kidra hissed back. "I had five minutes to find this and go. You try to do this feat in that short amount of time in the middle of complete chaos." In the process of shoving Wrath into the sack, a few metal feathers were bent. Wrath did not appreciate this.

"Please desist from causing my shell further damage. This will increase the repair time needed." Wrath said over the soul bridge between us, using Journey's external speakers, with its permission. Her violet eyes were the only thing we'd managed to get working after I'd tried to manually reboot some parts of her system while we'd been waiting. Mild success. Hoping for more, but there's a limit to what I could do, even with relic armor gloves keeping my hands steady.

Optical systems were a good first step, not too integrated into all the tiny bits in her head. Maybe if I had more time I could fix up some of the damaged wiring inside her shell. Feathers were built with far too many redundant systems. All I needed was to pick the least damaged one and make sure at least one thing was connected. Even her soul fractal seemed to be connected to adaptive circuitry. If I had enough time, I might even be able to hook up her arms and legs to route through those. She wouldn't be able to use them with any finesse as she told me, and walking was out of the question - but it was possible for her to try to move them manually.

The real killing issue here was that heat damage was extra effective. It hit everything at about the same rate. So while all those redundant features made Feathers excellent at shrugging off pinpoint strikes, area of effect hits did a number on them. Most of her body I could probably fix up into working condition so long as she directed me. None of those would fix the small circuitry inside her head that let her use all of this with any kind of skill.

"This is your fault for making your wingtips pointy." Kidra shot back at our captive. "Even shut down and unmoving, I'm amazed you're still capable of making life miserable for all of us. Keith taught you too much."

"My wings fit particular ascetics. It was necessary for them to be pointy." She said, completely serious. Given she was a Feather, I actually believed she really meant every word of that.

Kidra did too, one hand snatching Wrath's cheek and pinching it up and down. "All of this will be fixed up at the mite forge yes? What does it matter if I bend and break a few more fingers."

"That's a steep upgrade from feathertips. You seem a little miffed." I remarked, gleefully adding more fuel into the fire.

"I had some excellent patterns and colors I intended to bring back to the surface. Now, it's unlikely I'll get those back until the later expedition to loot the city." She said, giving Wrath a particularly hard shove into the sack. Violet eyes glared back at her in response.

"You are planning to loot my city?" She said, angry about all the wrong things in this picture.

Kidra turned her helmet in my direction. "Why is she even active? I thought you mentioned she was unconscious in the message."

"She's afraid of the dark." I said with a shrug.

"I am not afraid of the dark." Wrath said, violet eyes indigent. She couldn't move any of her facial features yet. But despite the neutral look, I could tell she'd be glaring at me if she could. "Besides. This is not the dark, I simply lose consciousness. There is a debatable difference."

I turned up to Kidra. "Like I said, she's afraid of the dark and wants me to hold her hand. It's a little adorable. Also, I think we need to restart, maybe if we tried rolling her up outside the sack first." I pointed at part of a tangle starting to happen.

"A Feather is not afraid of the dark!" Wrath said while Kidra lifted her out.

My sister gave me a pointed look.

"Fine," I huffed. "I'll be serious. Her soul fractal is active so long as a soul tendril connects. It looks like without her shell working, artificial souls fade. I don't know if it's permanent or just temporary. We know she can last at least an hour while in that deep sleep, since that's how long it took us to get to her. Maybe contact with another living being is enough to keep the concept of herself alive. After a bit of begging from her, I decided to be magnanimous and keep her company."

Wrath seethed. "That is factually incorrect and you know it, human."

"Fine fine, let me rephrase that. After a bit of dignified begging from her, I de-"

"Slander." She interrupted, glaring at me. "Feathers do not beg."

My sister turned her gaze in my direction. "Perhaps we are being a little too rough, she has lost almost all of her body and is currently being shoved into a sack."

"Counterpoint, we are Winterscars." I said, raising a finger.

Kidra hummed and nodded. "Fair point, continue."

"Right. Now as I was saying, a terrifying machine of mass destruction is clearly not scared of the dark. And it would be ridiculous of me to insinuate that, of course. She just appreciates that I'm holding her hand like this through a tough time."

"Exactly." Wrath said as we got her feet into the sack and brought her head back out. I had to hold her by the armpits and lift her up so that we could properly aim her down. "We do not know the full effects of leaving an artificial soul disconnected from a neural network for extended periods of time. Keeping me awake and aware is the preferred course of action."

"I understand." Kidra said, turning again to me as we lowered her into the sack. "Congratulations dear brother, it seems we've successfully abducted a stray. "

"You okay with us bringing her back into our House?" I said. "I know you've had some history with her. The stabbing kind."

"So long as she doesn't have fleas, I'm sure she'll fit in with the House. With some of the fabrics I'll loot from her city, I may even sow her a nice dress. Perhaps a uniform. Black and white, with frills and a tiara. Very traditional. Fitting end for what she put me through."

Violet eyes stared daggers back at Kidra, but Wrath smartly decided to remain close lipped at the provocation of having her city looted in any way.

"Capra'Nor will be an empty ghost town within a day, and quite a lot of resources are being left behind." Kidra continued, baiting the silent feather lurking in the sack. "Resources the clan could use. Once the Otherside hears of the evacuation, they'll come searching to pick the city's bones regardless. I don't intend to let them have first take."

That finally got her. "That is my city you intend to loot, I won it by conquest! It's mine! The equipment, gear, people and food are all mine by right."

"Kidra, I think we made a mistake." I said, wagging a finger within biting distance at the half-filled sack with violet eyes glowing inside, staring angrily back at me. "Look at how greedy she is about her loot. Typical spider behavior rather than a stray cat, if my machine guide is correct."

"I've learned only some lessons on handling machines." Kidra said, bringing one of Wrath's feathers up for inspection. "How much force do you believe would be required to snap one of these? This seems like important information to know, we should run a few experiments."

While they weren't connected to anything, there was still a magnetic field of some kind that was active and making them resistant to being bullied around. All part of regular Feather's stupid amounts of independent systems, all built to continue functioning even in the face of extreme damage.

The spider in question sputtered a few half-thought out words, before pausing. A slow blink in the darkness of the sack. "… I admit your analysis is correct that it would make more sense to… to loot my city on a return trip in the future." She spat out the word loot as if she'd been forced by gunpoint to cooperate. Which wasn't too far from the truth.

"And?" Kidra asked, tapping another obstructing wingtip.

"...And I am allowing my older nature to resurface. Slightly." Wrath said, sulking further into her soul fractal, glowing eyes looking away. "I know you worked hard on your textiles Kidra, I regret that they weren't deemed critical enough to bring with you. If I had bought the city a few more days, you would have been able to carry those to your residence."

Kidra stopped, gauntlet looking like it was about to bend another pointy bit. "It matters not. I'll be sure to recover them on a second expedition, another time." She folded the metal feather more gently, pushing it into the broken wing in the right place. "Besides, the majority of the textiles I wanted, I've already incorporated into my armor."

My sister had added a few touches on the otherwise barren and unpainted look of the Winterscar armor that Father had kept clean and uncluttered for the past lifetime. Relic armor could easily tear away cloth as if it were a sheet of window ice, so it didn't matter too much what she added or if it could get caught in anything. Against moving four hundred pound metal, few things would hold it back.

She wasn't exactly wearing a typical kimono, but the armor looked about as close to that as possible, with parts of the cloth cleverly cut to look as if it were all under the plate.

"It looks-" Father said and then wisely stopped midway. "Nevermind. I meant nothing of note."

Being a stout traditionalist, Father had never adorned the armor with any kind of trinkets beyond the sigils of the House. Kidra did not care to continue that legacy. She slowly looked down at the necklace she wore, as if daring the old ghost to make another comment. "Go on." She said, voice sounding awfully sweet. "Do remember, I quite liked the lacy patterns with Winterscar blood red. I could return to the city to fetch it. It is, after all, my armor now. I can do as I wish with it."

"That's a trap." I said, warning Father while I shifted Wrath inside the sack to bring her head out as a last step.

"...Do as you like. It's no longer my concern." Father tutted, turning back to his meditation. He understood Kidra and I had absolutely no reservations on working together. We could be at each other's throats one second, before immediately barking down a newcomer with no pause. He was fair game like Wrath, since both of them couldn't lift a finger to stop us now.

He didn't need to say more, Ankah and the Shadowsong minions appeared, holding a standard sprint as they covered ground. They'd even brought all their collected weapons, and a hoversled behind them with more ammunition and rations. In moments, they reached our little gathering spot and took position in the lineup.

We'd finally gotten all of Wrath's body correctly stuffed snuggly into the sack, with half her head poking out. Knees raised to her chest and arms hugging her sides, with the wingparts all safe from cutting the kevlar. Journey had no trouble lifting the sack into position while Kidra tightened the straps to keep the sack hands-free. She gave the Feather a pat on the head when it was all done.

Lord Atius took a step forward, and the knights all turned attention to him.

"Expedition team, mission briefing is as follows. Approximately two hours prior, an enemy Feather approached the city attempting to gather intel on To'Aacar's defeat and location. Lady To'Wrathh departed in an attempt to stall. Negotiations broke down, and the only option was to engage in a 'friendly spar' with the Feather, aiming to destroy her. This worked with mixed results. During the fight with this Feather, Lady To'Wrathh sustained fatal damage to her systems and is currently mostly offline. Fortunately, she was able to eliminate the opposing Feather, granting the Undersiders a stay of execution. That Feather will be back, and the amount of time the city has before the machines discover their true allegiance is likely measured in hours now, hence the immediate evacuation orders."

Behind the group, I could see the twinkling city lights of the pillar. A massive snake of lights were moving out of the gatehouse, spreading into thinner lines the further along the path they went. The city had steadily been evacuating over the past week, with enormous groups leaving every other hour. I thought those were large crowds. This made it all look like tiny expeditions in comparison.

Most would have to journey on foot, with a few soldiers to serve as guards. Transports were all taken up, or still returning back from the last deposit. Our knights had to really fight to bring the few hoversleds we had, packed with provisions.

It would be arduous for the people leaving, the voyage lasting days if not weeks of traveling through unclaimed territory. General Zaang was busy securing important items and projects for his own personal convoy, such as To'Aacar's broken shell that his war scientists were still slowly studying.

The machines in the city would be filtering out later, rejoining and hiding among the larger ranks. Perhaps their shared experience would curb the bloodthirsty monsters that lay past the sectors To'Wrathh had controlled.

Lord Atius watched with the rest of us at the distant parade. Old eyes grew hard. "What comes next does not involve the clan. And I do not speak as the clan lord, only as a Deathless.

We need To'Wrathh back online. However, the damage To'Wrathh sustained is too delicate for conventional repairs. And given her status as a machine traitor, it is very likely that this may be the last time a mite forge is left unguarded as the machines sound the alarm and begin to hunt after her. I aim to escort Keith to the nearest one, where he'll assist in the recovery. Once minimum repairs are complete, we will depart straight for the surface rendezvous point. As the first known Feather to turn against the machines, she may play a critical part to stabilizing some kind of peace underground. One thing I need to make clear - this is not the clan's business. As far as our home expects of us, we should return to the surface to help against the invasion, not run headfirst against a machine army. The clan is my home, my people. But Deathless are called to do more. I am compelled to see this through."

No murmurs among the group. The knights all stood ramrod straight, watching the clan lord, waiting. They knew he wasn't done yet.

"Those of you who serve the clan first, I will understand if your choice is to return now. I'll give an oath upon my name that I shall not hold your decision against you once I return to the clan. The next pickup at the rendezvous location is in five days, if you go now at full sprint, you should reach the evac zone with a day to spare for the unexpected."

The clan lord turned to scan the rest of the knights, age and wisdom in his gaze. "I have a good idea of who can come and who cannot. If you cannot, you know who you are. Go in peace. You've honored your vow by coming down here in the first place, and more even by staying and helping the Undersiders in their time of need. More isn't expected from any of you."

His head turned to stare down one knight in particular, giving him a slow nod. The knight stared back, then saluted and took a step backwards. "Forgive me, m'lord. I have too much at stake, my fam-"

Atius raised a hand, pausing the knight's speech. "Targon, lad, I know you and your situation back home. You have nothing to apologize for. Shelby needs you with that little hellion of yours. This mission is optional, unlike ending To'Aacar's threat to the clan. A call to action, not duty."

Four knights shuffled their feet, glanced at each other, and took a step back out of the line, joining the first knight. Three others followed shortly after.

All five Winterscar knights stood their ground, helmets locked on me. I had a feeling they were going wherever I was, and nobody could tell them otherwise.

Oddly enough, Ankah and her minions remained in the lineup, arms crossed over their chest as if this whole thing was beneath their notice. Atius glanced in her direction, raising an eyebrow, saying nothing otherwise.

It looked like there was nobody else leaving the lineup. Thirteen of the clan knights remained, with seven having backed out. Atius raised a hand, calling attention again.

"There is more. You all need to know the dangers that are waiting for us. Else your decision isn't informed. If danger appears, it is likely to be far worse than a standard expedition. Expected enemies are any of the known machine variants, and possibly three Feathers if we're not fast enough to get to this forge before the machines discover the deception. Two are of unknown abilities and one with semi-revealed ones. Sending the info package on what we know of To'Sefit now." There was a heavy tilt in his voice on this as all our HUD received the info package, opening it up to detailed specs we'd learned from talking to Wrath.

"Normally, it takes a team of Deathless working together to wear one down a single Feather. Against three, with access to an army... if the worse comes to happen it will be… a difficult fight at best, even with our equipment and abilities. A group of Feathers working together aren't uncommon on the lower strata, rather they're infamous. They're sent when Deathless get too far deep into the machine world and the machines want them stopped. Lads, I'll be straight with you all, I haven't heard of a Deathless team that survived past that point. It's typically known as the end of any expedition when Feathers are mobilized as a group. The goal at that point is to hold off the Feathers while any mortals among the expedition attempt to escape."

The group of knights didn't stir nor question anything.

Atius nodded, as if expecting this from his elites. "That said, there hasn't been a Deathless team composed of more than ten, we're too spread out from one another to gather like this. Usual teams are three to four, typically with support of Imperial Crusaders. Right now there are nineteen of us assembled here. All of you have access to equipment and techniques that put you on par with a Deathless, or even above them depending on your skills and experience. The raw firepower this expedition has far outstrips even a full legion of Imperials. The challenge isn't insurmountable. This is likely the first time in centuries that a group of Feathers is under threat of being beaten. It is, however, almost assuredly going to be deadly, which is one thing Deathless have on mortals. We can go in again and again, undying. You only have one life to give."

We were glass cannons in this case. Capable of dealing more damage than Deathless, but not capable of taking the same hits.

"The songs of a band of heroes diving into the heart of the enemy and returning all unscathed are just that - songs. Reality is harsh and rarely forgiving.

We came down here to hunt down and kill a single wounded Feather, equipped with twice the number expected to ensure we won. It was necessary, and we'd brought as much as we could to mitigate the risks.

Now, things have changed. All of you need to turn and ask your mirror - is your death something your House can afford? The safe route is still there, waiting behind you." At that, he turned knowing eyes to the Shadowsongs.

They remained in the lineup, stubborn. Up until one other clan knight had his shoulder slump down, and took a step back.

Windrunner, standing next to Lord Atius, was giving a death stare at one of the knights that was still among the lineup. That knight looked as if he was being raked over the coals. Likely a private comms chat between the two. A moment later, the knight gave a small nod, and took a step back.

"Shadowsong." Atius said, eyes still focused on the trio. "All the knights assembled here are among the elite warriors of our clan. Veterans, one and all. They've spent years training in armor. You three have only gained armor recently. While I have no doubt that you possess the courage to come with us, you lack the experience yet. Go live to fight another day."

Ankah and her minions still stood their ground, with the spoiled princess outright glaring back at the clan lord. "When the city was under siege by that Feather, Kidra shared the Winterblossom technique with us all. She has the same experience and time with her armor as we have. We can, and will, match her blade. House Shadowsong will not suffer to be cowed or judged a lesser."

"Lass, consider that wisely. Pride often finds itself misplaced, more so in youth. Your father wouldn't handle news of your death well. If you go with the retreating knights here, it's guaranteed you'll return safe to the surface."

"I said what I said, it is unbecoming of a Shadowsong to withdraw words spoken. I am a full member of the clan, with all the rights that attend to that rank, including independence." Ankah said, turning her helmet to stare at Kidra for a moment. "Should I die in this mission of yours, then record these words to my Father - I upheld the honor of our noble House. I am no craven coward hiding behind the shadows of others."

Atius leveled his stare and held it for a moment. Ankah didn't back down. "So be it lass." He finally said with a sigh. "I can't afford to turn down three more blades at our side. Not for a mission like this. And all whelps must eventually grow their own wings. The Winterblossom technique puts you on par with most veteran knights already."

We all turned to look north, where General Zaang had sent us coordinates for the nearest mite forge the city knew about.

A place listed as the flooded temple of Ordritz, and the hollow forest that stretched around it.

Next chapter - The Temple

Book 4 - Chapter 21 - The Temple

Travel underground ended up being categorized by three speeds. The first was a walking caravan. Slowest, easiest to attack, the tool of the desperate but nobody could argue with the sheer carrying capacity if they had prepared ahead of time for the journey. The second speed were Relic Knights, or just soldiers as the undersiders called them. They'd sprint for quite some time but could only carry a limited amount. Usually they ran with a hand on a hover sled that carried the important things, like people or ammo, and whatever could fit in their sacks. The third speed was for military and nobility use, which involved renting out airspeeders. Undersider versions had no external handholds and were smaller than their surface counterparts. They could go very quickly, but only among wide enough roads and stretches.

At knight speed, the temple was expected to be three days of travel. The clan knights sprinted the entire way, pausing only to consume ration bars when needed and only for a few minutes to rest the mind and return to sprinting. The winterblossom technique eliminated even the small fatigue of moving an armor that regular knights had to deal with. It was, after all, only the armor moving. At first, the entire clan moved as a unit, since the general direction matched up with the surface recovery point. Day one passed and the group split with only a few words of goodbye.

And now only the dedicated remained, racing against time directly to the mite forge.

The flooded temple of Ordritz wasn't named for some lost god or people. A hunter team stumbled on this while on expedition to map the surrounding areas during the days the Undersiders were deciding on settling here or in a few other locations of known pillars.

The scout master was named Ordritz, and his team had discovered a lot of landmarks along the way. However his massive ego wouldn't put his name on anything that wasn't impressive enough. The temple counted, and that ended up being the only thing Ordritz put his personal name on.

Interesting fellow. And it did not bode well for the size of this temple.

First sign we'd come close to our target was the water. We loped down a mountainside path, easily clearing the rocks with vaults and precise jumps before landing into a puddle that just never ended. It looked like Capra'nor's lake, except shallow enough to reach only our boot soles and we couldn't see the other end of the shoreline, if it even existed. Further past the initial empty stretch of water were trees. Not bunched up, but close enough to slowly obscure any vision through them. They all grew in this pseudo-lake, bright teal and green leaves.

The clan knights dove right into the forest, weaving expertly between the wide trees and leaving only ripples extending out on the otherwise mostly still water. Somewhere at the center of this forest, we'd find the temple.

"Think we made it before To'Sefit could show up?" I asked over the soul link I had to Wrath. It hadn't taken any effort to keep another tendril of soul linked up to her own fractal, so long as she was close enough to me. And the sack I used to ferry her on my back was close enough.

"Feathers can be rebuilt anywhere in the world. They use a teleportation network in the lower stratas to then move closer to where they need to be, the final mile will need to be traveled on foot, however Feathers will be faster than you are."

"What's the time frame we're working with?"

Wrath hummed in thought. "At best, To'Sefit decided to take her time and wait in line for the next available forge. Then, when she travels up to the city, she'll discover it empty. Only then will she suspect and possibly come here. That would give us perhaps a week at most."

Maybe this expedition wasn't quite as doomed as Lord Atius had made it out to be. We could be in and out of the temple within hours. The worst we could run into was whatever machines had already made it their home, and against us they wouldn't stand a chance.

So long as we remained hidden on the way back up, To'Sefit wouldn't be able to tell where we are. The Unity fractal that connected all machines could only connect to the soul fractal, of which wouldn't give much information at all other than the immediate surroundings if even that. Machines didn't have a soul sight, they needed a wired connection to any kind of sensor.

The Feathers would know she's alive, but so long as she didn't allow any intruder further access into her systems, there was nothing they could do to locate her.

"What about the worst case?"

"The worst possible situation I can calculate is that To'Sefit already knew of my allegiances before she arrived to the city. I find this unlikely, as To'Sefit would have used a surprise attack directly to neutralize my shell before I could react. Instead, she allowed me to get close enough to speak."

"Counterpoint, she's a Feather. They like to gloat. Maybe she was doing some kind of ego thing, where she went ahead of her team just to kill you early?"

Wrath stayed silent for a moment before she gave a resigned sight. "I admit that maybe be a possibility. My kind are prone to certain… vices."

"So if she was doing it all to toy with you, what's next?"

"To'Sefit would not have expected to have been defeated. I would imagine she would spend everything she's accumulated in order to pass the line and recreate her body at the first available spot and then rush directly to the city. I calculate six to eight hours before To'Sefit is within range. She would first search for my shell, find it missing and assume it would have been brought back to the city."

"No way Zaang could evacuate an entire city that fast, even if they had been preparing for it. They're not nearly that ready."

Wrath gave a sad nod inside her digital world. "Indeed. To'Sefit would find the migrants and likely attack them. She would hunt down the general, or any other high ranking officer and obtain information on us from there. If this is the case, we can expect her to appear behind us at some point, likely after we've entered the temple. It is possible we could have my shell fixed enough to leave early, before she arrives."

So we had good chances even in the worst case situation to beat the feather to the mite forge.

Cathida chimed in, oblivious to our private conversation. "Temple's in range young man. Chin up, sword out, and do us proud now." She said. The mix of having the empire vindicated as real in addition to seeing Wrath absolutely trashed had made the crusader quite happy for the old bat. She hadn't even insulted me all day so far.

The moment we passed the treeline, the group of knights came to a stop. Partly from natural shock, and party from Lord Atius's call on the comms. Ahead of us was another long empty stretch of shallow water. And at the center stood what looked like a small city, complete with white walls. All across the ground were pillars with decorative ends, most of which had been broken down with chunks spread across the water ground.

The temple itself was one massive building, interconnected with sloping arches, bridges, and grand statues that look vaguely humanoid. At the very entrance was a set of stairs that must have reached three or four stories high before the actual entrance. Looked more like a city made for giants than humans.

Lord Atius's voice crackled over the comms. "All of you lads should have read the packet General Zaang provided us a few dozen times now over the trip here. The temple has multiple floors to it, no doors or sealed chambers anywhere. The main floor will be flooded in at boot level like here. The subfloor under it has more pronounced flooding, up to chest level, and that's where the mite forge will be located. We'll travel above on the roof level to avoid being slowed down and make our way to the second floor once we've come close enough to the mite forge. Expected enemies will be spiders, screamers, locust, and serpents. Advance."

We got about twenty steps forward before Father broke his silent mediation, yelling over the comms system from the medallion Kidra wore. "LEAP UP, NOW!"

Clan knights, having been trained from infancy to follow orders from a superior, didn't question Father's orders and leapt up high in the air. Even our Deathless didn't take the warning lightly.

It saved our lives. Not even a moment into the air, seventeen beams of bright blue slammed all across the area we'd just been at, living only for a fraction of a second, cutting into the water and right into the rock under it.

A shockwave and steam raced out a moment after, the entire world engulfed in chaos and white blinding mist. Journey instantly compensated for that, highlighting objects on the HUD right through the steam including where the ground was, rock outlines, and outlines of all knights with us. On the list of names in the group, three had turned orange from their usual green.

To'Sefit had beat us to the temple. Worse, she'd been waiting for us to walk out into the open.

"Fall back behind treeline, now!" Atius commanded over the comms. Journey instantly highlighted a waypoint, showing me which way to run through the fog.

"A-1, dive!" Father yelled, and a moment later the chaos returned. Beams of blue lanced through the mist, casting them away like an exorcist cutting through a miasma. They weren't aimed, hitting the ground instead of any target. One came close to a knight and the shockwave threw him off his feet. Shields flared up on the armor before another hiss of steam hid everything.

Two names on my HUD turned gray instantly. One turned flashing red. We were getting cut apart.

"N-2, four oh one on A-1" Windrunner spoke over the comms, keeping a level voice. "R-1, four oh one on N-1. Leave H-1 behind."

In my HUD I could see two knight outlines break formation. One rushed to grab red flashing outlines of a fallen knight, lifting them up and continuing the mad sprint back to the treeline. Another did the same, running straight for a limp gray outline. I didn't see the rest, already passing right by. A second later, our group sprinted out of the steam clouds like wraiths, vaporized water trailing behind the gust of wind we each left behind.

Another volley of beams sounded behind us, but we were too far out and those beams had been aimed at the cloud center. Trees started to blur past, and soon we were back in the deep forest, taking a steep left as a group and circling around to a more unpredictable location.

"All units, combat confirmed. Apply propranolol version 7, call out status. Casualties first." Atius ordered, looking over the group. The knights all nodded, sounds of medical kits clicking open as each took out a cylinder inside, some already lifting it up to their necks and applying the drug.

"N-1, leg cut off." One of the knights said, letting go of another who'd carried him this far. He wasn't mincing his words either. The leg had been chopped off, armor and all, at an angle starting from his knee. There wasn't any blood, the wound was blackened.

"A-1, KOS." Another knight said, putting down a body he'd carried. This one was missing everything under his chestplate. Just a pair of arms with a limp helmet. His was one of the names grayed out on my HUD.

"Verify the soul fractal on the side of his helmet." Father's voice crackled from his medallion.

The knight who'd carried his fellow paused in his own medical application, then swiftly turned his helmet down to the dead body. In a moment, he was kneeling, drawing his helmet close enough to touch. "He's alive!" The knight shouted, "His soul is in the fractal, he can't return to his body, but reports status nominal otherwise!"

There was a kind of wonder in his voice. The rest of the knights paused, implications settling on their shoulders.

"I had hoped not to test this theory out anytime soon Tenisent, for obvious reasons." Atius said with a sigh, gravel in his voice. "Fortune smiles on us this time it seems. Cut free his soul fractal and hand it to Lady Winterscar. Tenisent, we'll leave A-1 to your care. All units, keep focused on the mission, do not assume complete immortality."

The clan knights nodded. There hadn't been a change in posture, but there was a feeling of relief. As if the mission was no longer as oppressive as it had been during the run here, even if technically it had gone even worse than the worst possible case.

"M'lord, does that mean H-1 is also possibly alive?" Another knight from the A-group asked, the gray name of his teammate morbidly just under on the list of names.

Atius nodded. "Most likely yes, so long as his helmet was not destroyed. We can't afford to grab his body just yet, he can wait until we've cleared out the threats." Old eyes turned to the group. "I am not in the habit of leaving warriors behind. We'll recover him the moment we can, or plan out a future mission to do so in stealth. Tenisent's experience as a soul shows they can remain alive and in slumber for months."

He pointed to eight knights, "Split into groups of two and scout ahead. We need to discover if the machines are attempting a surround or if they've sent forces after us."

They gave a salute, and four scout parties instantly raced out, fading into the trees.

Windrunner walked over to Atius's side. "Plan?"

"To'Sefit has already made a nest within the temple, likely at the high ground for full visibility. We should assume the other two Feathers are also within the temple guarding her. Plan needs confirmation first on viability." He turned to me, or rather to Wrath that was secured on my back. "Is there any way for Keith to fix you himself on the surface? We could retreat back. Even if it took months, it would be the safest compared to continuing on."

Wrath spoke over Journey's speakers. "Keith could repair the majority of my shell's systems with my guidance over enough time." She said. "The control nodes for the nanoswarms could be fixed by hand, however the central command systems that could activate those swarms isn't something that can be fixed conventionally. Neuromorphic and smaller chips within my head were not built to be operated on by anything other than nanoswarms, his armor couldn't hold his hands steady enough to repair damage there."

Atius nodded, looking grim. "Deadlock then. Is another mite forge viable?"

"No. Travel time to another mite forge would give the Feathers more access to resources, we would run into a far larger army each time we turned to search for a new forge. And they would still reach the location before we do."

"I see." He said, looking back in the direction of the temple. "So this is them at their weakest. They'll only grow stronger from here on out. If we can't win now, we can never win later."

"How'd she even beat us here?" I asked. "Worse case she's supposed to be interrogating some of the Undersiders and then leaving them immediately to come chase behind us. She should be attacking from the forest instead of on top of the temple."

"She must have moved directly to the temple instead of searching for my shell near the city." Wrath said. "It is the only possible way. I do not know how she knew we would come here of all places. My machines do not broadcast any relevant information back to the machine archive."

"Is a full frontal charge using a scattered formation possible?" Windrunner asked, already moving past the why's. "The open terrain before the temple would take only half a minute at a full sprint to reach. It's possible the majority of our forces can reach the temple without being eliminated."

Atius shook his head. "If we can't find another way, that'll be our last resort. Wrath's report on To'Sefit showed the beams came from hovering plates around her. She could aim those freely. Even split into groups, To'Sefit could fire on all of us at the same time."

Cathida cut into my helmet while the group was discussing possible strategies. "You haven't taken the shot." She hissed. "That drug existed even back in my day, don't think I don't know what it's for. Take the booster, or I'll rat you out."

"I could mute you." I said, hand over the medical kit to my side.

"You can't mute a text message, brat. I'll send it faster than you can blink through the menu. Try me."

The medkit unhooked from my belt with little resistance. Inside were cylinders, all marked differently. Knights had a different set than scavengers used. My old one had large handles to manipulate through thick gloves, and a needle point to punch through. We also had a field repair kit right next to the vials so we could seal the hole made. This kit was different, the fat vials made to hook up to a socket on the side of the throat. The armor would allow it through.

I picked the right vial and started to give it a few turns, a measuring needle on the side moving with each twist. "I think I've got an idea on how to sneak into the temple." I said to the crusader while working out the dosage.

"Pretend to be a walking tree or something?" Cathida scoffed. "The mission's a bust. Give up on the minx and just go back home safe. No need to stick your leg out for a glorified calculator with a pretty face."

"That so? Then you're going to love this next part. We just so happen to have a guide following around us somewhere, haunting the place. Time I put him to work."

Next chapter - Sneak level 10

Book 4 - Chapter 22 - Sneak level 10

When the propranolol dissociation passed, I flicked my HUD settings and found a recently used channel number. I had a mission to annoy a very specific machine, and I'm very good at what I do.

"Are you sure you want to go this route, deary?" Cathida asked. "Machines can't be trusted. They're servants of evil, silver tongued devils, the lot of them."

"Atius and the knights are already coming up with any plan I could, I'm picking options that only I'd know about. Now, switch over to the last band he used, short range, wide spectrum with the same encryption he used."

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. But don't come crying to me when he leads you into a trap." Journey complied, connecting all the comms settings to the correct values. "You're live. Knock yourself out."

"So, mysterious voice. Think Wrath and I could use some of that mysterious wisdom of yours right about now."

No response came.

Cathida huffed. "The toaster split, knew he was a coward like the rest of his ilk. I could smell it."

"You can't smell. You're a digital engram." I reminded Cathida, again. Then switched back to the wideband, trying to bait out the wraith again. "If you don't, we might end up having to storm the temple the traditional way. To'Sefit's probably got good eyes. She'll spot me running with a sack behind, and laser me first. Best I could do is slap a sign on my sack saying 'Spare parts, don't worry about it.' I give it maybe between zero to zero percent chance of working."

Still no answer.

"What are you going to tell your mite friends when Wrath's not available to do her job because she's been blown to bits? Better yet, without me, who's going to recover that artifact I buried upstairs? The one with all the traps that you don't want to deal with?"

There was a click, followed by static. A signal was being sent back. "You. Are. Insufferable." A robotic voice responded on the comms.

Got him.

Cathida groaned. "Why do you always have to work with goddess damned machines of all things? Every time I blink there's a new goddess forsaken one you've picked up somehow. Are you cursed or something?"

"Enemy of my enemy is probably my friend." I said, then went back to hunting for the wraith hiding somewhere in the forest. "You know, mysterious voice filled with static is a bit of a mouthful, got a nickname?"

There was a hiss of static.

"Quit being shy, we'll be stuck with each other for some time going forward, you might as well give me something to work with here. I'll come up with a really great name if you don't."

"Abraxas." The voice answered, as if being dragged through broken glass. Probably not too far from the truth.

"That… sounds like an oddly normal name." I said.

"For a toaster." Cathida added.

"I pick name. Meaning is mine. Not for you." Abraxas answered back, sounding upset.

"Shall I start to triangulate his position?" Cathida asked privately and nearly gave me a heart attack.

I made sure to shut down all of that through the HUD as soon as it popped up. "You just want to spook him to go away with that. No tracing. Get the feeling he's the paranoid type."

"An invisible machine hiding away from all the other machines, the paranoid type?" Cathida drooled. "You don't say."

"All right then, Abraxas. Are you familiar with this temple?" Better move on before Cathida could sabotage me more openly. There was a strong temptation to mute her, but we were in combat right now even if it was a lull. I'd need her intuition and skills at any moment, and there was still a chance she had something useful to say about this. A low chance.

"Am familiar." Abraxas said. "Passed through twice. Hostile environment both times."

There was hope in this plan after all. "Can you guide us into this temple, preferably without that Feather shooting us?"

He stayed quiet. I considered asking again, and was interrupted right as I opened my mouth. "... Can say. But. Must remain hidden. From Feather in sack. And from allies behind you. Deal cannot be broken."

"Going to be a little tough to explain to everyone here that I know something I shouldn't know, and don't want to tell them why or how."

"Your problem. Not mine." Abraxas said. "Do we have deal?"

"Fine you little scamp. Keep lurking around, I'll make sure only my armor and I know you're here." Not like I had much choice on that. Abraxas knew a way in, and I needed to get in, before the rest of the machines arrived. Simple addition here.

I could still sneak his existence to the clan knights over private encrypted comms, however I had a strong feeling I'd be working with Abraxas in the future. He was supposed to guide Wrath somewhere, and I don't think this temple was the original job description he'd signed up for. If I broke his agreements this early, he'd understandably be a little more hesitant to help me out again.

"... Temple mirrored." The machine said after I'd solemnly sworn secrecy. "Not horizontally. Vertically. Matches as above. Roof of strata under. Upside down temple."

"That's an interesting bit of trivia." If it was mirrored on the roof of the strata under us, it's probably for a reason. Otherwise I'd have seen more mite pseudo-cities crawl up the walls and hang upside down before. "Serves as some kind of gateway to the next level down?"

I guessed right. "Yes. Gravity different, under temple. Float down. One way. No return back up." Abraxas confirmed. "Not used often. Better, more open routes to lower strata exist. Ways that work back and back."

And according to Undersider maps Zaang had graciously given, under us was some kind of desert with storm events happening low to the ground.

I reviewed the video logs of our brief and painful combat encounter. The temple sat squat ahead of the group, stupidly large but also a little on the flat side. "I can see it doesn't get many tourists, sure." I said, zooming in further on the recording to a bell tower. Seemed to be the highest place. Exactly as expected, there was a fuzzy figure perched on top. A few flashes of blue and then Father's call to jump came right after.

Look at the devil, and we heard her voice. Magnified across the distance, loud enough to reach even the forest we were hiding in. The clan knights all froze in place, keeping still as if she could hear us.

"It seems I missed." She said, sounding vexed. "Would you all kindly do me the service of returning here so I can fix that mistake?"

"She think we're going to answer her?" Windrunner asked, sounding amused. "None of us are that stupid."

I pointedly did not notice Kidra turning her helmet to stare in my direction.

"All Feathers enjoy boasting." Lord Atius said. "Leave her to speak and focus on our current objective. Don't mute her, the devil could spill something we might use."

To'Sefit's initial barrage had been massive, racking across our entire group. If Father hadn't called out, she'd have flat out erased us out of existence before we even knew the fight started. Straight ruthless. Good thing we could cheat with Father's Death perception. She must be a bit miffed about that.

The attack did show the difference between To'Aacar and To'Sefit. The old toaster would have waited for us to get to the stairs where he'd be able to have the most dramatic monologue before trying to cut us up in the most flashy way possible.

To'Sefit had not given even so much as a warning. She wanted us dead and she'd opened fire with her strongest hitters right out the gate. Wrath said she'd fired three beams with each volley. Here, she'd opened fire with seventeen and then constantly continued the barrage afterwards.

Had to wonder what the other feathers on her team were like if she was like this. There were two others, though it wasn't guaranteed they were waiting inside the temple.

"Come now humans, don't be so coy." To'Sefit's voice echoed. "It's poor manners to leave a lady waiting. Besides, you'll all have to come scurrying out at some point. More lessers will arrive here soon enough. They'll swarm the forest from outside in, and then what will you do, I wonder?"

Atius hummed. "She's attempting to pressure us into action faster. Curious."

The other clan knights said nothing, the four scout teams returning with reports and terrain data. They'd done a full sweep, all around the temple. There was that stretch of empty water at every angle, though some places had a smaller distance to cover. No machines had been discovered, and neither had any left from the temple grounds.

"She has limited forces to work with." Atius concluded from their report. "Sending out waves of Screamers after us would reveal our location once we engaged and eliminated them, however we'd move too fast in relocating elsewhere for her to capitalize."

His logic made some twisted kind of sense. If To'Sefit had unlimited machines to throw away, she'd have done so and shot wherever the casualty reports returned, on the off chance of hitting us. Low chances, but there's always a chance she'll blindly hit close enough. If she hadn't done that, it meant she couldn't afford the cost. Or she'd been ordered to conserve forces.

Best plan they were coming up with was to divide in several groups, surround the temple, and attempt to distract To'Sefit long enough for a force to reach the parameter of the temple. A few knights with longer ranged ordinance would open fire on her plates, with hope that they weren't shielded. To'Sefit would have to not only track multiple evading targets rushing from every direction, she'd need to do it while moving her plates out of the way of the covering fire.

"How deep is the ground here before we hit the roof of the next strata down?" I asked Abraxas while the clan plotted the best way to dodge hits.

"Thirty feet." The old robot said. "Then, other side is reached."

"And if the temple is mirrored and made for people to walk down to the next strata, then there's a midsection squashed between."

"You catch on." Abraxas said. "Layer underground. Like roots of tree. Passage."

General Zaang couldn't have found the passage. In effect, neither had Ordritz clearly. The winding maze like temple with hundreds of grand roofless rooms and plazas had been too large for him and his team to explore all of it before the machines started getting upset at the visitors. Mite forges tended to have vast amounts of machines lurking around. Only reason the temple wasn't overrun with machines was due to there being no human cities within reach at that point.

Once humans settle in, machines start to make sure the nearby mite forges aren't ever available.

Ordritz found the mite forge at the center of the temple, documented a few different spots with pictures and waypoints on their exploration, and then had to beat it back home. Future expeditions to get things from the mite forge opened up more discoveries, but machines were always constant and only grew once the city started to grow.

Telling the clan I'd found out there was some kind of underground passage was a little less awkward than expected. They'd trusted I had sources of some kind, and also understood when I said I couldn't divulge where I'd gotten them. To clan knights, if someone said their information was need-to-know only, they shrugged metaphorical shoulders and asked no further questions, trusting their superior to have their reasons.

Lord Atius could have ordered me to give the info, however he hadn't. I think he understood implicitly when I said I couldn't break some bridges right now.

With Abraxas's knowledge, the clan's plan shifted. We'd keep a smaller team among the trees that would open fire on To'Sefit and keep her entertained. The larger team would sneak through the roots of the temple and breach from there.

The moment we ran into machines, we'd be alerting To'Sefit that we'd gotten in, so it was important to keep hidden as long as we could and let her think we were still lurking around in the trees. Ideally, we'd get to the mite forge, have it fix just Wrath's head, and then sneak back without the Feather knowing.

"Is this one of the openings?" I asked Abraxas, with the clan knights following behind.

Ahead was a larger tree and it matched the signs the machine had told me to look for. Specifically a radiating pattern of the leaves outwards. It would be hard to spot unless standing under it.

"This is one opening." Abraxas answered. "Throw rock at tree trunk."

I had questions, but we had a time limit hovering on our heads. Without complaint, I reached down, yanked a loose rock from underwater, and lobbed it at the tree. It hit, bounced up and off. Nothing else happened.

Atius turned his attention at that, an eyebrow raising up, as if he recognized something more meaningful in throwing rocks at a tree.

"Aim higher." The machine said.

I'd gotten practice throwing rocks at Fido before, so this felt nostalgic in a way. The next rock sailed forward and didn't hit the tree at all. Instead it just sunk right through, as if passing through air. The tree surface rippled for a moment, as if a reflection of water, before it popped like a bubble of soap. Behind it was a large tree hollow, with enough space for two knights to wiggle into.

Everyone except for Atius seemed outright caught off guard. He just nodded along, as if recognizing this blizzard thing. "A mite illusion." We'd all turned to silently ask what the hell, so he'd answered. "I've seen this in the lower levels, though never this far up. Odd of them to do something like this."

"Mites can make illusions?" I asked, while other clan knights got closer to the tree, poking it from different directions to see if more parts of it could pop.

"Aye, they can. They're bastards about it too. Often making the obvious ways long and difficult, while hiding a faster and cleaner route. Any physical disturbance will break the illusion for an hour or so before it regenerates. Some Deathless grow so paranoid of this, they flare out the occult periodically, trying to tap every wall and flat surface at least once. Just to see if there's some kind of hidden room."

A pair of knights were dispatched to begin scouting the tree hollow. There wasn't any kind of ladder inside, though the wooden handholds that dotted the inside of the tree were far from natural. "Hollow leads to an underground tunnel of some kind. No light, no hostiles detected. Slight current of water by our feet, flowing one direction." The report came back.

"There. Way in." Abraxas said. "Do not call again. Fix Feather, leave. Do not take long."

"Love you too buddy." I said as the comms connection closed.

We had a way into the temple and we had our distraction team setup and ready to harass To'Sefit. No idea what waited us inside the temple, or where the other two reported Feathers were. Best odds we could come up with on short notice.

It'll have to do.

Next chapter - Sneak level 100

Book 4 - Chapter 23 - Sneak level 100

I'm worried about this plan. Wrath said through the soul link, head half buried in the sack. Single working eye watched as the clan knights worked to pass off equipment and gear off the hoversleds. I recalled all forces in the area, including those within this temple. They have lived here for years, its likely they've already learned all passages over that time. The new forces called by To'Sefit here may have gotten that information. You could be walking into a trap.

You didn't know about it. I countered. And you're their boss.

I didn't need to know smaller details like this. I am not omnscient. They may have not known about these tunnels either, if it were hidden well enough.

All right, fair point. I thought. What's the chances that the machines inside had enough time to scout out all the tunnels?

I am not sure. It depends on how obvious the entrances are. If the tunnels lead into secret doorways, then it is fairly likely To'Sefit's forces have not discovered them within the few hours since.

Even if it's a trap of some kind, we've got to take it. Up here, To'Sefit will give us no chance at all to make it inside. Down there, could be anyone's guess.

Long range munitions and rifles were passed over from clan knights to the Shadowsongs, both the minions and their fearless leader. Lord Atius had made a good point about leaving them up here with a few of the clan knights, and the one with a wounded leg.

Perhaps on the surface we might find another method of repairing my circuits. Wrath said. Tsuya may have a possible solution

This might be the last chance we've got to access a mite forge, after this they'll be looking for you anywhere you show your face. So long as you have the unity fractal, Relinquished will know you're still alive somewhere.

Wrath said nothing to that, sulking further into the sack. I could tell she wasn't comfortable being so dependent on others. This hadn't been something she'd ever needed to go through.

Outside of the temple, the worst enemies the knights could fight would be machines in open ground. Other than Drakes, the knights could hold almost indefinitely against any enemy given the Winterblossom technique along with their training both inside and outside the digital sea. So leaving the Shadowsongs up here had made good sense. Inside the temple, experience would be king.

When Ankah had begun to protest on claim of being handled too lightly, Windrunner pointed a hand right in the direction of the temple, slightly up.

To'Sefit.

While we were preparing to dive into Feather central, there was still a good chance only To'Sefit had managed to make it here in time. We might not run into anything at all, fix up Wrath and get out just as quick. I mean, I absolutely didn't believe that was going to happen, I'm not an idiot. But it was theoretically possible all of this worked out exactly according to plan. In the same way it was theoretically possible that the sun stopped rising at dawn given a large enough calamity.

Anyhow, as far as I knew, Ankah wasn't going to have it easy even if it seemed like the safer group to be part of. The home team up there would need to keep shooting, from range, at a target that believed artillery spam was a noble strategy.

If anything they'd need to be the most nimble between our two groups. I could already see them strapping the legless knight on one of the hover sleds, planning out the logistics of being able to alternate fire from different sites and run like hell after every shot.

The away team ended up being five of Atius's knights including Windrunner, five Winterscar knights including Captain Sagrius, then Kidra, Atius and I to wrap up the team. Thirteen all in all, filing down the hidden hollow into the tunnel under us.

We landed with a slash, the walls down here wet with mist, illuminated in small teal lights. A pair of knights waited for us at the bottom, rifles aiming downrange. "No signs of movement. Path seems clear, m'lord."

Atius nodded, giving a critical glance into the murky depths ahead. "Time's fading fast. Let's get to it. Home team, engage To'Sefit the moment she shows signs of moving. Away team, advance."

The knights began to march forward, weapons scanning across each pathway. The small stream at the bottom of our feet rushed forward in a clear direction, likely towards the temple. We followed as silently as thirteen soldiers could creep, which turned out to be quieter than thought.

Two clan knights and Sagrius took point, trailed behind by the rest of the group. Holding our rear were the Winterscar knights, kept in reserve to hold off a flanking attack.

We passed the first antechamber, a larger cavern filled with different tunnels streaming out. At the center a larger puddle where the streams intersected, flooding forward to a larger tunnel ahead.

The room was filled with familiar metal stakes. A nest. Wrath said, though the team here clearly recognized the signs, rifles pointing up to search for possible targets. We found nothing, only past signs of occupation.

These sisters were recalled to the city. None took over their territory since. This is a good sign that To'Sefit's forces haven't had enough time to explore the temple.

Further proof she's simply low on the number of machines to throw at us. I thought.

With the only spider in the room strapped on my back and harmless enough, the group flowed through the tunnel, advancing forward into the larger tunnel.

Soon the walls stopped looking like rock and more like actual temple walls. The HUD on my map showed we'd crossed past the field of water above. To'Sefit was either being bullied by the surface team or hadn't yet caught on that the majority of the knights were sneaking under her nose.

So far so good. Up until it wasn't. We turned a corner and slid to a stop.

At the end of this corridor was the clear light of the mite temple. Light bright enough to mimic sunlight. A broken room filled with pillars crumpled on one another, half submerged in crystal blue water, large white walls stacked like fallen dominos against each other, or broken into smaller piles. Green leaves growing in the few places where dirt had piled up, adding a splash of life to the otherwise pristine ruins.

That wasn't what took our attention.

Ahead at the end of the corridor leading to the outside stood a mountain of alabaster white muscle, interspersed with black lines all across his body in geometric patterns. Small twinkles of violet lights within immediately showed none of this was organic. A massive warhammer that matched his size rested casually on his right shoulder, while a wall of bronze waited in his other. The tower shield looked more like a cut apart doorway, with some kind of ornate painting across the surface depicting a tree. The rest of the details were cut from the rough edges of the shield.

Crude. And completely at odds with the rest of his aesthetic. The massive man's face was half hidden with a head scarf sloppily held, dropping over one eye and wrapping around his throat.

The other glowing violet eye seemed filled with nothing but apathy as it lazily turned to meet us.

I'd never seen a Feather look more like a hunched musclehead minion before, but here he was. Almost within the same moment he'd appeared, his body lit up in bright yellow sparks all across as the clan knights opened fire from rifles without hesitation.

None of it did anything to a Feather, of course.

Reflex and training was the error here. They'd been too conditioned to respond to threats using rifles, when they should have opened fire with a knightbreaker instead. Atius rightfully called out for a shot the very next moment, the knight at the front responding by tossing his own rifle aside with little care, reaching to the back of his hip for the grenade launcher. Every knight here had one round ready to go, carefully carried from the few we had to work with.

They'd been brought down here to kill a Feather, only fitting they end up doing exactly that, if not the exact original target.

"Nnnn." The musclehead gunted, unbothered by the spray of bullets impacting his body at all points. He lifted the warhammer, rolled his shoulders, and slammed the weapon straight down into the stone ahead of him.

When the head of the hammer struck the ground, nothing physical happened anywhere.

There was no impact. No crater in the ground. No damage at all even. Instead, Occult light raced ahead of him, filling the hallway with light across the walls and ground, straight at us. One heartbeat and it was already past us, leaving the corridor filled with crackles of blue tinted lighting.

Gravity fled with it.

The knights and I started to float up, desperate scrabbling around only caused us to bounce off each other. The one with the knightbreaker kept a hold, aiming down sight even as he floated off his feet.

"Ropes!" Windrunner yelled out over comms, right behind me. "Get us out of here, now!"

The Winterscar knights behind us had been guarding our backs, and they hadn't yet turned the corridor. From my peripheral, I saw they hadn't been affected. Looked like the occult couldn't turn corners, the anti-gravity field had been a straight line.

My house knights instantly holstered weapons, drawing out grappling ropes with hooks, and threw them into the anti-gravity field, where knights behind me grabbed hold and were pulled out. I got my hands on a rope hook, then reached out to Kidra floating above me, grabbing her dress and yanking her to the rope. She grabbed on just above me.

The Feather wasn't done. He lifted the bronze shield and dropped it before him. He'd lifted it like it weighed a few pounds, but when it dropped, the ground cracked under. That thing was heavy.

Occult pulsed again, and this time gravity returned - except directly at him.

Down became sideways, and all of us fell directly in his direction. Those of us who'd already grabbed ropes had a chance to hold on, the string growing taut as the full weight of several relic armors held down against it. With the rope swinging us now, most of us slammed into the side of the wall, feet taking footholds.

Two knights and Captain Sagrius up front hadn't been so lucky. They'd been too far from the ropes. The lead knight hadn't even tried to attach himself, too busy aiming the knightbreaker in that short span of time.

He'd been quick, his entire movement had only taken seconds. But so had the Feather's own movements. The bronze shield ahead continued to draw the freefalling knights.

The knightbreaker round fired out. Even in this close range, it still had time to activate the rocket propellant. The round roared to life, screaming straight into the bronze shield, impacting it. Occult chains flared out the sides and wrapped around the tower shield. They connected and then bounced off, repelled. No shields or any kind appeared, the material seemed to be outright impervious. In moments, the knightbreaker shell also crushed itself flat against the shield, breaking the chains and cutting off power.

The shield remained untouched. The round had hit it with the same impact of a fly against a flyswatter. The Feather lifted a foot, and caught the spent shell as it rolled past him, stomping it into the ground like a paperclip.

The lead knight tossed the spent grenade launcher to the side, already drawing out his blade as he fell directly at the shield. The other two flanking him had also reoriented themselves in the fall, blades equally ready to strike. Strange gravity was nothing to them. They'd trained in the digital sea where gravity existed at odd angles. To them, this was simply a jump from up high on an enemy under them.

The Feather brought his hammer up again, and swiped it across the closest knight before he'd reached the shield. The hit struck the unfortunate knight, carried him down with the swing, into the ground. This time, when the hammer hit ground, it did exactly as a hammer ought to do when swung with superhuman strength. The entire ground collapsed under, ripping apart as occult pulsed across the hammer. The knight was utterly flattened into the ground, armored shield coming online to hold against the onslaught.

The shield held against whatever occult spell the Feather had used in his hammer, but the humans inside hadn't. Green nameplate instantly turned gray. Medical scans showed inertia had squashed the fragile gray matter against the inside of his skull.

"Nnnn. One." The Feather said as the knight's limp armor began to fall out of the crater, pulled by the artificial gravity. He let go of the tower shield handle and slammed the freed hand to the side of the wall. Occult rushed through the white arm, outlining an imprint of his hand in glowing blue. Air began to whoosh through the room, being sucked towards the handprint. The Feather took a casual step back, dragging the stupidly huge shield with him, as the next knight slammed down against it, feet first. He scrambled to leap over the barrier and stab at the mountain of muscle hiding behind.

That moment didn't come. Even with the relic armor's power clawing at the shield, the grip slacked and slipped off as the knight plummeted directly into the wall where the handprint lay, as if sucked to an airlock.

Shields triggered from the heavy impact, but nothing near close enough to deal internal damage, the knight was safe. The Feather's hammer swung down on him before he could even roll, the flat head glowing bright occult blue.

Another nameplate turned gray on my HUD as the rock walls shook from the impact. Too many bones had been fractured, internal organs ripped apart from the sharp shards, the whole body acting more like jelly trapped inside armor, whipped around by mutated physics.

"Two." The Feather grunted, lifting the hammer off the wall, the dead knight sliding off the crater and down the hallway, body limp. A violet eye turned past the bronze tower shield to stare up at Sagrius. Looking for a third victim.

The captain had the sense to angle his fall against the floor of the hallway, an occult blade slashing a wide cut into the ground, while his other hand drew out his personal rope and hook, slamming it into the freshly cut ground. His speed instantly cut off, the relic armor more than strong enough against the inverted gravity.

I spun out my own rope and hook from my belt, launching it directly at him, calling out for him to grab hold so I could lift him to safety.

"Nnnn… Annoying." The Feather growled, then leaped forward through the corridor, unaffected by the modified gravity or the bullets pinging off his skin sent down by desperate knights.

The hammer swung down for the Captain, bloodthirsty for a third soul to add to his tally.

Next Chapter - Tried

Book 4 - Chapter 24 - Tried

"Incoming!" I screamed out, praying he'd grab the rope fast enough for me to yank him out of range.

Sagrius realized there was no time for that. Instead, he twisted on himself and lifted a hand directly to the incoming hammer while bracing his shoulder against the floor. Two shimmering occult domes appeared, one on his hand and the other on the other ends against his braced shoulder.

The hammer struck an instant later - and held against the barrier in a shockwave of dust and electric occult. Sagrius grunted, hand straining backwards. The force passed straight through, as if channeled from his hand and out this shoulder, the ground under him cracking further, the hook bumped out with the broken rock. Inverted gravity already started to make it fall while Sagrius remained pinned between the floor and the hammer, occult crackling around him.

"Nnnn… Deathless." The Feather murmured, violet eye widening slightly. "Tedious..."

The hammer glowed brighter and pulsed out with force. The ground under the captain ripped apart in dust and pulverized stone.

His occult spell shattered against the pulse, but so had the hammer been repelled backwards in the explosion. Sagrius slumped, exhausted for a half second. Then, he mustered enough energy to twist to the side and kick off the closest wall, the Feather's hammer returning for a second attack, striking his abandoned hook, flattening it like a paperclip.

The captain hadn't made a clean escape. His ankle and foot had been just slightly in the way. His armor's shields triggered, holding off the hammer just long enough for him slip past. Not long enough for the glow of the hammer to disperse downwards, occult twisting force and physics behind the blow.

His nametag turned orange, medical report showing shattered bones in his foot and massive muscle contusions within. He didn't let that get in his way.

The fake gravity sent him sliding him along the floor behind the hammer's swing. Behind the tower shield. A kick on the side of the walls let him slip past the Feather's own lazy attempt to stomp down on the passing knight. His occult blade whipped through the air at lightning fast speed at the same time. It struck the Feather's body and exposed leg, triggering shields. Two hits, three hits, four hits. The captain continued to slide down the corridor, delivering one final hit before the gravity threw him out of range.

Soon enough, he reached the end of the artificial gravity then rolled back up on two feet by the battered remains of the other two clan knights.

The Feather regarded him for a moment, shrugged, then turned back to face us as if he was no threat.

"Orders m'lord?" The Captain called out, breathing heavily.

"Winterscar, hold position lad," Atius answered calmly, assessing the situation. "We'll slip another few knights in your direction and then open fire with knightbreakers on both sides. His shield can only hold off one direction."

Howling came from the end of the corridor, where Sagrius stood. He turned his helmet to search behind him, then drew his swords in that direction. A moment later, he leaped out of view, and white blurs raced past where he'd been. The sound of fighting emerged.

Static came from the comms, but his voice still carried. "Large number of Screamers, three spiders. I can hold," He said. "Continue operation." He sounded strained, clearly in the middle of a struggle.

"Kidra, with me." Atius called. "Windrunner, guard the boy. Keith, prepare a knightbreaker. Remaining units, hold position with Keith. We're killing this monster now, before the Winterscar gets overwhelmed."

Atius leapt straight down the corridor, Kidra jumping out after him, blades lit.

The Feather tilted his head to the side, giving his neck a crack. He neither smiled nor seemed to particularly care, readying his hammer and shield as if it was business as usual.

Atius swiped his sword through the air, occult embued around it, launching out an arc forward that slammed against the tower shield and the sides of the rock walls. The shield held against it without any sign of effort, while the rock walls nearby were gouged out. The Deathless tutted, not surprised the spell failed to do much. What it had done was force the Feather to lurk behind the shield.

Occult pulsed across Atius again, eyes trailing blue light. He twisted on himself, angling his fall, a white sword striking the floor and slowing the decent slightly.

Kidra passed right by him.

The Feather peeked over the shield, then swung his hammer, right at my sister.

Atius leaped further down, rolling into a kick that sent Kidra launching off to the side. She crashed against the wall, bouncing past the hammer's swing. It struck uselessly against the side of the wall, ripping it apart while the two knights sailed past him, striking out with blades against his shields.

He grunted as the threats passed by him, then shrugged again and turned back to watch us. Specifically me.

Kidra and Atius slid to a stop at the end of the corridor. "Hold position," Atius ordered, "I'll assist the Winterscar captain. Take aim and open fire with the knightbreaker while I keep them busy here."

She nodded, reaching for the weapon behind her belt while Atius raced out of view to enter the fight and back up my captain.

The Feather stood his ground, waiting.

"On three," Kidra called out while I drew out my own knightbreaker, one hand still holding onto the rope.

"Copy, on three." I sent back.

"Nnnnn… Enough." The Feather grumbled and slammed his hammer again into the ground. A shockwave of blue raced out, shaking past my armor and dealing negligible damage. But I hadn't been the target. Instead, the rope I'd been holding onto snapped, and I slid straight down along with Windrunner and the other clan knights behind me.

"Oh-shit-one-two-three!" I shouted out in quick succession, pressing the trigger down.

Kidra matched my attack, opening fire at the same time. Two knightbreaker rounds raced at the enemy from both directions. He let go of his shield, turned and slammed his hammer directly on Kidra's round. It squashed the knightbreaker, chains and all into the ground. My own attack struck against the bronze shield, equally doing no damage.

Okay, didn't think he could do that but in hindsight we really should have guessed that he could. Damn.

He lifted the shield up, letting it slam back down on my spent knightbreaker, just to be a complete dick to my creations. The Feather turned his gaze to me, judging the distance. "Close enough. Do it." He muttered.

The tunnel behind me exploded.

Rocks tumbled down as the corridor collapsed on itself, cutting off the Winterscar knights behind and leaving only myself and Windrunner in the clear. The rest were buried under the rubble. Nameplates mercifully remained green, the armor easily keeping them alive against something like a cave in.

But that left me falling directly down at a walking hydraulic press, looking at me like I was the next snack.

I've been baited out. Wrath had been right, they'd seen us coming down here somehow.

The hammer lifted up, occult pulsing into it. Kidra screamed out behind, charging forward. She hadn't drawn out two blades, instead throwing her own rope and hook directly at the Feather's neck with one hand, while her other brought up her occult knife in the familiar halo of blue.

To her perspective, she was scaling a vertical cliff to reach an enemy. Even in relic armor with the advantage of the rope, she couldn't scale it that fast. She wasn't going to make it in time.

I had no knightbreaker, no rope hook to work with, and I was falling directly to my doom with little way to move myself out. Wrath was screaming in my head, the knights were yelling on comms, Kidra was trying to beat a world record in scaling a sheer cliff in seconds, and the only thing going through my own head was annoyance.

My free hand reached out behind me, to a familiar prototype shield. One I'd spent some time working on.

Of all the scrapshit bull I had to deal with, it's not even a single hour into this trip and I already had to use up my tricks. Oh well. Negotiations are at a standstill. Time to try alternate methods, like extreme violence.

The front edge of the shield lit up occult blue. See, the one thing I'd realized could reliably block an occult blade was another occult blade, with exception to those massive mite blast doors. But those cathedral sized blocks of metal were basically impervious to everything and couldn't be stolen by any conventional means. At least, I hadn't come up with any ideas yet, work in progress.

Occult blades as a shield though? That was doable. So that's what I did. I layered a bunch of occult blades stacked like a waffle on top of a metal shield. Enough to catch everything. All great except not much range or way to attack with it. It was a dingy little armguard that had the same reach as my fists.

And that'd be all it could be if I were just a regular knight. Except I wasn't just a regular knight. I was a gods damned sorcerer knight and I wasn't about to let that go without being squeezed for every advantage I could think of.

Occult pulsed around me and I sent out three ghosts ahead, each carrying a shield of their own. They blurred forward, aiming to surround the stunned Feather.

"Nnnnn... Three Deathless?"

A single blade could do good damage. But the surface area was a little small, hence why it took a few blows to whittle down a Feather's shields. The knightbreakers were the right way to go about it, with chains that would wrap up and apply a thousand times more surface area. The occult shield was a little more humble compared to those monsters, but it certainly wasn't something to ignore when there's three of the angry things pushing down on someone's shields.

The Feather had two choices. Continue to wait for me to slowly reach his shield so he could squash me like a pancake, or leap backwards out of the way of the three occult ghosts currently rushing in to ruin his day.

I was betting I'd take more time to fall down on his shield than it would take my three ghosts to cut through his own shield and then dice him up into neat little bite-sized silver cubes.

He thought the same and wisely picked to leap backwards, trying to escape the occult ghosts. The hammer swung down, not on me, but swiping across all three images, dissipating them all.

I hit his left behind tower shield a moment later, scrambling on top, powering my occult again.

More ghosts were sent flying straight through the shield, zipping directly at him, swiping those wide arm guard shields. He ducked, dodged, punched and slammed his hammer and pole in tandem, fighting off the specters with simple brute movements. He was pretty good at breaking my ghosts before I could generate another from them, forcing me to constantly start back from scratch where I was instead of pressing the attack directly into the fight.

Then a hook wrapped around that tree-trunk sized neck and Kidra was on him the next second, stabbing away with her knife, outright furious, climbing around him in a way that he couldn't reach or grab her, swinging wildly.

Stab, stab, stab went her knife, each time forcing his shields to trigger, while she swung around him using the rope, climbing over his body against the inverted gravity.

His hand slammed the side of the wall, occult pulsing through, leaving another handprint. It sucked in both air and Kidra, giving him a little room to breath. He reached his hammer up, ready to slam down on my trapped sister before another swarm of ghosts harassed him.

He was still breaking them apart faster than I could generate them and I could feel my head growing sluggish from the excursion.

Windrunner made all the difference. He hit the shield I'd been camping on, rolled and jumped off, a knightbreaker in his hands, safety off, aimed straight at the monster ahead.

The Feather raised his hammer in position, ready to slam the shell down. Only he didn't get that luxury, since my ghosts were once again harassing him from all sides. He punched one, kicked another, and then the knightbreaker round flew right at his chest, perfectly timed to the instant he wasn't looking.

The Feather grunted, moving stupidly fast for a mountain of muscle. Not quite fast enough, the round clipped his arm, the chains flying off and wrapping around. Shields lit up, flared and broke instantly against the deadly hug. An instant later, they cut off his arm and a large chunk of his chest.

He leaped backwards, and made another mistake in doing that. He'd gone outside his gravity field. Windrunner flew directly at him, blade out, while Kidra clawed her way off the occult gravity well, and raced across his shadow like an assassin, hunched forward, duel occult daggers out for blood.

Windrunner hit first, and battled the Feather. The enemy held him off, hammer swinging out and finding a way to both repel the knight backwards and also slam down on the spent knightbreaker shell that ate his arm off in the same motion. This motherfucker clearly had resource denial as part of his goals, and being harrassed by clan knights was not going to distract him from that. Kidra joined in a moment after, leaping at him with kicks and spinning blades.

The Feather fought both with one hand holding onto his hammer, swinging it as if it were weightless. Kidra managed to rake a blade across his head, cutting deep into his hidden eye, and stabbing a few more critical joints. Swings and strikes came lighting fast from all three fighters before the Feather managed to nail Kidra with a kick that flattened her into the ground and pinned her in place under his bare foot, while his hammer flicked out against Windrunner mid-jump. It struck him dead on with a pulse of occult, sending the armor reeling off into the air, nameplate going orange.

The hammer swung into position, high above Kidra and then swung down all in one smooth motion.

The weapon fell behind his back instead, a heavy clunk against the rock, his severed hand still holding onto it uselessly. The last working violet eye turned to gaze at the severed arm, spotting the trail of occult from where my ghost had struck.

Three more ghosts zipped into place. He jumped backwards to buy a second of time, taping his other foot on the ground, leaving an occult inprint there. Air rushed forward to the mark, but that didn't affect any of the chasing ghosts. Things like inertia and gravity didn't mean anything at all to the occult.

He seemed to realize it a moment too late. "Ahhh." He shrugged. "I tried."

"Shouldn't have tried at all, asshole." I yelled back at him, and my images sliced through the machine without a shred of mercy.

Next Chapter - Move fast, kill faster

Book 4 - Chapter 25 - It could be worse

The walking brick gazed up at me, a single violet eye still glowing. There wasn't any malice or hate in those like To'Aacar, nor that glint of curiosity I'd seen in Wrath's eyes.

He looked rather bored if anything, as if this was all just a terrible inconvenience and some Logi would fix it up soon enough if he waited long enough with a cup of coffee to draw them in. Even with his head bouncing on the floor, coming loose with a good handful of his chest. His chest had been sliced to ribbons, my occult armshield cut through the bulletproof skin and artificial muscles with no resistance. White oil like fluid came apart, staining the water around.

The rest of the fight ended just about the same moment he had.

An unheard call to retreat had sounded and the machine forces harassing Captain Sagrius instantly fled, regrouping deeper into the tunnel and leaving our team alive. Which only made me nervous. Machines generally ran in one direction, and it wasn't away from a fight.

Always a pain when mooks are smart. I sent out to Wrath. To'Sefit is not going to make this easy on us.

To'Sefit is not in command of this team. There is a third leading this team of Feathers.

Wasn't that a nice thought.

The artificial gravity gave out, the world returning back to normal. Water sloshed back into the corridor, washing past our feet and carrying away the Feather's own smaller parts, leaving a shallow pool that kept going back and forth with waves, rebalancing between the tunnel and the flat ground.

A violet eye continued to stare at me, a good third of the head submerged in the shallow water.

Wrath gave a mental shrug when I asked her how the walking brick was still alive. With no shell to support, the energy expenditure will be minimal. Machines do not need the majority of their shell to function, and a reserve amount of fuel is stored next to their fractals. I do not understand why he has not yet fled to the digital sea however.

He might want to trash talk a bit? He was pretty quiet during the fight, for a Feather.

… Perhaps. Wrath agreed, clearly aware of her kind's… dramatics. Nevertheless, this is an opportunity to eliminate another Feather. So long as his soul remains within reach, the sword carried by your clan lord could eliminate him.

That's if he doesn't run the moment he sees that drawn out.

To'Aacar's forged white sword, made with the true division fractal, could cut right into reality itself. Or at least, that's how it felt like when I'd seen that fractal in use. Maybe this Feather wasn't aware we had a weapon like that ready to use.

"Report status." Atius ordered over the comms, taking steps to survey our surroundings, armored boots sloshing through the thin water while his greatcloak was getting mildly soaked at the hem. All around him were cut machine parts, Screamer arms and spider legs alike. I hadn't seen him fight, but the remains scattered around him showed why Deathless were considered second only to Feathers.

A set of responses came back over the general chatter. The few clan knights left had been buried under rubble behind me, unfortunate to have been just a little too far down the corridor. The winterscar knights caught on the other side were busy trying to dig them out.

"Journey estimates it'll take an hour to cut a full path through that amount of rubble." Cathida said with an old sigh. "Not often I see toasters make plans. Basically never. Machines are supposed to be as smart as a bug near a light! Peh. All this for a pair of tits. Not even real ones either! Squirlings. Next time, go lick something else than electric sockets."

Wrath was clearly upset by this, but not on the subject she should have been upset about. Please let the engram know that I have put considerable research into making my che-

Nope. Not going to do that. I shut down Wrath before she could say innocent Wrath things.

We didn't have the time to dig out the broken path. The temple was swarming with machines already, and more were soon to come. Had to get Wrath into the mite forge and then run for it.

Sagrius had taken a seat against a nearby wall, bringing out a medical kit and unhooking his right boots to tend to the injury. The soul fractal cut off most physical sensations, so pain wasn't a factor, he could easily continue duty with the broken foot for now. He still didn't want to lose a leg, knights didn't spend every day in their armors back home. And he knew we'd be on the move pretty soon.

Kidra was lifting up the dead knights, bringing out small plates, hooking them up to her necklace. "Both stable." She called out.

Ankah's voice scratched against the chatter, static fading into her voice even with the armors scrubbing out most of it and reconstructing her words to be more clear. "Shadowsong to Away team. Be aware, To'Sefit has left her post and is going deeper into the temple. We opened fire and held her for a few minutes. Fractal plates floating around her were unshielded and vulnerable to shots. Effect was negligible, the Feather repaired them with that black smoke of theirs."

"How long did it take her to fix up bullet hits?" Windrunner asked, likely considering the tactical benefit. We all carried rifles with a few mags for each. They'd been mostly brought to deal with the smaller machines, but if we could leverage it against a Feather…

"Five to ten seconds at most." Ankah answered. "Be aware, she returns fire almost instantly against threats like this. Protecting her weapon is likely a priority."

Lord Atius nodded, kneeling by the Feather's left behind tower shield, examining it. "A vulnerability is a vulnerability. A few seconds in a fight may be all we need."

"Know something about the shield?" I asked, pointing at the bronze slab Atius was tapping an armored hand at.

"I believe it's a cut section of a mite blast door. Never seen a chunk discard like that, the material has always been impervious to everything. I'm not sure how the machines were able to get a section of it..." He hummed, thinking. "From the unaltered state of the thing, once they had their cut, they weren't able to do anything more with it." He took an experimental tug at the handle. The shield remained where it was, standing upright in the corridor, unmovable even with his relic armor. "As I suspected. If only we had more time, bringing this back for study could have been a boon."

Got any idea about it Wrath? I asked our expert in Feathers. How'd a Feather in the middle of nowhere find a mite blast door section.

It is possible this Feather intercepted mites while they were constructing a new blast doorway, and extracted a piece from it. That is the best I could guess. He may have spent months waiting for the moment.

"I'd bet an airspeeder punching more than just bullet holes in those fractal plates would ruin her day." Windrunner said over comms, having been mulling over Ankah's report.

"You don't have the funds for an Airspeeder, Windrunner." Father's scratchy voice sounded from Kidra's necklace. "I've seen what you spend your coin on."

Windrunner paused for a half second and then cackled. "Harassing me even from the afterlife. Heh. Feels like old times never went away. Just missing Ironreach and Shadowsong here for the full team. Guess a Captain and the rookies will have to do in a pinch."

"They will. Everyone started as a rookie once." Atius said, now making his way to the Feather's decapitated head. "The next generation has always stepped up to the plate when called, time and time again. This group is no different."

The full talley returned on our HUDs over the banter. Kidra, Atius and I were the only ones on this side of the rock collapse that hadn't been injured in any way. Sagrius had his ankle and calf broken into pieces from the Feather's hammer, but Windrunner had been hit the hardest of us all. In midair with a full swing of that hammer. He'd ended with a heavy amount of broken bones all across his body, though he hadn't flatlined like the other knights. Guessing it had to do with the other knights being smashed between the hammer and a wall.

He shrugged his shoulders at the medical readout, noticing my own gaze looking him over. The knight hadn't bothered to open a kit or anything. "That head poking out your sack, she'll be able to heal all injuries I hear. We restore her, and she will restore me." He said, pointing at the white hair and eyes left sulking in the sack. "Can't go back to the surface to Ironreach like this, prick won't let me forget it for years. He'll start telling me I should have made more jokes about proposing to a girl after the expedition's done like he does."

Kidra walked over to me from the other side, lifting the ruins of a knightbreaker shell. "Lord Arius and I still have an unspent knightbreaker round. The rest of our ordinance is behind that pile of rock, unfortunately. As is most of our ammunition. We will need to ration our resources now."

She'd brought all three spent shells to me for inspection. The Feather had gone out of his way to eliminate each whenever he had a chance, outright putting that as a higher priority above fighting off Windrunner and Kidra near the end there.

"Yeah, that's not getting fixed." I muttered, dangling the mutilated remains of my blood, sweat and tears. The chains had been warped, caught between a heavy hammer or shield and unyielding rock. Squashed, which meant the internal fractals had also been bent.

The fractal of heat etched inside the palms of my hand lit up, quickly turning the chains red hot. I crumpled them into a ball in my armored hands. "Can't let the enemy recover anything working from these. They aren't using chain weapons themselves, best not give them more ideas."

"We'll need to continue forward." Atius said, looking down the collapsed tunnel. Only a minute or so had passed since the end of the fight, but already the enemy was regrouping and probably planning more things out. "There isn't time to dig out a tunnel here. Winterscars, recover the clan knights from the rubble and rejoin the Shadowsongs above ground."

There was a noticeable pause on the other end, as the Winterscar knights were having a silent internal debate about that.

"It'll be fine." I spoke out. "Kidra and I will make it out."

"Understood m'lo- master Keith." One of the Winterscar knights spoke. "We'll recover the trapped knights and rendezvous with the Shadowsongs."

The comms clicked shut. Atius made no mention of the possible insubordination. Instead, he grabbed the head of the defeated Feather, lifting it up out of the water. "And you. Who are you? Who sent you?"

The violet eye turned from its perpetual stare in my direction, locking onto its captor. "I am To'Orda. The one of resolve dyed ash."

I sent a private comms, though I knew that Feathers could overhear under the armors. Had to make it vague. "You could use To'Aacar's last gift to help us all out here." I said, hoping it was cryptic enough the Feather wouldn't guess, but clear enough the Deathless would.

Atius brought a single finger to drum lightly on the pommel of his sword, the only indication he'd understood the message. "Ask Wrath if they can track us with a head."

The head contains the neuromorphic portions along with the general CMOS architecture and processing power. Wireless systems are located inside, although these are used only as last resort and are far less powerful compared to the systems integrated within the rest of the combat shell. The signal should be easily drowned out with your current equipment.

"She says he's got a small budget-tier emergency whistle with him." I said. "But we can get the armors to jam it so long as we keep him close to us. Just in case. We'll keep him gagged, metaphorically."

Atius nodded. "Let's get moving then, we can interrogate him as we make our way in, for however long he remains. For now, we'll avoid the rooftops, as To'Sefit might be able to get a bead on us."

I suspect she'll start shelling us through the walls anyhow, but not letting her see where we were had already proved effective in the forest. The group gathered together and we started our path to the goal, jumping over rocks for easier traversal, splashing down against the water anytime it wasn't possible.

"Does your leader know what we're here for?" Atius asked the head.

"Don't know." If it still had shoulders, To'Orda would have shrugged I think. "Ask him yourself."

Cathida hissed. "A comms frequency ping was sent out from the head in wide band. We muffled the signal without problem, but the contents were for us. Don't like this. Ping's probably the channel the Feathers are using or something. Recommend you avoid it, but we both know you're a brat that doesn't listen to his betters."

"I haven't the faintest idea why I'm being accused of that, and quite frankly, I feel personally insulted here. How dare you, wench."

"Delightful. Wench. Is that really the best you have, deary?"

I can offer a list of alternatives. Wrath sent to me. I've documented many new terms Cathida has shared in prior training sessions.

I shushed her before she could make things worse, of course. Wrath was not particularly happy about that, given she felt proud of having assembled such a long list.

"Should we take the invitation?" I asked Atius instead, as we sprinted through the broken temple. The chambers all had little or no roofing left stable, all of it crumpled long ago into the ground, the pool of water almost always a constant no matter where we were. Some parts looked deep enough to reach our knees.

We were moving on pure luck, trying to follow the general direction where the mite forge should be. Running into dead ends or being forced to sidetrack was common. All through the sprint, we could hear machines lurking around us, wailing out, but none came in sight.

"The machines already know we're here." The Deathless sighed, having mulled it over for the past minute. "Perhaps it would be good to introduce ourselves, go ahead and do the honors lad, I doubt there's much you could say that would make things worse. They already want us dead."

"Everyone's a critic." I grumbled, swapping the frequency, taking a few coughs to clear my throat. Journey automatically set safeties on the comms to slow down any triangulation, same thing Abraxas used to keep us from finding him. We were set the moment it clicked green on my HUD. "Hello Feathers. I think we haven't been introduced yet." Nailed it.

"Keith Winterscar." A low voice answered. "Male. Age twenty one. Last recorded dead by To'Wrathh's blade. Last spotted alive in the digital sea, somehow. Percent probability of being involved with To'Aacar's destruction at near ninety two." That wasn't To'Sefit, so this must be the mysterious leader of the pack. His voice didn't sound deep, but there was still that synthetic quality to it, the same that had tinted To'Aacar's voice. Wrath had that issue ironed out already, as she proudly reported to me before over lunch once. Wonder if it had to do with the generation?

"I see I have fans. Who should I write this autograph to?"

"I am To'Avalis."

Nothing else came after, which was odd. I thought Feathers were rather strict about their names and took pride in their meanings. Wrath had told me it was a general machine quirk. "Any reason to come after us on this lovely day?"

"There's no need to continue this act, Winterscar. We both know why you are here. And we both know what I want. Surrender To'Wrathh into my custody, and I will allow you and your team to leave without harm."

"Does everyone think I put myself into these situations because I'm trying to live a few years longer? If I wanted safety, I'd have ditched everything and ran off already to retire. Besides, we're the ones holding To'Orda's head right now, not the other way around. Think that says a lot for our survival chance."

The voice didn't answer for a moment, as if contemplating. "Surrender To'Wrathh's shell and I will argue in her defense against the pale lady's coming anger, and let you stay at her side unimpeded. I can offer a modified version of the Chosen implants that will skirt rules Mother set. You will have immunity to machine kind, without the shackles that come with the gift, letting you stay at To'Wrathh's side without encroaching on your free will."

Oh. This Feather was different. That offer wasn't half-bad even. Know who he is? I nudged Wrath. Friend of yours?

No. I do not know this Feather, or most Feathers. The only one I had contact and communication with was To'Aacar and briefly To'Sefit.

"This Chosen thing, not sure how you'd sell it to Relinquished in the first place." I asked, curious.

"She is interested in destroying humanity as a whole. A single human, or even a thousand humans, are insignificant to her gaze. You will die of old age long before she notices you exist."

"Why would you even try to defend Wrath?"

"I've been sent to investigate To'Aacar's death and nothing more. I hold no interest in what happens to you or To'Wrathh after I've submitted my report and all relevant people of interest. I can recommend To'Wrathh to be rehabilitated, or sent elsewhere with supervision instead of being destroyed."

"Well, sorry to disappoint, but I get this nagging feeling that's not going to end well. Like that subtle sense of danger watching a fifty ton airspeeder about to crash into you."

"I have successfully isolated you from the majority of your group. To'Orda will return shortly. He remains in your hands out of boredom, not inability. His personal presence isn't needed to craft a new shell, it is already in progress. In addition, I've already learned most of your abilities and offensive capabilities and will ferret out any last tricks you have shortly. I recommend you reconsider wisely, if not for yourself, than for the others you've brought with you. Are you willing to let more of them die in exchange for a machine?"

"When you put it like that, I think you're running scared."

"I believe in results first. If I can avoid a fight, I will. When you change your mind, this channel will remain open." To'Avalis said. "You will need it."

The connection clicked shut.

Next chapter - It got worse

Book 4 - Chapter 26 - It got worse

"Nnnn.. don't know." The talking head said in such a flat tone I think even with a full set of shoulders, To'Orda would be too apathetic to even shrug. "Don't care." Bouncing with each footfall as our team sprinted through the initial channels, Lord Atius leading with Kidra at his side.

Windrunner gave the head another shake, midsprint. "Gods, fucking talk already you defective piece of scrap." The unkept white hair made for a good handle that dangled up and down. Windrunner turned his helmet to us. "I'm starting to think he's not being stubborn here, this scrapshit seriously doesn't know a single thing at all."

"Leader said guard tunnel. I do." To'Orda said, dangling almost horizontally from centrifugal forces as we took a sharp turn, all of us leaping over a set of rubble. "Leader says stay, talk, give contact channel. I do. No other orders left to do."

"Why the gods are you still here then? To piss us off?" Windrunner asked, shaking the head a little more than needed.

"Nnnn… being carried." The gravely voice said, pausing with each word as if it were annoying to even speak. "Unfamiliar. Get to move without effort. It's nice. Relaxing. If I could sleep, would be even better."

"Didn't know machines could sleep." Windrunner said. "Why would you even need to sleep in the first place?"

Wrath? I asked, poking the Feather carried on my back. I hadn't seen her sleep before, though I have seen her pretend to.

Neuromorphic systems do benefit from a garbage collection process similar to organic mind. Wrath explained. However, we do not need to turn off all our functions for this to happen. The cleaning systems are automatic and nonintrusive. This may be a quirk of To'Orda specifically.

"Wrath says your guess is as good as hers." I said, to which Windrunner gave a few questioning glances before realizing I wasn't making a joke.

Atius turned an eye to glance at the stump in Windrunner's possession, a set of calculations passing through before a conclusion was reached. "Well then, why don't you go to sleep lad? Keith, see if you can get some space in your sack for an extra head. We'll interrogate him once all of this is over."

"Wait, you're serious?" I asked, now both Windrunner and I looking at the Deathless expecting him to tell us it's a joke.

"Aye, nothing more we can do with the head right now. Once we're more settled, we can consider ways to interrogate him that'll work."

This is not a wise course of action. Wrath said through the link between us. Her working eyes flickered in my direction, violet glow narrowing down with accusation. To'Avalis had orders for To'Orda to follow in the event of his capture, which means this situation was predicted. We do not know if there are additional countermeasures To'Avalis planned out. Or if the head could be a danger to us in another way.

She had a point there.

We reached another dead end and instantly took the left, the sound of splashing puddles the only thing left behind us. No sign of any machines yet, though we have been sprinting for only a few minutes now since our fight with To'Orda. "For the record clan lord, Wrath thinks this is a bad idea." I said, bringing up her points again. "Maybe should ditch the head somewhere? Preferably kick it over a wall. I vote Kidra do it, she could probably launch it into the next level up."

Kidra scoffed. Actually scoffed. The nerve. And here I was giving her a chance to show off. Last time I'm doing her any favors, swear to the gods.

"No need for anything so drastic, whelpling. I have plans of my own, for now carry on with setting the head in the sack." He raised a hand up, the motion for the group to stop. We slid against the waterway, while I was already opening up Wrath's sack, preparing it for a new neighbor. The other knights took point at the same moment, rifles up and aiming downrange, covering angles.

Still no machine anywhere. Just broken walls, and water leaking in between the cracks.

While Wrath and I were privately debating the merits of keeping a living head as decoration, Atius had turned to the object of discussion himself. "Should be good for you, aye? You get to sleep and you won't hear orders from your boss. So long as you feed us information, you won't even need to move anymore."

"That… seems good. Accept." The head said, the single violet eye closing shut, already, deciding to waste no time on the offer.

Windrunner held the head out, helmet glancing in my direction with clear befuddlement. "He... he actually went to sleep I think. In the middle of all this?" Nevertheless, he held out the head so I could grab it. "I mean, if machines really can sle-"

A white machine sword flicked with lighting speed out of Lord Atius's scabbard, tip unerringly diving for the Feather's lower neck all in one fluid motion. Even Windrunner who was carrying the damned thing didn't react to it in time before the blade had sunk straight through the machine's soul fractal.

No pulse of occult came. No feeling of something more being cut. Atius tutted, withdrawing the blade with disappointment before he resheathed it. "He fled faster then I could get him. Seems he was either expecting this, or constantly on guard."

A befuddled look down at Wrath reminded me I should probably close the sack again and strap it on. After all, it doesn't look like Wrath is getting a friend now. While the rest of her face was frozen in a neutral position, the eyes looked almost as confused as the rest of us. Windrunner shrugged, tossing the broken head behind him where it sunk halfway into the water.

"No plans to interrogate him?" I asked, slowly reconsidering the past events.

"No. Only picking the best moment to catch him unaware. It's likely he did know information we could have used." Atius said, continuing the sprint forward, his gaze flickering at the walls around us, as if looking for patterns. He clearly had a plan in mind given the directions we were taking. The rest of us followed behind, quickly putting distance between us and the head. "Unfortunately, as much as he liked to talk, we don't have the time to extract the info, nor the tools. Carrying him around will only give-"

"DUCK!" Father yelled out over the comms. The group didn't question it, all of us diving into a sliding crouch, feet wide to force the maximum surface friction, slowing us all to a full stop.

At the very same moment, the walls before us blew up. Or rather, seven blue beams sliced through at an angle and for a small sliver of frozen time, everything seemed perfectly still. The beams clear and bright, almost like the corridor was filled with dust and light was passing by.

The shockwaves of the beams ripped the walls apart from the inside out wherever the beams had cut.

That's all I saw before a massive chunk of rock slammed on my side and sent me flying into rubble. The hit had been dangerous enough to trigger Journey's shields, though the damage was negligible.

Wrath in the sack remained in good condition, only one strap had snapped off. She was lighter than she looked, despite the ridiculous things she constantly ate.

"I don't think they appreciated us stabbing the head." I said, scrambling back to my feet and following the other knights. They were already leaping over the rumble, soaring through the cloud of brick dust fighting against the splashed water droplets, turning into muddy rain. Looks like I'd been the unlucky one here, having to deal with a rock to my face. That's not a good omen.

"You bugs are ever so quick to scurry around." To'Sefit's voice echoed, amplified from somewhere far away. "I admit, I haven't ever known humans to slip away so many times. Makes a lady wonder if she's lost her edge. Would you so kindly do me the honor of dying correctly this time?"

And that's an even worse omen.

Father called out again, and beams lanced through the walls again, right in our path. This time a followup barrage came right on the heels of the first, trying to catch us wherever we'd crouched. To'Sefit had us in sight somehow and she wasn't holding back.

The world shuddered around us, rock chips flying everywhere.

The wall behind us had already been ripped apart by the first volley of beams. Two more had turned it from something sturdy to an outright danger. It collapsed with a final groan, straight down on Kidra, the entire top part still solid enough to hold together. My heart froze at the sight.

She gave a surprised yell and leaped into action. A relic armor in full sprint was incredibly fast. The collapsing ton of rock was faster. Kidra wasn't going to make it, not at the speed she was sprinting at.

An arc of pure occult flew over my head, impacting the rock wall and shattering it apart. A second wave of occult chased right behind, insurance in case the first wave didn't do the job. The pile of rocks still collapsed straight onto Kidra, burying her for a half moment before her chest and arms broke free from the rubble, which was far better than being buried under a fully intact section. The family armor struggled out of the mountain of collapsed rock. I could hear the whine of motors trying, and failing to pull her completely free. "Can't!" She called out, "Too much!"

"My, seems I've caught one." To'Sefit's voice echoed again, glee in every syllable, likely licking her lips.

I rushed straight for my sister, probably screaming I think, occult rippling around as I sent image after image to slice and cut at the rocks with the armguard I had, dice up the obstruction into smaller chunks her armor could push against. It was working, loose stone crumbling apart as more of her body was fighting for freedom. We could all dodge in some way. But Kidra was a sitting speeder, unable to move from her trap.

"Get down!" Atius called out right behind me, likely sprinting right on my heels. "Keith! Get down! Damn you, get down!" Atius's voice felt far off, bouncing off me like snow blown against armor.

"Much obliged for the generous meal." That damned voice echoed through the ruined rubble, low and husky, as if all of this was just a game to her. "I will gladly partake."

Father called out to move, desperation in his voice, knowing equally well To'Sefit wasn't going to miss a chance like this. The beams would slice through and rip apart everything - including the soul fractals.

A foot kicked my knee joint and forced the armor to crumple on itself, breaking my sprint just as I was about to get to Kidra. That had been enough to avoid a beam To'Sefit had sent for my head a half moment after. I could see it, looking distorted through the flaring relic armor shields holding off the shockwave that came after from being so close to the beam.

In the soul trance I saw Atius continue past me, sliding directly next to Kidra, extending his hand out as his foot hit the collapsed ruin and forced him to a full stop.

A beam that had been aimed perfectly for Kidra speared directly into his hand the moment after - and slammed against an unmovable wall of will.

Occult surged, whipping even the water in a wide circle away from him. To'Sefit's beam battled against the white dome shield. Atius grunted in pain, one knee falling down, arm shaking. The beam held for a second more, then dispersed.

The Deathless remained behind, occult evaporating off his armor like steam.

"Oh?" To'Sefit's voice called out. "You survived? Today is just filled with surprises." She seemed genuinely puzzled.

From his position, twelve pale blue wraiths stepped out, each leaping forward against the rubble, slicing and attacking everything holding Kidra.

Atius turned, exhausted eyes locking onto me. "Help dig her out, now!"

It shocked me back to my senses. My own ghosts flew straight out, joining in as I scrambled back on my feet. Something hit critical mass within the rockslide and Kidra's knee lifted out, shoving crumbling rock out of the way, as if she was walking out of the deeper side of the baths. The stone grip loosened all at once, deflating as she forced her way through.

Father called out again. To'Sefit wasn't done. Kidra tried to jump out of the way, but part of her was still climbing out of the rocks. The pause between volleys had been too brief. Atius grabbed her shoulder and shoved down, forcing her to stay put.

The rest of us leaped in random directions. Another set of beams cut again, directly through the open air. Atius's eyes closed, mouth grimaced, and his hand snapped up once more, the dome shield summoned, shoulder and body braced into it.

To'Sefit's beam lanced through, battering the invisible barrier again. The impact echoed through his armor, pushing his hand and shoulders back. Sweat beaded on the old man's face, teeth grinding with effort.

Shockwaves impacted the rocks around, pulverizing the smaller ones into pisces and throwing dust all across, obscuring the battlefield for a moment.

The beams cut off, firepower spent.

Atius's status on my HUD remained green.

To'Sefit tutted. "You are quite the resilient specimen. I suppose my cute little sister picked her friends well. A shame she couldn't do the same for the rest of her decisions."

Relief washed through me like a tide, as both the Deathless and Kidra sprinted out of the dust cloud, rejoining our group. We turned on our heels and ran. With so much of the walls ripped apart, there wasn't any more rubble To'Sefit could use to pincer us.

To'Sefit didn't care. She was out for blood now. I think living this long had made it personal.

"How's she finding us through the walls?!" I yelled out, looking for any clues in the chaos around me.

Father called out warnings again, death approaching all of us as the Feather locked onto our positions somehow and opened fire far off. The beams sliced through the far wall side, blowing it up into white granite chunks that harmlessly crashed into the floor and water, much too far to be any threat to us.

With the warnings Father had called out, we each leaped out of the way, avoiding the beams and letting our armor's shields soak the resulting pulses that came from them.

"We can't run from her, we need to engage her directly!" Atius called out. "Advance!"

We only got to our feet and hardly had the time to scramble before more beams came, shockwaves constantly ripping apart the very air with sound and confusion. This time she fired dozens in staggered shots, randomly aimed. There was not a single second where a beam was not in some way slicing through somewhere. They fired off like a machine gun.

Father stepped up to the plate. With his sight, he could see all fatal attacks ahead of the hit. And he used it to call out individual knights with clear cut instructions, honed with the clarity of a thousand battles. His voice only grew more calm as the fight continued, old habits of command returning even as a ghost.

We pressed forward, trying to make headway directly at the source of the firepower, somehow doing it.

"Why won't you just die?" To'Sefit said, sounding annoyed now. "You are making thi-" She paused for a moment, though the barrage of beams didn't abate. "I get it." She said. "This isn't working, yes yes, no need to point out the obvious so incessantly. I can handle myself, go pester To'Orda or the lessers. These humans are mine."

The firepower stopped. We took the window for what we could, sprinting directly through ruins of walls between us and where To'Sefit must have been firing from. Relic armors were already painting the likely location of origin.

We barreled through the half teetering remains of a thinner brick wall, arriving at the location predicted. Nothing waited for us here except for a large half standing pillar, of which our HUD showed every line point intersecting. She'd been right here, firing at us through the walls from on top of that pillar.

"She can't have gotten far." Windrunner snarled.

None of us relaxed in any way, eyes peeled open for any possible attack. Four relic helmets looking around, with our Deathless clan lord at the center, watching the world through open eyes, calculating. "We don't yet know how the witch moves in combat besides walking. Keep alert. A ranged artillery unit must have some emergency methods of escaping an attacker."

Father called out a warning, we scattered on command.

No beams came.

"She's aborted her attack." Father said, voice on edge.

"Hmm, interesting. Very interesting." To'Sefit called out, something in that voice sent a chill through my back. "How exactly did you all start diving around only when I decided to fire? Some supernaturally honed instinct to live? My, my, tenacious. A shame that won't be enough."

The world turned into hell the very next moment.

This time an entire barrage of twenty four shots opened up, slicing through everywhere like the wrath of gods, all at once. There was no way to dodge. No way to avoid it all.

We were dead.

Occult pulsed behind us, and ghosts of Atius leaped with full speed, reaching each of us, lifting a hand out in To'Sefit's direction.

Most of her beams missed. Some hit. None got past the occult domes Atius summoned from each of his ghosts.

A terrible howl came from the clan lord behind us, hoarse, filled with pain.

The moment the beams faded, we turned, watching Atius collapse on both his knees, near pitch black blood leaking from his mouth, eyes flickering, fading between unconsciousness and lucidity. Old tired eyes met ours, and drifted away as his body fell forward.

Windrunner was at his side within the second, arms snapping out to hold the clan lord from complete collapse into the shallow water under. His teal helmet turned straight to us a moment after. I could almost feel the knight's panic. I rushed over, not sure what I could do, my legs still moving me anyhow.

Atius sputtered, body shaking, coughing out. Black blood splashing down into the water, diluting back to red in the troubled water. He heaved, as if trying to gulp down air all the while choking still. One of his hands reached out blindly, trying to grab anything, failing at it. He was saying something, but even the armors weren't able to reconstruct the few intact syllables coming from him into anything audible.

He wasn't getting back on his feet. The hand began to wave more frantically. Voice fighting against his need to breath.

Kidra and Sagrius came to a stop, our group huddling over the clan lord, silently debating how to carry him out. Pure panic flashed through his gaze, eyes wide. Father didn't make another callout yet, which meant To'Sefit wasn't firing at us again for now.

"My, my. How exciting!" The bitch's voice called out instead, happy for some reason. "You've really outdone yourselves, tiring me out like this. But now, without your Deathless…"

The chill raced again through my spine. Atius wasn't flailing around out of panic, suffocating on his blood.

He'd been trying to warn us. We'd all huddled into one convenient target.

"... This is the part where I finally kill you all."

In the face of complete annihilation, Captain Sagrius rose before any of us could act, turning to face the direction To'Sefit would fire from. Shield fractals began to glow across his armor, called on by his will. He took a step forward.

"I must protect... the young lord." He whispered, more a litany than anything truly said to anyone. His relic armor automatically amplifying the silent prayer to audible levels. There was something strange in his voice, a distortion growing with each sentence. Crackles of occult were drifting across his plate, across the glowing shield fractals that lit up bright.

He lifted a hand before himself, watching it as if pleading to it. "I am... a knight Retainer... and I will honor my vow."

"Directive... acknowledged." His armor whispered back. The hand snapped forward, palm out.

To'Sefit opened fire. Twenty four beams ripped apart everything in their path, obliterating ground and air alike, more a force of nature incarnate. Uncontrolled and inevitable destruction. They converged into one point, one target.

Next chapter - Unpayable Cost

Book 4 - Chapter 27 - Unpayable cost

Light and sound crashed with the full fury of an avalanche. Nothing more than a black silhouette stood between us and the blinding white-blue destruction. Ground ripped apart around our group in a semicircle, as if we were standing in the eye of the storm, somehow safe while the rest of the world tore apart.

The occult dome stretched wide before Captain Sagrius, wider than any I'd seen before. He staggered back for a moment, knee dropping down for support, before slowly rising back up, inevitable.

Between him and To'Sefit's full power, one broke first and it wasn't the Captain.

Her weapons winked out, energy spent, leaving melted rock and glowing embers all around our small island of safety. Steam wrapped a hand around the world, a thick white cloud of vapor that hung almost endless and hid everything from sight.

Relic armors displayed linework of the expected topology, orange grids showing a virtual space within our HUDs, superimposed on the obscuring steam. It rose on a current of warm air, picking the cloud apart.

Sagrius's arms dropped back to his side. He remained upright, staring straight ahead, silent - and alive.

The terrain emerged around us as the steam lifted. Far away, the final wall To'Sefit hid behind had been utterly blasted apart from her attack, revealing her position. She stood regally on the top of another half cut pillar, staff extended out, dropping down to her side with slow grace, mirroring the captain's. "Well." She said, violet eyes widening in surprise. "To'Avalis was right... It seems I can't quite kill you by myself. My, my. How unexpected."

"Strategy?" Windrunner hissed, still holding the clan lord with one arm draped over his shoulder.

Atius didn't answer, still hacking black blood into the steaming puddle of water that remained by our feet. Draining away now into the cut ground to our sides, sizzling on contact with the half melted stonework. A hand shook, and he painfully formed a hand sign.

Take command.

Windrunner nodded then let go. Atius fell to the ground with a merciless thud. "Acknowledged." He said, voice emotionless, hand reaching down, unclasping Atius's knightbreaker launcher with quick and practiced motions. "Assuming command. Keith, Kidra, flank. Sagrius and I will run vanguard. Advance."

He rose up, and sprinted straight forward. Simple plan, but we didn't have time to come up with a better one. Standard playbook here. Anything is better than nothing. And To'Sefit wasn't opening fire on us. She'd had pauses between rounds before, but this was already well within her firing window range. Which meant she should be attacking again any moment now.

Instead, she looked like she was reviewing the battle, contemplating what to do next. Couldn't let that go on uninterrupted. Kidra and I dashed off to the right, sprinting over the destroyed terrain, advancing directly at To'Sefit from an angle.

"Draw knightbreakers." Windrunner hissed through the comms.

Kidra yanked her own launcher out, safety clicking off.

"Winterscars, run interference." Windrunner said. "We'll need to pin To'Sefit into a position she can't escape or dodge. Kidra, open fire at first opportunity. I'll match."

Relic armors calculated our current speed with the distance to target, thirty seconds was all we'd need before we were within melee range of To'Sefit.

Thirty seconds was all she needed to fire at least two or even four volleys. We might just be able to make it if Father calls out accurate directions.

On my minimap, two dots remained in place. HUD showing the nameplates, the first was expected - Atius hadn't recovered yet. The second wasn't. A look behind made it clear it wasn't some glitch.

The captain stayed still, like a puppet, right where we'd left him. A cold feeling welled in the pit of my stomach. Windrunner noticed at the same time I had, realizing he was sprinting straight at a Feather alone. Whatever flashed through his mind, he must have concluded there's nothing he could do other than commit fully.

No time to worry about that right now. We had a Feather to kill.

"Kidra," Windrunner said, voice deadly calm. "Sagrius likely indisposed. Command falls to you if I'm taken out. Atius is Deathless, he's died before and knows the score. Don't prioritize him. Make sure you and your brother make it out. Confirm orders."

"Understood." Kidra confirmed.

To'Sefit tilted her head with curiosity, blinked, and lifted her staff once more. I had a feeling she'd overheard us under our helmets, but nothing we could do about that. The staff aimed downrange at Windrunner, metal plates behind her circling in a pattern of two concentric rings, moving in opposite directions.

Occult crackled like lightning between the plates, the dome shield Wrath had described appearing. Protecting the Feather from the proximity danger of her own attack. The plates flew further away from her, spinning faster and faster- and then froze in their tracks all at once.

A single probing beam lanced out from To'Sefit, gouging a hole into the ground to Windrunner's right. He leaped into a roll to his left almost simultaneously, avoiding the majority of the damage, relic shields triggering to absorb the ambient damage. It hardly took any percent off his reserve, the HUD showing him hovering around ninety eight percent.

"Interesting." To'Sefit hummed. "Delayed reaction now. Was that Deathless using some kind of prediction area support spell?" Her hand lifted up, palm extended out to her side, as if she were about to grab us. The Feather hadn't even bothered to look in our direction.

Two metal plates twisted in the air to face us. Occult glowed, portals appearing within both, leading into someplace filled with machinery and the dark hollow of a massive barrel.

That's all I got to see before Feather called out a warning through the comms, voice clear and direct. Kidra leaped directly to her right without a word, landing hard on her shoulder and turning it into a roll, while I slid on the gravel, crouching down. Above my head, a beam speared out, while another crackled right through where Kidra had been.

"Not the Deathless then. Ah, how rotten." To'Sefit said, now giving us attention. "Which one of you is calling out those instructions?"

Fifteen seconds until we reached her. She was onto us. To'Aacar had quickly figured out non-lethal hits wouldn't show on Father's death sight, and had instantly changed his combat strategy back when he fought against Wrath.

How fast would To'Sefit catch on? Trick question - I wasn't going to let her catch on at all.

At this distance, there was something I could do to throw a crowbar into her plans. Occult crackled around me, and I dove for the mirror fractal, reaching for every bit of training I'd done with Atius. Using it while running was going to be difficult, especially with what I planned. But one image was all I needed. Nothing too complicated. The real fight would be keeping it alive within range.

I sent it out, watching it soar through the air at ridiculous speeds. The fastest I could imagine it going. Gravity and air resistance both had no hold over the wraith as it sprinted over, bounding leap after leap.

Father called out another warning to all three of us left. Once more we followed orders, dodging the shots that would kill us, and tanking the damage that wouldn't.

While I'd been dodging, she's speared out my image, the beam slicing through the ghost with no resistance. It whisked out of existence, my plan scrapped out the airlock.

I gritted my teeth, and summoned another, sending it once more after her. Willing it to go faster.

It leaped ahead, and was promptly speared again by another beam, while the three of us were forced to abort our sprint in order to dodge her shots. She was testing the waters, trying to find out what triggered our group's ability to avoid her shots.

Only a matter of time until she figured it out.

One more chance. Think. Imagine. Gravity was nothing more than a force that tied physical objects down. The occult wasn't physical. The mirror fractal fuzzed in my mind as I exerted more thought. Faster. It had to be faster. It had to soar through the very air. Size was relative. Everything was relative.

The fractal refused to comply. The instructions I sent, rejected.

I wasn't thinking about this the right way.

To'Sefit drew the staff in Windrunner's direction, twelve plates turning to track him. A gut feeling deep within called out to me. If she opened fire, Windrunner would die. To'Sefit was going to attack in a pattern that wouldn't let him escape. I simply knew.

I forced every ounce of will I had into the mirror fractal. I needed some kind of edge, now or Windrunner was as good as dead. If the occult didn't answer to my imagination of gravity, than I'd make it accept my own reality. The soul tendrils within my mind flailed around the concept of that fractal, seeking out all the hidden edges within the no-man's land of broken cracks. The occult never respected physics in the first place, why should I? Everything was wrapped in concepts to the occult... and so was gravity. Just one massive concept so large and taken for granted I'd never seen it in my occult sight.

Something in my head finally clicked. My tendrils found something to hold onto deep within the fractal, a dimension that had been ignored. I didn't question it, and threw myself at the mirror fractal again.

A ghost of my image soared out, straight up, less like a cohesive figure, more like a wisp of pure occult. It arched directly down at the Feather, moving as fast as a tracer bullet. Faster than anything had any right to go, flying freely through the air.

To'Sefit spotted it, two plates turning to fire, both unable to track the spell fast enough.

The ball of occult split into two into two, falling into a complete stop, one in front and the other behind her. Both materialized into fully realized images, as if my ghosts had simply appeared.

She picked to guard against the one in front of her, head turned to keep watch over the one behind.

I dismissed the one in front, no longer needing it, now that I had an image right against her undefended side. My real armshield lit up with the occult blades all across, and so did the copy on the ghost, now too close for her to shield against. She drew her staff around, letting the shield vanish, exactly as planned. My image lunged forward, the armguard zipping through the air.

I stumbled back on my feet, realizing I'd crashed into the ground at some point channeling that spell. My mind felt… off. That feeling of elucidation fading away like melting snow in my palm.

But the mirror fractal remained working, and that's all I needed.

To'Sefit expertly ducked my image's attack, staff whistling around in an uppercut. Occult pulsed with it, air flowing like a stream behind, the gust heavy enough to throw even loose rocks on the ground up. With the dust swirling around, it almost looked like a dozen streaming pillars - and every one of them went through my image, immaterial.

Enough force would break these ghosts apart, a punch or kick. Even a rock thrown. But air? It did nothing to the ghost.

I tapped into the mirror fractal again within my armor, and the mirrored version on my image lit bright. From there, another ghost appeared as the first image faded. I wasn't keeping more than one image active, just constantly refreshing a single image.

If To'Sefit was surprised her gust didn't throw the melee combatant away from her, she didn't show it. The mirror lunged forward. She twisted away in place, refusing to give up her high ground, gracefully stabbing the end of her staff directly into the ghost with an occult blade at the end. Not before it had already generated another image, which dove to the side and attacked again. To'Sefit tutted, aware that we were getting closer.

I might have stumbled, but both Kidra and Windrunner hadn't. They'd doubled down, rushing at a full breakneck sprint.

To'Sefit sent a far faster jab from her staff than any before, trying to destroy the ghost before it could split. But that was useless - I was already copying it again, letting the first image vanish right as her staff ripped it apart. Again and again I generated more copies, most not even given any attack pattern. Just avoid hits and remain close enough to be a threat. So long as the image was within attacking range, To'Sefit couldn't turn that staff to protect herself for another bombardment.

No shield, no attack. Simple plan. The plates around her twitched impatiently, still tracking their enemies, but unable to open fire. It was working. There were a few dozen occult edges crisscrossed on my armshield. Just one solid hit with that and her personal shields would take a huge chunk to hold off that much surface area.

If she ignored my image and tried to fire her beams, it would open her up to a free backstab. That that would be a cost she couldn't pay.

For once, things were going my way. I had the right idea generating images with no intention other than to dodge. It let me keep up with her increasingly fast pace. She might not have been a melee fighter, but To'Sefit was still a Feather and they could all move stupidly fast. I wasn't reacting, rather assuming she would pop them out of existence within a half second, no idea how or with what move, only certain she would.

I wasn't wrong.

She moved faster and faster, becoming more frantic in her attempts to eliminate the ghost. My image danced around her, destroyed over and over again, always one step ahead. The staff whipped around, now with no wasted movements, stabbing through each image, and instantly turning to chase after the next. Gone were her fluid and graceful strikes, she wanted that image gone.

Ten seconds until Kidra and Windrunner were onto her.

Windrunner aimed the knightbreaker with one hand, the other hand keeping his blade at the ready. Kidra and I were racing over rocks, vaulting over any obstacles with little issue.

To'Sefit stopped, then turned to look up. As if something else had caught her interest.

Five seconds until we reached her.

The occult metal plates started to move again, portals closing on each, before they circled around her, retracting back into a tight knit orbit around her staff, midway through a parting swing. They flowed like water streaming after the source. She turned the attack into a graceful spin, leaping far into the air.

A shadow overtook the land under us.

Something large flew across the air from behind, with a screech that echoed everywhere. A massive metal bird, pulled straight from a nightmare, eight violet eyes glaring down at us, four on each side of the half skull like mask. Its wings were the same design To'Wrathh used, only scaled up by a massive factor. Hundreds of blades all held together by nothing and yet still in cohesion.

To'Sefit's upward momentum ended, and she began to fall back down to the ground. The massive machine swooped under her at the apex of her jump, letting the Feather land with little issue. It circled around, taking further altitude, To'Sefit as its only passenger. "It seems my illustrious leader doesn't believe in my chances of success anymore." Her voice echoed out, with an edge of manic insanity to it. "Even my own prediction programs were giving it a coin toss. Can you believe that? Me. A coin toss from losing. Exciting, isn't it? I would have loved to see how this would have ended. The uncertainty… Ahhh…"

She smiled, walking by the spine of the monster as if the speed it was soaring was immaterial to her, another hand lightly going from spike to spike like guardrails on a stairwell. The metal plates streamed behind her staff, trying to keep up with the bird's speed and remain at her side.

"Scatter!" Windrunner called out. "We have no means of reaching her on a moving aerial platform like that. We've got to retreat."

With images that could bypass gravity, I could possibly reach her if I tapped into that power again. But I couldn't beat her at my best already when she was rooted to her spot and in range. No chance now that she was nearly out of range and moving around. We were sitting targets, out in the cold.

"She won't fire." Kidra spoke, coming to a stop and unstrapping her rifle, switching the safety off and verifying the weapon was good to fire. "If she could fight from the safety of that machine's back, she'd have already done so from the start. To'Sefit has not shown any sign of moderating her attacks from the start. Every attack was either to kill or to learn our patterns." She aimed, and opened fire.

Yellow sparks appeared on the bird's metal carapace. It glared down at her, the bullets uselessly flying off its armor. The bird circled again, giving a heavy shriek of anger. Talons trailing behind large metal legs, curling and uncurling as if anticipating a meal. Kidra stopped her fire, growling.

Wrath, what even is this? I asked.

In human terms, you address them as Ravens. A higher tier machine reserved for the seventh strata and downwards. Wrath said, watching the skies from her sack. It should not be here. Mites don't allow mother many chances to build such machines in mass. They're expensive, and she tries to conserve resources when she can.

From up there, To'Sefit could have just bombard us anywhere we tried to run, and there'd be nothing we could do.

Except she hadn't. And I think I know why. "Her dome shield can't cover more than herself." I said. "She opens fire on us from there, her mount dies from the splash damage. And Wrath says she can't get another one easily."

Given that To'Sefit held her ground against my image instead of trying to move away, maybe this particular feather's malfunction was a pride thing about never breaking into a sprint? Her stupidly ornate robe might get ripped up or something and she cared more about that than winning at all costs. If her mount got off'd, how would she get anywhere unless she ran on foot? Hardly dignified for a lady of her stature, if that's how her mind worked. Always had to attribute extremes when it came to Feathers. They were all dialed up on dramatics.

"You have a few minutes of interlude while I look for a better spot. I suggest you think up a better plan." To'Sefit said, proving my point. "Or call up To'Avalis and accept the offer to surrender, though I would hope you don't. This has been very fun, a shame to see it end on such an anticlimactic note like that, wouldn't you agree?"

"It's going to end with us stabbing you to death. Maybe I might even put your head on a spike, we're surface savages after all." I said, using that comms channel of theirs.

I knew she could hear, because her gaze snapped my direction, a smile blooming over it. "Brave words." She laughed, hiding her mouth with the back of her hand. "Why if you keep glaring at me with such passion, this lady might even swoon." Scraphead even had the audacity to wink as her mount whisked her away to safety.

Miserable lousy wench. Wrath seethed, actually upset. You should consider letting loose the Cathida engram on the Feather channel.

I believe that might be considered a war crime. I sent back.

I thought you took pride in committing those?

... She got me nailed there.

I'll hit them with Cathida once we're sure we don't need a channel to them anymore. The moment we send Cathida there, they'll shut down the channel in a few minutes at best.

The real Cathida might eventually run out of breath, but not our version. She'd rage around and never stop. I had to keep all options open. A direct link to this To'Avalis might come in handy later.

We'd started with a full army of the best knights the surface had to offer, equipped to the teeth. Now, there were only three of us left. Atius was out of commission, having overextended himself using the shield fractal, afflicted by something that was tearing him up on the inside. And Sagrius… I didn't know what happened to the Captain. He remained staring vacantly ahead, right at the apex of the ruined ground.

We'll get him back, whatever it was that happened. Somehow. I was the occult specialist, I'll fix this. I'll solve, bend or break whatever rules I need to get him back. He's not gone. And if he is…

The group watched To'Sefit soar away, the bird diving down further off to the center of the temple, relocating deeper into the structure.

If he is gone… either I'll cut To'Sefit down, or I'll be cut down myself at the end of the day.

But one of us wasn't walking out of this temple alive.

Next chapter - Turnabout

Book 4 - Chapter 28 - Turnabout

To'Sefit was gone. Despite this being the middle of enemy held territory, everything felt silent.

That gave us some time to lick our wounds. Windrunner was at Atius's side, helping the Deathless up. The clan lord hadn't recovered yet, still having a hard time just breathing. Black blood kept building up in his lungs, hacked out with wet coughs.

Sagrius remained standing where we'd left him, gazing vacantly into the distance. He didn't turn to watch me come closer. "Captain, are you all right?" I asked, waving a hand in front of him, fearing the worst.

His head turned, snapping to my direction. "Unknown." He said in a calm voice. "User unresponsive."

I almost wished he hadn't spoken. That manner of speech… "Are you his relic armor?"

"Affirmative." The captain said. It was his voice, the same deep scratchy worldness of it behind each syllable. But the words… it wasn't him.

"How's that possible?" I asked, mouth faster than my head. I've already seen the occult do stranger things. For a moment, Father had outright possessed Winterscar. If it could happen one direction, it could go the other.

"Natural language predictive transformer unable to generate acceptable solution to the query. All answers fall below twenty percent confidence threshold." He spoke, helmet still turned my direction, unflinching.

I'd heard that very same phrase before. Swallowing, I asked the same question I had all these months ago. "What is the highest answer you have? And from now on, lower required confidence threshold for any question we have. I need answers, just pick the highest rank and go with that." Had a feeling I'd need to ask more than one question to figure out what's going on.

"Affirmative. Configurations modified. I am unwillingly consuming my user's soul." His voice remained monotone. That didn't help any of my growing panic, of course.

"Unwillingly? Can you stop?"

"I am unable to stop the process, I do not understand how to stop."

Kidra approached from behind us, walking over to the captain. She glanced at me, and even behind the faceless helmet, I could tell she was hoping I'd know what to do.

Only one way to know what was going on. I was the occult specialist here, time I started pulling my weight.

I opened myself further into the soul sight, fumbling around for the soul fractal within Sagrius's helmet. I found the fractal, but nothing within. Empty.

I searched with a tendril, floating it out into the cold harsh world, until I reached the relic armor's own soul fractal. Here I found a mess. Sagrius was still there. Or at least, the concept of his soul remained. Diminished, intertwined with the armor. Linked back to his body, comatose. And, almost like osmosis, bits of his soul were flaking off, floating over into the relic armor's own soul, almost pulled like gravity. They touched on the relic armor's own depths, and merged within.

The relic armor wasn't aware of it's own soul, not like humans were. We could manipulate, move it around, shape it into tendrils. The relic armor seemed more trapped inside its soul fractal.

"Place me next to him." Father said from his base of operation on Kidra's necklace, rousing me out of the soul trance. "I've learned much about souls and the occult in my time here. I may be able to help."

Windrunner lifted Atius, cutting loose the greatcloak, locking the clan lord's armor to his back. Relic armors had hidden hooks for all kinds of gear, and one thing they could do was carry another armor back to back. "Kidra, grab Sagrius. We can't stay here for long. Time isn't on our side." His own armor whined at the strain of lifting a four hundred pound armor, especially with the damage he'd taken earlier, but Windrunner's armor was up to the task.

Kidra did as asked, grabbing her necklace and draping it over the captain's own neck. In the soul sight, I saw not just Father, but other knights within the multiple soul fractals in that necklace reach out. It took Father only a few moments to come up with a plan, moving tendrils into walls that held off the captain's essence from drifting away. The other knights joined in, trying to copy Father's own movements with far less finesse.

The broken motes of Sagrius's soul collided against the makeshift walls, but didn't merge. "As I thought." Father said. "The concepts and identity that make up my soul is different enough from his that we cannot merge. Winterscar generated an engram of me, and in doing so, it became too similar to myself. That's how I slipped inside, the resonance was an open door, unguarded. Sagrius has done the same, become too much like the armor, allowing it to connect to him. I suspect that's how he gained the single minded focus to resist To'Sefit's attack. The two worked together as one. Only, the separation at the end of their task was impossible."

"Can you separate them yourself?" Kidra asked.

"Not yet. I can slow down the process, too much of him was tied to the armor. Enough that even his body moves as if it were the armor's."

A mental image of where Feather was looking at was sent out to all of us looking in with the soul sight. Tendrils of sagrius's soul had reached out, connecting to the relic armor's. Those hadn't been severed. In effect, I couldn't tell where the Captain began and where the Armor ended. What I could sense was Father's intention. He needed to find a way to cut a part of a soul somehow. If he could cut off those tendrils, Sagrius would be separated from the armor, and then his soul could be dragged away back into an empty soul fractal, safe from the world.

Kidra lifted up the comatose captain, hooking his back to her own. He made no move to assist, nor fight back. Windrunner nodded, turned and began on a slower sprint. He didn't trust his armor could jump with another armor strapped behind him, vaulting over ruins was out of the question. So our group was forced to follow the watertrails. The mite forge was growing closer, our navigation point remained fixed on it.

"The Feathers haven't attacked us with any lesser machines. Not since our fight with To'Orda." I said as we make our way through the temple.

Kidra nodded grimly at that. "Even fighting against To'Sefit, none appeared to play interference. I am not well versed in machine tactics, Wrath, is this expected?"

No. Wrath sent back. Machine doctrine is to send all lesser forces against the enemy with little reserve. Only stronger units are more strategically used. As far as I am aware of, I am the only Feather within the last dozen generations to attempt to preserve my forces. At least, until now.

"Preserve forces eh?" Windrunner hummed. "I see a possible reason now. To'Sefit, her weapons aren't made to hold back against friendly fire. If she threw her forces at us to tie us down, they'd have been blasted just as much as we'd have. Then again, machines aren't known for holding back anything. If they could have sacrificed a dozen Screamers just to force one of us to stay still for a beam, they should have."

That is the standard doctrine. Runner models are easy to produce and require very little specialize machinery to create. Wrath said. To'Avalis is not behaving as other Feathers would.

"To'Avalis doesn't have an actual army here at all." I said, putting the pieces together. "Think about it. The moment we killed To'Orda, he sounded the retreat for them. Whatever forces he has here, he must not have been able to fully restock an army in the short time he had."

I'm sure feathers could move fast enough to make it here, hence why all three of these Feathers were lurking around. The minions move a lot slower. "His first goal had been to divide us into smaller, more easily managed subgroups. And then try to further whittle us down from a safe distance. Whatever forces he has here, it's the bottom of the storage bin scrap I think. Anything he could work with that was nearby."

"That winged machine doesn't seem low quality." Windrunner said. "Looks mighty expensive to me."

"Also looked stupidly fast." I said. "Not surprised it managed to make it here in time. We made a good call heading here right away, any later and he would have had an actual army to throw at us. That said, now that To'Sefit's run off, we might be able to move on the roof level. Make a direct line to the mite forge."

Windrunner nodded, "That means time isn't on our side. More machines are on their way. The longer we take to reach the mite forge the worse it will get for us. We need to get there as fast as we can."

"No." Kidra said. "This entire time we've been playing into To'Avalis's plans. He's set the stage, and we have all been reacting instead of acting. If we make an attempt for the mite forge, we need to do it in a way that he isn't prepared to handle."

Windrunner didn't say anything for a moment, focusing on his run. Then he sighed. "You make a point. But how do we surprise a Feather that's got us running around his palm like this?"

I would recommend disabling his intelligence first. Wrath said, watching from her sack. He must have found some means of tracking you and your group. To'Sefit's attacks were too well placed to have been blind fire. And Feathers do not have means of seeing through walls.

"So he's tracking us somehow already. Lovely, always wanted another machine stalker. Don't think he'll end up the same way you did though Wrath. Maybe he has a spotter of some kind?"

"We could use standard doctrine against Othersider long distance weaponry." Windrunner said. "There's a list of potential means to track targets. We can start by ferreting out his spotter, and then move on to verifying he isn't tracking us using software, a mole, or some kind of long range vision."

"He'd need something that could keep up with full relic armor sprints." I said, following the group behind at our safe speed. There's no roofing anywhere here, just large chambers with pillars, walls, and pooled water with leaves growing anywhere dirt might have appeared. If he was tracking us, he'd need some kind of unit that traversed things effortlessly. "That bird could have been above us the whole time, keeping sight. We have to figure out how it hid from sight."

Windrunner was taking random turns on each chamber, hoping to confuse the enemy on our ultimate endpoint. "If he's got a more conventional spotter following us, it would have to be a drake. That's the only model of machines known to surpass relic armor sprinting speed." Windrunner said. "Problem with that is that Drakes like to bounce when they jump from roof to roof, we should have seen a pipe lizard making the rounds by now."

It is not a drake model. Wrath said. The terrain is too chaotic for their kind to smoothly move through. As Windrunner demonstrated, we would have seen the 'bounce'

"You sound like you have an idea." I said.

I do have a suggestion. The terrain here is varied enough the spotter cannot have visual contact all the time. There must be some amount of blind spots that occur as the machine follows behind. The wrong terrain could force the machine model to take paths that we could use to ambush it unaware.

Windrunner nodded, putting it together. "We find a narrow set of corridors that leads to a larger open room. Then kill our speed and instantly take the corners. Wait a second, flash the strongest short range ping out. If we have any tails, they'll lose sight of us long enough to stumble close enough. A strong ping from our armors should be able to detect them all if they don't have any warnings it's coming."

"That will have to do." Kidra said. "Now we're at the mercy of luck to stumble on the right location."

"No, not luck." Windrunner said. "Atius wasn't running around without a plan. He was surveying the area, following a shallow sweep pattern. The mite forge wasn't his end goal, I think he was already planning on turning the tides on To'Avalis. He didn't have a plan yet, but he knew map knowledge would be critical for whatever we came up with. There's a spot we already passed that would be perfect for this kind of ambush."

The group doubled down on the sprint, cutting a corner and backtracking a different route. It took only minutes to reconnect with our past exploration. From there, Windrunner took a few obstructing turns, making our end goal less obvious until the very last turn, where we sprinted down a wider corridor at full speed. The moment we reached the turnpoint and vanished from the corridor, Kidra and I dove to the left, while Windrunner took the right.

There were sounds approaching in the silence. Like metal rods clinking against rock, only it felt like hundreds of it. A second later, the sound was nearly on top of us.

Windrunner sent out the ping. The machine scrambled to try and stop, their own sensors detecting the incoming wave, but being too far committed to get out of the way.

We got an answer. "Scan returned. Showing we're being shadowed by four spiders, two on each side of us. Let's take them down." Windrunner said.

Atius coughed then, hand reaching out to make signs. Enemy. Eyes. Redundancies. Threats unseen. Strike all at once.

Wrath was the one who picked the meaning apart, violet eyes staring at the clan lord's shaking hands. I don't know when she'd learn the surface hand signs, but she knew enough to cut through even his shaking.

The spiders are the threat we can see. What's important is the threats we can't see. To'Avalis must be tracking us with multiple redundancies. If we eliminate the spiders without eliminating the other methods, he can recover. We need to eliminate every means of tracking us all at once, along with mapping another route.

Windrunner nodded, lifting up from his crouch before continuing his sprint forward, Kidra and I following. Somewhere behind us, four spiders skittered away, cautious to not be seen and agile enough to make that a reality.

Kidra, Windrunner and Wrath all started swapping ideas on other means To'Avalis could be tracking our group.

There were still other bits of information we could use. It's been a quarter hour since we've breached the temple and he still hasn't sent any other machines to attack us. Even with a limited amount of machines, he'd still at least try to probe out our full strength. Wrath's thoughts was that his forces were already tied up somewhere we'd be forced to go through, and he wasn't going to divide his soldiers on a possibly failing attack on us. When the machines under his command were played as a card, it would likely be an all-in.

Kidra brought out that the separated knights wouldn't just sit idle behind the rock wall. They'd go looking for another way into the temple, and by now they'd have found it. So To'Avalis also needed to consider dealing with a larger group of knights running around the temple. He might be using them to bait those knights out of position while he dealt with us.

She was convinced on one point: He'd gone out of his way to separate me from the rest of the expedition. That meant he didn't think he could win with the forces he had against our relic knights. Which put an upper number to what he actually had to work with. He couldn't have dozens of spotters running around if he was fortifying a chokepoint.

So how else could he track us?

No. Not thinking about it the right way. I should pick out the earliest he'd started to track us and go from there. The tunnel, To'Orda had been sent there to hold us off. So he must have known by then where we were. And down there, there's no visibility. The spotters weren't the main way he was keeping us in sights, they were the backup.

When was the point that he didn't have visibility on us?

To'Sefit opened fire on us with several walls between, and those had cut through like a heated pole through snow. Her range of fire is likely limitless in tactical terms. But when we first retreated into the forest, she should have been able to shoot through.

Instead she remained stationary. No pursuit. So my guess is that she can shoot blindly - so long as she had a spotter. Somewhere between that point in the forest and our group going down into the tunnels, he'd found a way to track us. Something we couldn't see as humans, and relic armors wouldn't notice either.

The right kind of signal could be both.

"All relic armors." I announced, "Cut off any signal you're sending, then search for anything still being transmitted from armors around you."

Next chapter - Outfoxing the fox

Book 4 - Chapter 29 - Outfoxing the fox

Cathida purred like a cat spotting a pipe weasel. "Right on the gold, deary. There's still five signals being sent, one from each of us. Not software either, signals seem to be separate from the armors."

"How did you miss an entire set of signals being sent out?" I asked, "Only the real Cathida gets to say she's too old for this scrapshit, you're part-armor."

"Well, if you have to know, the data signatures are forged as relic armor metadata, the kind that Journey was set to ignore. There's lots of outdated info in this software, do you really need to know the soil density and mineral composition of the surrounding bricks? Or the local alpha meter readings? Or maybe you'd like to know their potential value in dollars and cost assessment of the complex ore surrounding us?"

"What the gods is a dollar?" Windrunner asked a second before I got to doing the same.

"Why are you asking me?" Cathida said. "It's just a number on the system under the column 'value.' Could be the keys to the goddess's kingdom for all we know and I'd miss it for pretty sparkle. Value's extremely vague and nobody's left anything else to work with. I'm not your golden saint with all the answers."

"We do not have the time for this." Kidra cut in. "Focus, Keith."

"Right. We've got to deal with a backstabbing sneaky calculator first. Journey, can you highlight where the source of the signals are?"

"Now that's a question it can work with." Cathida grumbled, complying. The HUD changed, outlines showing on all armors, isolating where the signals were on each of us. We found Kidra's first. Hidden under a fold of her dress, looking more like a small clump of dirt, magnetized to stick on the armor.

Her relic armor hadn't noticed one loose signal from all the others being communicated between the group.

"This is too clean." Windrunner said, finding his own bug slipped between armor plates. He didn't find just one either, there were three in there, two dormant while the third did the work. "This is specialized tech, how did he come up with something like this in a few hours?"

"He didn't." I said, recognizing the simplicity of the design as Journey's scanning brought out reports on the dirt we'd found. This sort of tech wasn't made last second. "He'd need trial and error to figure out exactly what data he could send that relic armors would ignore. This wasn't made to handle us. This was made to handle any relic user he'd run into. Tracking where people are isn't something he came up with to deal with us, it's his default tactic."

I took a closer look through the soul sight, now that I knew what I was looking for. Machinery inside came into focus, the concepts simple and clear. My regular eyes would have had a hard time focusing on the tiny things, but the soul sight was very different. Concepts didn't have different sizes after all.

The little bugs looked like small pucks, with one side flat while the other had a randomized rock like surface, making it look like a speck of dirt. And the flat surface was strongly magnetic.

Everything else inside the tiny robot was made to help transmit the signal. The only thing it used to hide was its size and keeping the signal hidden among the junk.

To'Avalis must have spent some time designing this and using it against other relic armors in the past. Which made him the first Feather I knew about to use things like this.

Wrath, I called out. Do Feathers normally use tools like this?

No. She sent back immediately. Although I only have surface understanding of other Feathers. There may be more that deviate from standards.

Windrunner cursed under his breath. "When did he get this stuff on us?"

"The tunnels." Kidra said. "Consider it. We all have more than a single transmitter around on our armor, they're clearly mass made. To'Avalis could have put hundreds scattered across a few different chokepoints."

"How did he know we'd even use the tunnels?" Windrunner countered. "That's one giant leap. If We didn't have Kei…" He stopped, then turned to look at me. "Before you kept to yourself how you knew about the tunnels. Was that information deliberately leaked to you? Is your source planted?"

Did Abraxas set me up? That coward of a machine kept watching over To'Wrathh and I for days on end. Why turn traitor on us now? Not to mention I had to force it out of him.

"No. Can't see any reason why my source would be a setup. I think he took a lucky gamble." I said, "He didn't know if we'd use the tunnels or not, but he set up everything so that we'd be forced to."

Putting To'Sefit at the centerpoint forced us to consider alternative options, like a surround.

And in doing so, we'd either run into the tunnels ourselves while setting up, or we'd run into something he'd plant to draw us into the tunnels one way or another.

Windrunner looked up, muttering. "All gone to hell faster than any other expedition I'd been on. It's fine, we're still alive and we have time to make a plan."

I raised a hand. "I've got a suggestion for the bugs. I say we reuse - and recycle."

Four spiders stalked forward, slowing down in confusion. Their targets had gone silent, no more sounds of sprinting footsteps on water. Maybe they thought we'd stopped to talk again, and so they all scurried around to take a position.

And then a wide range ping was sent out, the same scan as before. The spiders knew we'd spotted them once already, so they were again prepared to fend off.

Two knights leaped straight up, landing on the ruined wall, right into sight. Staring down at the spiders.

Both knights lifted grenade launchers and aimed. The spiders did what spiders do, shields flaring into life on their arms, lifting them up to protect their main body from whatever it was those humans were about to fire down with. Their shields could handle any kind of human weapon.

Unfortunately for the spiders, knightbreakers were on a different level. Both rounds launched, expanded, and ripped into the stationary machines, shields and all. I couldn't have asked for better targets.

The remaining two knew they were in trouble. They booked it, only to be pincered in by one more knight in teal colors, a blade twirling out.

Behind the two spiders, were the two knights in red who'd opened fire on them, namely Kidra and I, already jumping down to tackle these leftovers. And ahead of them was the lone teal knight with only one sword out.

They picked to take their chances against Windrunner. One knight was a better bet than two. And I'm sure they had some sensors that let them notice Windrunner was filled with broken bones and muscle contusions. Surely he couldn't post that much of a threat to them, they must have thought.

Works for us. Instead of chasing after the fleeing targets, Kidra and I went to recover our spent knightbreaker shells. Those had been engineered to be reusable. We just needed to wiggle them out of the dead spiders.

I have no idea what the two spiders would be thinking of this time, watching the humans fishing around the cut up guts of their packmates as they ran off in the other direction. If I had to bet, I'd say they were rapidly more occupied about a specific knight in the teal heraldry of House Windrunner, the very same knight they thought could be shoved aside and left behind.

The spiders ran right into him, like rats running directly into the open claws of a waiting cat.

Windrunner blurred with unnatural speed, unhinged laughter spilling out of him as he slipped under the guard of the first spider, neatly stabbing his sword into a weak spot of some kind. The spider's lights went out, but not before Windrunner vaulted from under the belly. Using a hand to swing himself up, flipping halfway until his feet were on the upper shell. From there he kicked off like a rocket, directly as the other fleeing target, blade flashing out.

The spider realized it wasn't going to escape, turned and swiped out for the gleeful knight. Windrunner twisted like a cat in midair, free hand grabbing hold of the swinging leg. The spider took a few hesitant steps backwards, waving the captured leg frantically, as if it were trying to flick a disgusting insect off its fingers.

Windrunner let go. It just wasn't in the direction the spider had hoped for. Instead, he flew right at the spider's main body courtesy of the spider's own misguided attempts to knock him away. His feet skidded on top of the smooth surface, a blade plunging down into the shell at the same time, leaving a blue trail behind.

The spider screeched in panic. It instantly retracted all legs, flopping onto the floor with a thud, while six reversed arms all stabbed out wildly above itself, trying to knock the knight dancing around on top.

He dodged three in quick succession, slipped under the guard of a fourth, vaulted over a fifth, and chopped a path through the sixth, ending with him sliding down the domed shell of the spider, blade flashing down for the front. His boots hit the ground, his helmet glared up, waiting.

The spider shrieked against the damage, scrambling up and away, every leg it had digging at the stone ground to push itself further away. Which was exactly what Windrunner had been waiting on.

An easy exposed target on the belly.

He threw his blade like an arrow, where it sank directly on target. The spider's lights flashed out, its momentum causing it to roll over on its back, legs frozen in their final movements.

"That was cathartic." He said with a satisfied sigh, slapping his hands free of non-existant dirt, walking over for the hilt of his discarded sword. "Feels good to move as fast as they do now. Even the score out. Now, onto the next part of your plan kid?"

"Right." I said, catching up. "Journey, toggle on the countermeasures."

"Done." Cathida said. "Annnnd... looks like it worked out exactly as theory said it would. Gold for gold, deary."

I'd spent a few years of my life trying to get internet working on the surface, or at least a prototype version of it. Signals and comms were part of the technology I was looking into, trying to find a way to create a net of broadcasting buoys.

That plan was doomed for failure of course, but the knowledge didn't go to wastes. Signals were ultimately waves when all the math was boiled down. And waves could be nullified with an equal and opposite wave.

We knew what the transmitters were sending off. So I had Journey and the other armors study the patterns, and setup an exact counterpattern to transmit. I could have gone through and squashed all of these into actual dust, but I had plans for these little critters.

Almost predictably, he gave us a call the moment he realized he no longer had any eyes on us. "Continue to resist, and I will hunt down your separated brethren and eliminate them." To'Avalis said over the general comms channel. "I have the skill to do so. Even if I can't track you, I can track them."

"You didn't show your face with To'Orda, and you didn't come to help To'Sefit. I'm starting to think you're not here at all, are you?" I said. "You know what all this adds up to? A bluff."

"Then you gamble with lives that aren't yours. Does that sit right with you, human?"

Windrunner shook his head. "Have to hand it to him, he really pulls out every dirty trick in the book. Moment he starts losing, he's already going for the backup options."

"Avalis, can I call you Avalis? To'Avalis is a mouthful you know." I said.

"Call me what you want, Winterscar. I only care to recover To'Wrathh, alive or dead. You're a curiosity but not my objective."

"Get a feeling I'm about to be upgraded from curiosity to nuisance. Now I'm going to hang up, because I'm quite sure you're trying to keep me talking as a last desperate attempt to keep track of our general location while you scramble out some kind of response. See you soon buddy. And Wrath says hi."

I shut off the comms, ignoring whatever message he'd sent back. Likely one trying to goad me into talking scrapshit with him some more.

Wrath, ever the patient saint, decided not to let me know I wasn't being honest with Avalis about her warm regards. She stayed in the sack, waiting with Sagrius and Atius nice and safe while we were squashing the spiders.

"You okay with us fighting off spiders? Not that we have much of a choice." I said, lifting up the sack and hooking it on my back.

I feel sorrow that they had to be eliminated. She said. However I understand reality. A commander needs to be prepared to lose their own units, and these are enemies.

"So long as they don't come back as Feathers looking to smite me, I'll take whatever kills I can get." Windrunner grumbled, reaching Atius and lifting him carefully onto his back. He was hacking out black blood a lot less, wheezing instead. His lungs must be clearing up. Hopefully that Deathless constitution of his would get him back on his feet soon, he was a large part of our team's damage and utility.

Kidra wordlessly took hold of Sagrius and followed procedure. On his front, Sagrius hadn't improved, still comatose, and the armor was still in command of his body. It hadn't talked much at all, other than answer basic questions. Incredibly eerie. Father was doing his best with the other knights under his command, we had to trust he'd figure it out.

As for the rest of us, we had our own show to handle. "Journey, open up the map and give us directions." I ordered.

The armor complied, a green arrow and highlighted line showed up superimposed on my HUD.

Despite Kidra telling me it wasn't the time to ask Journey a bunch of questions, we still had to map out more of the area before we could find a good ambush spot for the spiders. During that time, I found out a few more things about all these disabled and abandoned settings that were still running due to hardware rather than software.

Relic armor had excellent sensors embedded into the helmets, capable of full spectrum composition analysis in micro situations, and it had wide spectrum analysis with less detail for the macro situations. No idea why random features like this ended up in the armor, this was just one of many niche features the armors ended up with. I could imagine a few Reacher all working together and slipping in different things they thought could be useful. And when field testing came around, the Reachers would opt to turn off and mothball the extra features as it was easier than removing all of the junk directly. Not like a few extra pounds would make any difference to a relic armor.

The wide range scanners were passive and helped out mapping the surroundings as we'd run through it. They did more than map, they were running analysis on the wall composition, alluvium levels left by all the water, and all kinds of other random datapoints that had next to no worth in the battlefield.

But there was one bit of data that I found interesting. The scanner portions that let relic armors figure out exactly how deep the knights had been buried when To'Orda showed up and ripped the tunnel apart. That could tell density of land - and pockets of air further past the rock.

How's that useful in combat? Generally it's not. But in this particular case, we know there was a basement level under us somewhere that was accessible through the center of the temple, where the mite forge was located. So I'd asked Journey to narrow down the place where the floor is structurally thin enough to get through with some creative fenangling: We'd make our own stairwell down a level, and leave him looking around for us in the wrong area.

If To'Avalis was going to play this out like a rat bastard, he'll quickly learn he's not alone.

Next chapter - Interlude - Clan Knights

Book 4 - Chapter 30 - Interlude - Clan Knights

Loraii Icestride moved with every bit of speed she could push her ancient armor to go. The rest of the team did just the same, sprinting through the tunnels. They held the speed, often times jumping and running against walls in order to take shaper turns, trying to outrun what was stalking behind their group.

They'd barely managed to pull out the trapped knights that Feather with the greatshield had separated. Things were difficult, but they'd made progress.

Now, two of them were dead. Saraphin of House Tempest held onto the helmets, each containing the souls of those knights. There wasn't time to salvage the full relic armors, or what was left behind of them, the helmets would do for now. They could recreate new armors from those. As for the souls, Loraii wasn't sure.

The Winterscar Scion would figure something out. His own Father was one such soul. She had to hold out to hope. Lord Atius had taken him under his personal tutiage, and the clan lord was someone all of them trusted implicitly.

More of them were wounded, and that was far more understandable and real to her mind. Javalin Stormsweeper had most of his ribcage shattered, only the soul fractal kept him active and moving, and he wasn't alone. The other Stormsweeper showed critical health, a punctured lung, and heavy internal bleeding where bone shards had done the true damage. His armor gave him two days to live without medical attention. If they both perished here, their House would have lost all their relics in one mission. Others had more minor issues, anywhere from a broken leg or muscle contusions, depending on how far away from each blast they'd managed to get.

Ahead of the team, the Winterscar knights led the charge forward, knightbreakers carefully held in one hand, like the rest of the knights.

All of them new knights who'd barely had any training in relic armor, rookies at best to the field. Few had actual training in an armor, the rest were simple soldiers who'd never been able to climb the ranks high enough. Until this month, none had even gone underground yet. What horrible luck. Pit against an enemy most clan knights wouldn't see in their lifetime. A harsh first mission for those new knights.

She didn't know what she could do to protect them. As it was, Loraii was having a hard time keeping herself alive. She knew some of the other knights here resented House Winterscar, their own Houses took years to gain even one relic armor, shared by dozens of their best warriors.

And Winterscars were suddenly wealthy enough to have seven armors among their group, each dedicated to only one warrior. The Lady Winterscar and the young master Winterscar she could understand. The other five? Rookies all and one. Worse - they were clearly compromised in some manner that deeply disturbed the rest of the veterans here. It wasn't clear if the Winterscar loyalty remained with the clan, or with their young master.

The clan knights could forgive and overlook quite a lot of crimes, possible treason however was something that she couldn't overlook so simply. A part of her hated herself for even understanding and empathizing why the Winterscars may have put their master on a pedestal higher than the clan lord.

She shook the thoughts from her head. There was no time for politics on a mission. As much as the knights disliked the Winterscars, against a common enemy, surface clans always banded together even in the middle of a blood feud. It was tradition, and great dishonor came to any who held onto personal gripes when faced with a dangerous enemy. And the enemy behind them was far more dangerous than anything any clan had to fight.

Loyalty and treason were ultimately judgements for the clan lord alone. The clan knights would serve and leave the decisions to him. And of all missions she'd taken part of, this one felt particularly important not just to the clan but all humanity. Enough so that even the clan lord himself would hedge his own home against the success. She'd work with the Winterscars as if they were her own brothers and sisters, and let them be judged once the snow had settled.

The occult pulsed around them again in the subtle tell-tale sign of their hunter. This time it sounded right behind her. She ignored the chill spreading down her back, diving further into the soul fractal to escape her body's fear. Her armor crouched mid-sprint, letting the boot slide against the ground with a few sparks, twisting herself around gracefully, one hand aiming the knightbreaker while the other held a blade at the ready.

"Rear flank." She called out, alerting the rest of the team. Armors had shown difficulty measuring or detecting the Occult, they lacked the hardware and software to do so, despite being made of the occult themselves. Teamwork was needed as the enemy had already preyed on this blindspot before.

She was going to open fire with the knightbreaker this time instead of holding onto it in reserve. The Feather hunting them all had shown himself immune to threats, unlike To'Accar who'd been forced to engage more cautiously so long as a weapon was trained on him.

Pale blue light came from the rock wall, and a pale blue figure stepped through, similar to the wraiths the Winterscar scion had summoned before. In his hands, a ghostly chain spun around, already gathering speed.

The figure materialized, turning solid again, and dragging the dangerous weapon into reality with him. She didn't have time to soak in the details, as the chain whip was speeding directly at her with the mace-head tip.

Her number was up. She pressed down on the trigger the moment he was material enough.

An instant after, she threw herself to the side, slamming her shoulder into a rough dodge roll. Occult pulsed across the tip of the chainweapon as it sailed by her, just as she recovered from her roll. The shockwave leaping out from the weapon was caught by her armor's shields, strong enough to throw her into the wall. It jolted her neck and head violently to the side. She could see bits of her organs shake through the soul sight, but the hit hadn't been direct. The shockwave was minor, force transferring through the air and rapidly losing the dangerous edge. Her neck would feel sore once all of this was over, but so would most of her body given the hits she'd already taken on this mission.

Loraii was still alive and capable of combat. That was a victory in itself.

Her own shot had been fired with expert aim and flew right into the figure. Then the round went through the figure, slamming against the wall behind him.

She hissed a curse under her breath. The Feather had gone immaterial right as the shell was about to collide against him. A moment later, he was corporal again, withdrawing the chain in midair, the movements defying gravity and all logic as the chain returned back into a swinging circle in his hands. A twist around himself and the chain again raced out, seeking for another victim in a straight line forward.

Directly at Javalin this time, the clan knight rushing forward to intercept alongside the two others holding the rearguard. They'd passed by Loraii a moment ago, becoming the largest threat to the Feather now.

The knight jumped to the side of the attack, only for the Feather's hand to grip the occult chain at the base. The section touched instantly winked out of power, allowing the enemy to manipulate the weapon with ease. The chain's mace end redirected from the tug at the base of the hilt, and slammed into Javalin's exposed side.

The occult pulse came out again, and Javalin was tossed far into the wall, shields flaring up as chunks of rock cracked and flew off from the destruction. His medical report turned from orange to red as he bounced off the rock and down into the ground. Too much internal bleeding inside, too many fragmented bones cutting away at the man's soft tissues.

Despite the damage, he was already standing back up on one knee as quickly as he could. The chain was recalled, and then swung back, like a wide occult scythe, seeking him out again from a side angle, relentless.

Javalin drew out his blade, angling it like a shield against the bright blue chainlinks of the Feather's weapon.

His edge held against the chain as it crashed into him.

And then the mace-tip continued its path, wrapping around the knights side, arm, back and helmet neck guard. Shields flared up, trying to protect their user in one last desperate attempt, but Loraii had seen this happen twice already. Just like knightbreakers, this Feather's weapon also ate away shields faster than an eyeblink.

Javelin didn't have time to utter a gasp of surprise. His shields flared and broke. Fractals on his armor lit up, the occult dome shields holding off the chain. Willpower pitted against the very concept of destruction.

Javelin held off the chain long enough for him to yank his reserve knife out of his boot and launch it against the Feather with one last war cry.

The enemy's spare hand backhanded the thrown weapon, taking a slight dip in his shield in the exchange. One of the few times any damage had been sucessfully dealt. Almost at the same moment, the chains broke past Javalin's occult defense and ripped into his arm, chest and neck, cutting through the armor as if it didn't exist.

Loraii's HUD showed his name turn grey. He'd been one of the better trained knights with those fractals. Far better at it than she was. Now, all that was left of the knight was cut sections of armor, and far, far too much blood.

Another one of them dead. A veteran, a dozen years of history and close calls, hundreds of expeditions where he'd returned successful and alive - all to end up here. Killed in a blink of an eye.

The other two knights continued their wild sprint forward, ignoring the grim sight, eyes focused only on the enemy. Nearly there.

The Feather withdrew his chain again, the hilt he carried outright eating the links back into itself, far too much mass for it to hide. There had to be some kind of space folding fractal within that hilt hiding the true length of the weapon. His armored foot stepped back, and flicked her spent knightbreaker round up and into his spare hand. The Feather nodded, then turned translucent again, walking backwards into the wall, melting into it, as the two clan knights ripped into the earth and rock with their blades, failing to catch the thief.

They cursed loudly, one slamming an arm against the rock in impotent fury.

"Mark a third round stolen." Icestride prime called out. "Note that the enemy is attempting to bait our attacks in order to secure the rounds. We'll need to open fire on him when he has no choice but to remain manifested. All units, hold fire on knightbreakers until further notice or if you're completely sure it will connect."

The Feather had begun his reign of terror with thievery twenty minutes ago. Appearing behind the team with no weapons and two free hands. With those, he'd unhooked two knightbreakers, launchers and all, from the backs of two knights before turning immaterial again and slipping away with his haul. They'd been forced to hold onto their weapons with one hand now, just to be sure the weapons couldn't be stolen again.

The Feather had tried again, and thus far hadn't been able to steal more rounds.

Now he had three rounds to his name. All because Loraii hadn't been fast enough on the trigger. If she could have had that round slam into the scraphead the moment he'd attempt his chain occult trick, it might have worked. She should have fired earlier, before he'd materialized.

"We can't outrun him." Their leader said, thinking. "Form up into a defensive ball, Icewing, eyes on the ceiling. Tempest knights, eyes on the floor. Everyone else, cover your angle. We'll escape this slowly. Eyes out for possible explosives or structurally weak ceilings. A cave in is likely his next plan."

The knight was an experienced veteran of her House, and the third highest ranking knight, with Windrunner and Clan Lord Atius taking the higher ranks. He was growing on the years, white hair and heavy wrinkles claiming his head, while his bones barely supported his movements anymore.

In armor, the man was among their most deadly knights. Not just for his skill with the blade, but also his uncanny ability to ferret out machine and raider movements ahead of time. She'd been on expedition with him as a lead more than a dozen times over her career. Windrunner was more politically powerful, and a better swordsman, but in terms of tactics, she'd trusted the Icestride Prime.

Though perhaps she was being biased, considering he was part of her House.

Their group moved at a far more comfortable pace now, all in lockstep with one another.

Occult pulsed once more, and this time the Tempest knights called out on comms the direction.

A blue wraith's head lifted from underground, eyes watching. Realizing he'd been spotted from all the weapons pointing directly at his face, he vanished back underground, aborting the attack.

The next attack had been within the minute, where he had appeared already ahead of the team, past a turn they'd been approaching.

The moment the Winterscar knights checked their angle, a chain was already soaring to the front one. He moved on sheer reflex, turning his torso and taking a small step to the side, letting the chain soar past his helmet, trusting the warriors behind him to handle the attack.

Behind, a House Tempest knight had a blade slashing up, slapping against the chain tip and throwing the mace end up and into the wall. The occult detonation hit a moment later, ripping chunks of rocks down, revealing rays of artificial light above. Water poured in from the hole, dropping down like a waterfall into the tunnels, swiftly building up at their feet before sweeping down the path.

The ceilings were thin here. They must be close to the temple entrance, just under the lake of shallow water that surrounded the temple.

The Winterscar knights charged forward at the monster before them, moving as a team in a perfect example of a flying V formation. Rookie soldiers with little experience they may be, they were still clan swordmasters who'd been trained with aspirations to become relic knights. They all knew how to fight both individually and as a team.

The Feather twirled the chain back and once more went for a scything attack. Low enough to the ground all four knights leapt above it without pause. The Feather hummed, eyes narrowing through those spectacles of his. A pale white armored gauntlet once more reached to the base of the chain, pushing it with the back of his hand, and pulled the chain like a knight fishing against a reel.

The chain obeyed his command, striking the wall, bouncing off and redirecting back at an angle. She knew what would happen next. At this angle, the knights would be forced to crouch under. And right as they did, the Feather would use that hand already on the chain, moving his body in sync, and force the chain down on the crouching knight like an executioner's blade.

One more of them would die again.

The Winterscar knight closest did just that, crouching to avoid the attack, blade lifted with one hand, ready in guard for an attack that would only wrap around his defense and end him in one blow.

The Feather followed through, a step back, twisting his torso and chest all the while manipulating the chain. A burst of occult spread through it, halting it's prior speed, hanging still in the air for only a moment before it soared down to wrap around the caught knight.

His blade struck out, connected with the occult chain, and then he pushed further. Using the occult edge on his blade like a makeshift hand, forcing the chain to the side as he twisted out of the way. A deflection and dodge in one fluid motion.

The result was brilliant. The chain crashed against the ground, harmless again.

The Feather recalled the chain - or attempted to. Another Winterscar stomped down hard on the mace end of the chain, blade flying down to stab the weapon through one of the links and pin it to the ground before it could slither away back to its master.

He succeeded, the tip of his sword digging perfectly through one of the open links, and then sinking further into the rock.

The Feather's strength was simply too much for his armor or the rock under him to hold against. The chain flew back to the owner's hilt as if nothing had tried to hold it back in the first place, while the Winterscar's blade ripped out of his hand, the rocks under him breaking apart with little resistance, destabilizing his footing.

The enemy observed the tunnel cautiously, a hand on the hilt of his spare longsword, as the other two Winterscar knights neared within striking distance. She could tell he was contemplating his odds, weighing how much time he had before the rest of the knight and herself descended on him.

The Winterscars slashed for his throat and arms, both blades going through the transparent wraith. He rematerialized, the blade in one hand, the shortened chain in the other. Using the blade as a spare hand to move his chain, all the while stabbing and striking out against the two knights with incredible speed. Each time they came close to a hit, he turned immaterial, allowing the blow to pass by for a split-second.

But in doing so, he was giving up his own chance of dealing damage alongside, the immaterial chain sailing through a Winterscar's chestplate in one such clash.

Attempts to deal damage to the Winterscar knights only opened him up for counter attacks, and while he moved far faster than either of the knights, there were two of them and both were looking for a chance to shoot him with the knightbreakers at point blank range. It was controlled chaos, slashes and stabs flying wildly, all of it parried, blocked, dodged or aborted midway to avoid danger as he took steps backwards.

The Feather fought against the pair with a cold calculating glare, contemplating each movement, each attack, each swing of his chain, seeking out weaknesses.

She saw the change in his objective the moment it happened. He stopped going for hits on the knights to whittle down their shields, and turned his attention to breaking apart those knightbreaker launchers. He managed one, cutting it near the hilt of the soldier's grip. The barrel flew free - and within it, the round itself remained.

He wasn't able to kick it away into his territory, the Winterscar knight too quick to spike the flying part down with the flat of his blade the moment it had been cut off, while the other instantly kicked the downed scrap backwards, into the rest of the clan knight formation and safe from the Feather's attempt to steal the weapon.

For once, the Feather looked annoyed at that. The first sign of true emotion on the creature.

The rest of the clan knights descended on the enemy a moment later. He chose to retreat back into the wall. Two was his limit. Fighting the knights in close quarters had been the most danger he'd let himself be in thus far.

Once more the knights hit against dull rock, leaving no trace of the enemy.

Their group huddled back into a defensive circle, not letting the enemy possibly catch them off guard. Icestride Prime nodded at the four knights with their blood red sigils. Calmly analyzing the battle, old eyes trying to discern every bit of information he could. He'd reached a conclusion. "He won't reappear." He said to the quiet group. "We've been adapting new methods of fighting him off with each encounter. Now, we've gone even with him for the first time. The next, we could score a victory. He will not take that chance. Once we make it out of the tunnels, we'll report all our findings to the clan lord. Including what worked and didn't."

The group took his word as law, forming up and continuing down the tunnel, to where the entrance of the temple might be.

They had to get through these tunnels and warn Lord Atius of the threat. Even against a full battalion of trained knights, all using the winterblossom technique in addition to knightbreakers, three of them had died, more had been wounded and ordinance had been stolen right from their hands.

It took another half hour to navigate to another entrance, and Icestride Prime's prediction had come true. They found light at the end of the tunnel, and exited out into the open air of the temple ruins, safe and alive. Comms connection returned instantly, including with the Shadowsongs left behind the parameter, and the away team further into the temple.

The Feather never reappeared since their last fight. She didn't know if she should be thankful, or worried. With every clash, they'd gained some information on how to fight him. Information that had come at the cost of their lives, but could save Lord Atius and the others alongside him.

Regardless, they survived the gauntlet.

And now they could take the fight to the enemy.

Next chapter - More points into sneak

Book 4 - Chapter 31 - More points into sneak

"How's about there?" I asked, pointing at the three dimensional map outlined over our HUD. "Cozy spot I think."

Cathida cackled, connecting the dots. "Trying to avoid hard work even in this situation?"

What made this spot different from the other possible candidates with weak flooring was a massive stone pillar that was still standing nearby. Which wouldn't stay intact for very long after we showed up and did knightly things to it.

Pillar falls over, crashes into ground, collapses floor and we've got a way down into the second level. "Work smart, not hard. Never work hard." I shot back, looking back at my sister for backup. "Right Kidra?"

"If my dear brother isn't trying to avoid hard work, I would consider him a possible imposter." She said drolly, ever my loyal and kindhearted sister. Windrunner hummed along, in agreement, the traitor.

"Cutting the pillar down would save a good chunk of time from your way down to the basement directly." Cathida said. "Plesh-squire plan, but it could actually work out."

"Any objections?" I asked to my group of critics.

With a few headshakes, our next plan was in motion. And our crew sprinted away like pipe bugs hiding from a search light. We'd shaken To'Avalis's eyes on us, but the rat was probably cooking up another plan to get visual on us again. So we kept a close eye around for machine sounds, strange signals, and keeping to the shadows.

Halfway through to our destination, we found out what he was up to. Indirectly.

A whole series of previously grayed out nametags on our squad list turned back to green, signifying they were once more in comms contact. The team that got split up from us had found a way out of the tunnels, and so were in general comms range once again now that there wasn't a few hundred tons of rocks in between our groups.

"Away team, come in. This is Icestride prime, in current command of the split off tunnel team. Respond." A voice came up on the comms system, following all the standard encryptions.

Windrunner picked up. "This is Windrunner. Lord Atius is indisposed, I've taken temporary command. Status?"

"We found a way through the tunnel systems leading into the temple. Sending map data now. We'll be attempting to advance into the temple, however it looks like we're some distance from you."

There was a ping and update on our HUDs.

Ankah showed up on the comms not a moment later, having heard and gotten the update. "Shadowsong to away teams, should we advance into the tunnels and regroup? To'Sefit is no longer active."

"Negative." Windrunner sent back. "Keep a lookout for machine reinforcements. When they come, we'll need to know. You'll redeploy into the tunnels after visual confirmation, ground team has cleared the tunnels, you should be able to sprint through with little difficulty."

She sent back confirmation, returning to her vigil along with her two minions and some of the wounded knights we'd left behind.

The tunnel team wasn't done with their report, hitting us with bad news next. "All teams, be aware, we've run into another Feather, capable of phasing through walls with hit and run tactics. Black level threat." Black level wasn't something used lightly. That was the most dangerous possible threat assessment knights used, something of the level that would require an entire clan's worth of knights to fight off. "Weapons seen in use are as follows: A chain whip, longsword, and three knightbreakers." The Icewing knight reported.

"Knightbreakers?" Windrunner asked, just as stupefied as us all.

"Confirmed. Knightbreakers. Target's first attacks were to unhook and steal knightbreakers from us before we knew to beware. He's made further attempts to recover additional knightbreakers from our team. We've repelled him thus far."

Phasing through walls? That didn't sound like To'Sefit's kit, and To'Orda didn't show any sign of wanting to even move from his spot. Not to mention this Feather was trying to steal my gear. So To'Avalis. Using a chain weapon huh? Someone's been stealing my ideas on top of my actual gear.

"He'll phase through walls behind you, unhook the knightbreaker launchers and phase out again, with the weapon." The clan knight said, continuing his report. "We've seen him bait attacks in order to recover the shells. They're ineffective against him, phasing through his ability."

To'Orda had gone out of his way to stomp on every knightbreaker he could, and To'Avalis was out here swiping them up from our team. The Feathers were worried about those weapons and taking actions to mitigate how hard we could hit with them. That was worrisome. And also a good sign we had weapons they didn't want to deal with directly if they could avoid it.

"What's the counter you've devised against theft?" Windrunner asked.

"Nothing groundbreaking or clever, sir. So long as you are situationally aware and prepared, you can twist away and avoid his grab. Holding onto the weapons themselves has proven reliable, but we've seen him attempt to cut the round directly out of the launcher tube."

"That worked for him?" I asked, but surprise was rapidly fading. This was a Feather, and they could move like an intercept frigate through combat. And hit just as hard.

"Negative, your knights improvised against him in time before he could extract the round and run. We've noticed he needs to fully pass through walls in order to rematerialize and affect the world again. It takes him a second. Have full lookouts from all directions, including up and down, he's tried to attack from those directions already."

"Knightbreakers will be something to be wary of. I liked them better when pointed at the enemy." Cathida said. "Couldn't have put some kind of lock down on them? A security feature so this kind of silverscrap isn't something to deal with? Journey's distressed about the idea of having to tank one of your nightmare weapons."

"Had considered it," I said, sighing. "But putting on the microrockets behind the shells was more important at the time. Plus I didn't have any good ideas on how to add security. Lock the launcher to be only triggered by relic armors, and they can't be used in case you don't have armor anymore. Lock it by some kind of authentication signal, and I'd need to start putting in a lot of circuitry inside each launcher. A physical key would slow down setting up the launcher, and if we lose it, we're stuck in the wastes with no airspeeder."

"Excuses, Winterscar." Ankah said with a scoff. "This is on your head. You've created weapons of destruction with little oversight."

"I didn't see anyone bringing this issue up when I distributed them around, so excuse me princess." I shot back. Not to mention there's nothing stopping To'Avalis from simply ripping the knightbreaker round out itself and swinging it around like Atius had on his second encounter with To'Aacar. I'd need to both add security on the launchers and the rounds.

That was quickly going from impractical to impossible.

"Cut the chatter," Windrunner ordered. "All knights, note, we've found two possible methods To'Avalis can track you." Windrunner said, "He may have direct eyes on your team, specifically with spiders following in the general area out of sight. Additionally, it's possible you have transmitter bugs magnetized on your armor. We'll send the reverse frequency and details you'll need. Now that you're outside the tunnels, you'll need to advance to the mite forge without being spotted."

The armors complied, already sending a data package with what we'd discovered of the little bugs. "Make sure you've eliminated all eyes on your team and have an escape plan in action before you jam their signal. You want to vanish into the darkness, and not give the machines any time to triangulate your possible movements the moment you disappear."

Knights returned all-green on that.

"I need a threat assessment on To'Avalis, this is the first we've confirmed an attack from him."

"Three dead, four wounded." The knight immediately answered, "Alone and with next to no danger to himself, he's already caused a significant amount of damage to our team of fully equipped relic knights. The chain weapon's tip has some kind of occult pulse that's caused internal damage in addition to heavy knockback. Used to displace and isolate our warriors." The clan knight said. "The chain itself acts like a knightbreaker's chain would, but there's only one. If it wraps around an armor, the effects are almost instant death. With a sword it's possible to deflect and push the chain off course before it wraps around, the Winterscars figured that out. Transmitting the combat log."

"How often is he attacking?" I asked, watching some of the footage.

"Only appeared a few times, Master Keith. He stopped once we had begun testing out possible counters. After the sword counter was discovered, he hasn't yet reappeared."

"Won't allow us any practice." I noted. "Figures. Did the most damage he could, and ran once the knights started to mount up a defense. Souls recovered?"

"Confirmed, we've housed the dead knights within our spare soul fractals. They're safe with us. We're carrying armor remaints with us as well." Which meant they'd snapped off a piece of armor that would house the armor's self-repair swarm. It'll take a week or so to bring those armors back online, but far better than to run around with the full armors.

We swapped more details, including what we'd gone through as I went through the combat footage. Word on how Lord Atius was incapacitated rattled the clan knights, but they knew the score with a Deathless. He couldn't die, and out of all of us, he was the most expendable member if it came down to it. Not a fact the knights liked to think about, but we were on mission. No luxuries down here.

And we had a date with an old molding pillar, specifically to ruin it's day.

"Shadowsong to all units, detecting movement ahead outside the forest." Ankah said over the comms.

Good timing that. The group and I were hacking away with blades on a large leaning pillar. From what Cathida confirmed, cutting this down in the right way would hit the ground and knock a hole into the next level down.

"Windrunner actual, copy. Enemy movement?"

"About to confirm. Scans show a large number making their way here." She said.

"I don't think it's a convoy of merchants dropping by." I said, "Might want to assume it's evil and head down to rejoin the clan knights."

A few more careful swipes from our occult blades and the pillar started to groan. Rocks began to break away in puffs of white dust, as the entire thing started to lean. Windrunner hurried to the right side, boot lifted up, convincing the massive thing to fall in just the right away. "The Winterscar has it right. Shadowsongs, fall back into the tunnel system and regroup with I1 and the rest of the knights."

"Understood." She said, then paused. "Locke confirms the approaching movement is a machine army. Or the start of one. We have it on our scopes."

"Chance of holding them off?" Windrunner asked, voice making it clear he didn't expect much.

"Nonexistent." Ankah said. "In open terrain, we will not hold for long. Even with our advantages."

The pillar finally gave in, the last bits of rock holding it up cracking into pieces. It began to topple down in an arc, right to open ground. When it hit, the ground caved in with little resistance. The cloud of particles left behind was tinted red, showing some kind of working light system within the temple's closed off section.

"Right then, back to the original plan, see if you can regroup with the main forces." Windrunner ordered. "Bring your wounded with you, the larger group will be the safer location. Continue primary objective of reaching the mite forge. We'll likely need the backup by the time you arrive."

"Confirmed," Icewing Prime and his clan knights sent out over the comms. "We'll look for the Shadowsongs as they come out of the tunnels."

A confirmation ping came back, the Shadowsongs moving onto their new objective.

"I've got a possible idea." I said. "On how we can make use of this."

"Oh?" Windrunner prodded. "I'm all ears."

"See, Avalis doesn't know where we are anymore, but he likely knows where the clan knights are right now. They haven't yet found a good spot to pull off a disappearing act yet. So when the shadowsongs meet up with them, they could start heading to a location opposite of us, and not quite near the mite forge. Avalis might think they're coming to link up with us."

"And in the process he'll send more forces in that direction." Kidra completed for me. "That could work."

"So long as he doesn't think we're underground, we get some extra points into sneak." I said, walking over to check out our new way down.

And speaking of extra points, the underground basement level looked quite nice for that.

Kidra and I landed down, deep into the wet gloom. Large puddles spread across the ground here, getting filled up further from the waterfalls of the upper level's water spilling down. The red tint in the air turned out to be from the wall lights, where the mites had embedded some kind of haphazard crystals that glowed. I found myself near one, tapping it with an idle finger, trying to figure out if the crystal itself emitted light, or if they were decoration for an actual light.

Wrath. I sent out. How good is machine sight? Say within your Runners?

Similar to humans in quality. Although infrared spectrum is included, the wavelengths captured are otherwise identical enough.

Then they'd have a hard time looking out for things in the dark that don't emit heat?

They would. She confirmed. How do you intend to do that?

I looked at the crystal decorations around the wall, reaching out with the soul sight and finding what I thought was going on. Turns out mites do cut corners, they were all regular glass crystals. And the light behind - all wired.

If there's wire, then there's a power source. And if we could cut out all the lights underground, we'd have the advantage. Knight helmets had a lot more sensors than just visuals. They frankly had far more sensors than any armored suit really needed, but now it was coming in handy. Here would be an excellent lesson in why more sensors were better than less, even if most of the data was junk.

They had less and we had more. We had a team on the top level that could run distractions, say exploding something near a power source for plausible deniability.

A power source that could potentially light up all of the basement level.

We could see in the dark.

And the cheap mass manufactured machines couldn't.

Next chapter - Under the temple

Book 4 - Chapter 32 - Under the temple

Somewhere up on the surface, a heavy explosion took place, multiple stacked grenades lighting up and ripping apart the temple ruins.

At the very same moment, my occult blade cut through massive power cables deep underwater, spreading out from the floor. Kidra and Windrunner each cut their own respective cables at the same time, and a few more cuts later, there wasn't a single power cable still whole.

The briefing had mentioned the basement level was flooded. That part was true. What they hadn't mentioned was that it was an entire river down here. Our movements made no sound we could hear, even with us being the ones making it. Mostly because everything was drowned out by the sound of the running river we'd found ourselves waist deep in, a dull constant roar that crashed against distant walls.

The strong current that constantly threatened to swamp us, given we were all carrying stuff in awkward angles, including keeping our rifles elevated out of this whole mess.

They could still work if they took a dip in the bath, so long as there wasn't a puddle of water left in the barrel. Ammunition rated for military use were all sealed, keeping the powder safe. Undersiders had even more reason to make sure their ammunition was waterproof, since they might actually run into the issue while surface dwellers had very little chance to run into any kind of water that wasn't frozen solid. Still, no reason to take chances until it was necessary.

A Wrath in a sack couldn't complain too much about getting an impromptu dip in cold water, the rifle might.

The basement level of the temple had stark differences from the above layer. For one, it wasn't stone down here. A lot of the temple showed signs of being flooded, only now left with water fountains from the walls spraying out water into the puddles on the ground, which streamed down, forming small rivers.

Metal lined walls and flooring, with red crystals jutting from the ground. Above the river, suspended in the air in smaller groupings, were blocks of red or white, opposing the organic archways and smooth walls. Never in the path we needed to walk through. Sometimes entire pillar sections were eliminated, replaced by the geometric cubes floating around as if they were part of the pillar holding an arch or ceiling up.

The lights were far more down-to-earth, with power sources that made sense. The wiring led us all the way here, where a mess of larger cables became visible. It looked like snakes all slithering out of the ground to a nest under the water. The closer we'd come to the mite forge, the deeper the stream became, until everything was waist deep. I'd been expecting it to go up to my chest, so the briefing had been exaggerating, or water had slowly evaporated out over the years. This was easily traversable.

Once we'd gotten to the source of power, all we had to do was wait for the sound of an explosion. The surface team hadn't gone lightly with it too, the detonation we heard echoed through the tunnels, even over the sound of the rushing water.

I expected the world to turn dark instantly after we'd cut the power cables, instead the red lights held. Which wasn't according to plan.

Was there a backup source of light?

Just as I was about to call our plan a bust, the red around us started to fade, darkness slowly growing around until it wrapped everything in a tender hold.

"Oh, duh. Capacitors." I said, realizing we'd done the right job. The last bits of energy were bleeding out.

"Whatever Reacher jargon that is, I'm glad the plan's working." Windrunner said. "The surface team should be heading to the mite forge now, we can beat them there and prevent any ambush getting together. They shouldn't see us coming."

My HUD lit up with a wireframe image of the surroundings, not quite details but enough to traverse the now pitch black flooded terrain with little issue.

"First objective is information gathering." Windrunner said. "In the dark, we'll be able to move around and avoid patrols if we run into them. The water will hide the sound of our footsteps, and it slows both us and them down equally. Second objective is possibly eliminating rogue patches of stranded machines if we can. Is that at all possible?"

"Maybe if we can jam their signals? Underground there's a lot of stone for signals to bounce around, the walls here are full metal so nothing's going through. Wouldn't be out of the ordinary for groups to go in and out of connection as they move around." I said.

"I don't believe that is a good course of action. If we fail for any reason, To'Avalis will know something is destroying his forces underground and react accordingly." Kidra said. "We should use the darkness to map out where they are setting ambushes, and attack all at once when we're ready."

Windrunner hummed, thinking quickly between the two options. "Kidra's points are valid." he said. "We'll stick with the primary objective. Secrecy is more valuable than eliminating a few packs of isolated machines. If we can get the drop on To'Sefit and eliminate her, it'll be more valuable than any amount of machine kills."

"What are we going to do with Captain Sagrius and Atius?" Kidra asked, shifting the Winterscar captain on her back. I was busy carrying Wrath, while Windrunner was in charge of the clan lord. He'd gone unconscious a few times since, his condition bouncing between recovering and getting worse.

We could carry one deadweight, but three was going to drag us down in these flooded tunnels. The current was strong, and the added surface area was giving our relic armors a run for their scrap. Anytime we hit combat, we'd need to unstrap before we could do any kind of movement. They might get swept away if we're not here to stop it.

"If it comes down to it, I'm fear we'll need to leave them in the dark someplace safe while we handle the machines. There's no choice on this." Windrunner's helmet turned to me, outlined in green on Journey's vision. "Keith, Tenisent, you've got until we reach the mite forge to figure out something to do with your captain. After that, we'll need to hope Lord Atius regains his senses and takes care of your captain while we're away."

On the necklace Sagrius had equipped, Father's voice carried out. "We understand. The other knights and I still have a few more options to explore. We all know the mission comes first, if it comes down to it, we'll try to bring his soul with us instead. Our only issue is that artificial souls aren't easily moved out of a fractal, they seem rooted on a conceptual level, tied to their homes."

And Sagrius was intertwined with his armor's soul, so he was stuck with the armor. That was making things difficult. "Can we physically cut out the armor's soul fractal and carry it with us?"

"That's what we intend to call for as our last resort. We are touching on subjects outside our mortal ken, boy. Caution is needed. For all we know, we may bar him from an afterlife."

Windrunner nodded while he undid Atius's relic armor helmet off his shoulder pad, fastening it onto the comatose Deathless. While the river obscured any kind of footsteps, a coughing Deathless might be different enough to be noticed. "We'll have to go with this for now. Lord Atius can be left behind without issue, if he dies, he'll reappear somewhere he's already been. The worst case is that we lose his armor down here, and that's not the same kind of blow that it used to be a few months ago. He would understand. Sagrius… not so much. I hope for his sake something is figured out between you all, because we're running out of time for him. As Tenisent said, the mission comes first. If everything goes exactly as hoped, we may be able to loop back for him on extraction."

Wrath only needed the control and command nodes of her nanoswarm fixed up, and just enough of her head to access them. From there she could repair the rest of the damage herself. The mite forge didn't need to repair her to full health.

Although given that an army of machines were approaching, we might need her completely repaired and helping us scythe a way out. An army of Screamers wasn't as dangerous to us if we worked as a group. The Feathers were the part that complicated things.

It might end up that the only way out was to destroy To'Sefit and To'Avalis both, before we could take on whatever he'd managed to drag here as a first wave.

To'Sefit in specific. If she was alive, the machines could dogpile on us and let her turn the entire melee into smoke and ash, friend and foe alike.

With a communal nod, our group began to advance towards the center of the temple, where the mite forge was outlined. It would be slow going, with a lot of dead ends and having to redouble back. We had no map of the second basement layer, only a general sense of direction. It would have to do for now.

I thought about what we could do for Sagrius on the way. Father had the soul aspect covered. He and the other knights stuck in limbo were the best bet we had, they had nothing else to focus on.

So any solution from me had to come from the armor itself, a solution from technology. I put to mind all the armors could do. Root administrators could do absolutely everything. General administrators could do more things than guest users, but it still needed the local user to approve anything over remote command.

I was a general administrator, but Sagrius was in a coma and unable to consent to anything. There had to be something I could work with here.

The outline of a plan came to mind. Something that might just work if the rules were squinted at. Armor sought to protect its user in any way it could, if it had a chance to squint at the rulebook, it would.

And we were in territory not covered by any rulebook right now, which is exactly the kind of land I was more than happy to run around in.

"Journey, pull up Sagrius's armor specs." I asked, looking over the list sent over. His armor showed it was manufactured earlier than Journey, though the schematics it followed were the version 1.2 of the armor, while Cathida's was 1.5

It was odd that an older version of armor was created later on, while Cathida's armor was a more advanced version. The specs and abilities between the armors looked somewhat identical, though Journey was a little stronger with different synthetic muscle fibers in new places. Journey had a better range of motion as a result. Software wise, a bunch of numbers and jargon was there, though it looked identical to Journey's, guess that means the difference between versions is only raw capability, nothing was touched software wise. And both older and newer versions were crafted by the mites to this day.

The captain had named his armor Aegis, after an imperial crusader who'd appeared in one of our stories. That tale was about a Retainer knight fighting off a slaver attack, and left to die within one of their fortresses. Aegis had remained at the side of the hero, even though he had no orders to remain, and ultimately held the line against three enemy knights long enough for the hero to finish unlocking an airspeeder where they all escaped.

The tale had been about the heroism of the knight, but also a nod to the imperial religion on their own long standing friendship with the surface clans. Given the armor had been taken from Slavers attacking the Winterscar compound, Sagrius must have found the name of an imperial knight that protected the hero against slavers to be fitting.

"Aegis, if you're tied with your user and any motion you make is mimicked by him, are you able to move yourself around through him?"

"Unknown command. No default instructions set." The armor said, the voice coming out of both Sagrius and over the comms since the two were too tangled together on the soul level. The inflection in Sagrius's vocal cords were the only difference between his armor's monotone voice, and his own.

Creepy as it was, so far so good.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Windrunner asked, confused. "No default instructions?"

"If my armor-to-human translation is correct, I think it means Aegis isn't moving Sagrius because it wasn't programmed to move a human around. It doesn't know what to do, so it defaults to doing nothing."

"That seems… odd." Kidra said. "It can speak with his mouth, isn't that moving the captain's body in a way? Perhaps it can access the captain's muscle memory?"

"If you asked a newborn baby to start running a lap and swimming in the baths, the only thing you'll get is a very angry mother calling security on you, if you're lucky. But more probably beating you up with a crowbar. Ask a baby to do something it already knows how to do, like cry a lot, it'll be perfectly happy to scream. Same with the armor. It knows how to speak, but it doesn't know how to move independently, even if it should be perfectly able to. Got to think more like a program and less like a human. They follow a very strict rulebook, I need to give it something like a guiding hand. Or another rulebook it can follow."

"So where are you going to get a rulebook on how to move around from the ground up?" Windrunner asked.

"Here's the good news. I know exactly where a rulebook like that exists. Aegis," I called out to it, taking my gamble. "Do you recognize me as an administrator?"

I did have that designation, given by Tsuya herself. It should still be active and recognized by other armors.

"User: Winterscar, Keith. This user's permissions are currently set to general administrator." Aegis said with that eerie echo.

Good, that means I've got wiggle room to bend the rules with. Now it's time for my master plan. If I couldn't get Sagrius back on his feet, I could go for the second best option.

"Aegis, is it possible to create a predictive model of Captain Sagrius?"

Next chapter - The Mite Forge

Book 4 - Chapter 33 - The Mite Forge

"Insufficient user data to generate predictive model. Three thousand operation hours required for predictive modeling to pass acceptable percent accuracy. Twenty thousand hours recommended before diminishing returns reached." Sagrius said from Kidra's back as our group marched through the river.

"Does that mean your plan doesn't pan out?" Windrunner asked from the front.

"In my defense, I never said all my plans work out. In fact, historically, most of them don't."

"You are filling us all with great confidence here." He answered back.

I gave a shrug. "Eh, that's what plan B, C, and D are for. At least, once I figured them out. Give me a second to think." If I couldn't get a rulebook from the source himself, I'd settle for another rulebook closer to home. "Can the Winterscar amor send motion data of Tenisent?" I asked. "Or better yet, the combat engram itself if Winterscar hasn't deleted it yet."

"Winterscar confirms it still has the data at one hundred twenty thousand, four hundred forty-nine hours?" Kidra said, "There's also a file with a warning symbol flashing next to it on my HUD. I believe this is the actual engram."

"What's all the Reacher jargon about?" Windrunner asked, recognizing the words but not the context behind it.

"You weren't around to see it, but we had Winterscar generate a predictive model of Father's movements and combat skills. It worked, and then the Occult happened at the same time, so half-worked." I turned my attention to Kidra. "If I had to guess, it hasn't deleted the engram just yet, but instead it's keeping it under quarantine. It has… let's say opinions about that engram. Wasn't a great time for it. Because, you know, Occult."

Windrunner nodded slowly, "Not sure I understand, and we don't have time to explain it all to me. If it could work, do it. If it doesn't work, leaves us right back to our current plan. Two possible plans are better than one."

"Aegis, can you reuse that combat engram?" I asked. Hoping it would give me the answer I wanted it to.

The armor processed the request, a noticeable pause in the calculations. Which wasn't normal for armors.

"Loading signs are showing on the HUD." Kidra answered my unworded question. "I believe the armor is sending more than the engram."

"Cathida, what are the armors saying to each other?" I asked, curious to the gossip going on in the background.

"Blah blah blah, danger danger danger, don't touch it or turn it on. Spooky occult pyrite is going to happen. Users are being morons and setting you up. The usual scrapshit." She said, bored. "Your family armor had a pretty traumatizing experience and is still healing up parts of its soul that your Father ate when he took the pilot seat by force. Being a bit of a drama queen though. Journey doesn't agree with its conclusions, thinks it is putting its own self-preservation above the user's, which is a very big no-no for armors. They're all more surprised your family armor is so adamant about this and processing the validity."

All right, I was now a little worried Aegis wouldn't want to cooperate given what happened to Winterscar. The last time, Father's soul used the combat engram as a conceptual crack in the ice to sneak inside with all the subtlety of a crowbar.

"Should it ease their fear, I was the one to choose to take advantage of the opening. What happened to my armor was my doing." Father said from his necklace. "The resonance felt like an open path, and I made the decision to walk through it with force. Should it happen again to this armor, I won't interfere. I give my word on this."

"My armor, you mean." Kidra corrected.

"Affirmative." Aegis eventually said, deciding to take the chance, either out of its own conclusion or because of Father's promise to not try anything. "Combat engram data received. Verified valid file. Warning, potential virus noted and confirmed by filesource, designation: Winterscar. Threat level calculated within tolerances."

Winterscar remained carefully quiet on this. I got a feeling it was brooding, but that might just be me humanizing relic armors. Even Cathida was just Journey pretending to be the old bat and answering as the old bat would.

"Wait, let me get my weasels in line with their pipes here; you're trying to get the armor itself to move around using your Father's movements as the rulebook?" Windrunner asked, picking up on the plan.

I flashed him a thumbs up. "Yep, if we can't get the captain back on his feet, we could go for the next best thing, get the armor moving around so it won't be dead weight. It won't help Sagrius directly, but we won't need to leave him behind."

Windrunner whistled. "Lord Atius wasn't kicking the snow about Reachers and what you've been up to. Consider me a convert if this works out, kid."

The old bat gave her bits of unasked for advice. "That said, how are you going to get past the local user permission? Last I checked, your captain here is out cold. Journey and the rest of the armors are trying to figure out a way past this lock, but they haven't hit any gold yet on that front."

"Local user permission?" Windrunner asked, taking a closer look at the captain.

"Yep, that's a thing with armors." I said. "Watch. Aegis, activate the engram to help you move around and fight."

"Remote override rejected. Insufficient permissions. Root level permissions or administrator and user permissions required for remote override." Aegis said in Sagrius's strange voice.

"Any way you can just read and copy the engram movements, without applying them to the armor?" I pressed on, trying out my different options before I had to go with the crowbar version.

"Unknown command. No default instructions set for this action." Sagrius said, the armor not used to moving a human around even if it had an engram telling it how to move. We needed the engram online and working as the actual driver, leaving the armor at the pilot seat instead of the engine room.

"Tell me the specifics on how to authorize autonomous locomotion." I asked, moving onto plan C.

"All features that require autonomous locomotion are locked, requiring both physical user confirmation and administrator permission, or root administrator permissions. Local administrator permissions are waived only if no local users are active."

Word for word what Journey had told me all that time ago, when I was a bumbling kid trying to cheat as much of the system as I could. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"Local user is still alive in there, so Sagrius is considered active. You've got my permission, a general administrator. Now, you need Sagrius's permission, right?"

"Affirmative." The armor said.

"Good. And since your soul is currently puppeteering Sagrius somehow, repeat after me: Remote override approved."

Sure it wasn't Sagrius himself approving the request, but the armor's safety locks weren't intelligent. They were simply hardwired protections, a separate system armors couldn't touch or interfere with by design. That safety hardware heard the local user vocalize approval, and it wouldn't ask any other questions.

"Remote override approved." The armor dutifully said, and in doing so, made Sagrius say it as well. Aegis must have already caught on, because the very next words were very familiar to me.

"Releasing safety locks. Loading cognitive engram. Isolating model to directed assisted movement. Full cognitive engram, online."

I held a breath, but there was no occult pulse this time. No crackle of lighting, and no show of force. Father remained inside the necklace, at least from what I saw in the soul fractal. Sure he and the others all had their tendrils busy trying to keep the captain's soul together, but if Father saw a hole in the armor, he ignored it. And Sagrius remained connected with the armor's soul, no change happened to it either.

Instead, Captain Sagrius reached his arms behind his back and unhooked himself from Kidra's armor as if it were natural, falling down into the flowing river, up to his waistline. Wordlessly, he turned and began to march forward, taking a spot behind Windrunner and Kidra. The two stopped, looking over at the armor as if it had sprouted a few heads, which it might have for all we knew.

Agis stopped and glared at the two ahead. A beat passed, then it cracked its neck to the side, hand going to the hilt of the blade, while the helmet turned to examine the surroundings, as if searching for danger. The same kind of movement Father did whenever there was a hold up.

It was eerie. Extremely eerie.

"Aegis, are you… okay?" I asked, and watched as the armor turned its faceless head my direction.

"This unit is prepared for combat." It said, the voice remaining monotone with Sagrius's echo mixed in. "The Winterscar-Tenisent combat engram will be used to guide all further motion. No abnormalities detected. All systems working within tolerance."

Windrunner gawked, then shrugged, turned and continued the march forward. "No idea how any of this occult-Reacher scrapshit works, but ain't going to kick snow into a giftbox just because the wrapping's weird. If Sagrius can move and fight, that's all I care about."

Cathida cackled. "Oh it can do that all right. And this time around, none of that spooky hokus pokus. All within what Journey and the armors understand. Mind you, it's not going to fight as well as the old man did, or me of course. I'm better than any of you louts, but it'll work out well enough."

"What, should we have loaded your engram instead?" I asked. It was possible, we could swap it out. Father had beaten Cathida within the digital sea when we'd practiced, but that was his true self. This was just data mimicking his prior movements.

"Oh no, not at all." Cathida said. "Best set of data here would be your Fathers. Crusader techniques are widespread against the lower strata machines, but we're fighting upper strata machines here. Surface knights know this enemy and have plenty of tools to deal with them just as well as Imperials do. And surface techniques are a better match against Feathers. Crusaders don't fight and win against those, not worth wasting time to train against, we leave those for the Deathless."

"So why all this boasting about being better?" Windrunner asked, confused.

"The old bat never admits to anyone being better at fighting than she was." I said. "She lies like she breathes when it comes to that. You get used to it."

"Don't do much breathing anymore these days, deary. But you got the basics of it." Cathida cackled. "Now, get moving, Empire isn't paying per hour."

Crazy engram.

In the dark, our group of four pressed forward. The river's pull crashed and buckled against the red crystals and walls of the underground temple, creating an echoing cacophony that overshadowed any sound we made. The river slowed us down slightly, relic armor having little trouble powering through. If we hadn't been in armor, we'd have gotten pulled off our feet and swept down with no resistance given how violent it had gotten. Progress was steady until we ran into machines.

We saw them well before they were even in a position to see us. Machines, for whatever reason Relinquished had chosen, glowed violet. Especially their eyes. It wasn't much, but it did reveal their position like a beacon in this much darkness. Wrath had to keep her own shut down to avoid the glow, which effectively blinded her to everything save for what scraps of data Journey graciously sent over.

The Screamers waded through the stream, moving as a single file line, trying to keep the majority of their body out of the water as they pushed on. Twenty of them in this group. The one leading ahead constantly had one hand stretched out, holding onto the side of a wall for guidance. The rest followed behind, one arm reached out to keep hold of the front runner's back. Given the proportionally massive arms and loping gait they took on, not much of them was completely submerged in the water. It let them move through the stream, almost spiderlike. Keeping one hand busy to make sure they wouldn't lose each other was what truly slowed them down.

We froze as a group the moment we saw them. They came closer, their gait not showing any sign of difference, even as Journey revealed more details in wireframe. We all took a collective step to the other side of the large tunnel, the one they weren't holding onto for guidance, and ducked under the water. Rifles and all. The rest of our hands were holding onto the hilts of our weapons, ready to draw them out and destroy this group at the slightest hint of hostility. Their outlines weren't distorted as we sank, crouched low into the water.

They passed us by, completely oblivious of our existence. Wrath was right, their vision wasn't any better than a human's.

Windrunner drew a hand out, and motioned for us to follow.

They didn't howl or make any of the usual noises Screamers made when hunting around as a pack. These were clearly under orders. And if the thick walls did prevent orders from being sent out, this group must be on their way back to an important chokehold or backup site, likely the mite forge itself.

While they didn't do an all out rush, their movements were still moving with haste. They'd speak to each other using clicks and whistles, violet glowing eyes illuminating next to nothing but the side of the walls and tinting the white froth of the river a light purple. Almost impossible to hear over the river noises, but our armors had excellent hearing as part of their scanning suites.

And behind the machines, our group stalked a short distance away. Too far for them to overhear anything. Not far away enough for us to lose them.

We kept as much as we could submerged, leaving us virtually invisible to any of the machines taking a curious glance behind them into the darkness. Not that it happened, the machines walked with little fear.

As time went on, we drew closer and closer to the position marked on our map as the mite forge. Light came through on the other end. The machines crossed the threshold, gripping onto the sides of the tunnel and lifting themselves up one at a time, out of the tunnel and out of our sight.

Our group continued cautiously, fighting off against the current, staying underwater to take a peak at what lay on the other side. Here, we found our objective.

Windrunner cursed, breathed a bit, and cursed again. "Now what? Gods be damned, we'll need to kill those two feathers before we can retreat, and all that for nothing."

A massive ring of space stretched out before us, where all paths into the basement level led to. Massive ornate stairwells connected down from above, the second upper level winding into the sanctuary here in between the pillars that held the tower above.

The center of the temple.

The space here was huge, an outright ringed walkway surrounded the location, as wide as the main streets of the Undercity. But the edge had been clearly sliced off in small directed cuts, exactly the kind of damage To'Sefit could do if her plates moved during her shots. It made the entire ring edge look more like a large multi-gon.

I realized now why the area was noted down as simply flooded, rather than the powerful currents we'd run into. Why some of the sections further away were wet and filled with puddles instead of water.

The water was coming here from all directions, falling off the central hole like a waterfall. More water than whatever the mites had made to keep the temple supplied.

What's better than having to defend an objective?

Not having any objective to defend in the first place.

To'Avalis couldn't destroy the mite forge, but he sure could cut everything holding it attached to the temple and then let the whole thing fall down into the second strata below.

This might complicate things slightly.

Next chapter - Improvising

Book 4 - Chapter 34 - Improvising

Water rippled over our group of submerged insurgents, trying to drag us out into the open, outside the tunnel. The effect was rather… interesting.

The anti-gravity field the temple had for people jumping down to the second strata was still well and working. Thousands of water drops floated around, split from the churning water as it flowed down into the hole.

The weakened gravity quickly became only a minor force down there, with the power of the current becoming the dominant force, causing a whirlpool of water blocking its own path down. Otherwise a hole this large would have already drained the entire place clean of water by now. It was creating its own funnel in a way. The metallic debris floating through the water equally made everything under the whirlpool completely unreadable. No signals were going in or out through it.

Relic armor let us hold onto the ground, despite the torrent washing over us. And while physics was clearly drunk on vacation a few meters away, where we were right now it wanted nothing more than to wash us down into the gullet leading into the second strata down.

Meanwhile, we were having a get together and discussing issues with leisure.

"The mite forge wouldn't have broken down, it would have floated down gently." I said, pointing out the anomaly. "So good chances it's still in one piece working down there."

Abraxas had been the one to tell me about the anti-gravity function, but fortunately I didn't need to rat his name out since it was clear to everyone here what was going on. Or at least, clear to the armors who could do the number crunching required to figure out what the new gravity coefficient had to be to cause this kind of buildup a few meters away from us.

"Surprised this Feather wouldn't just destroy the forge in the first place." Windrunner said. "Is it really indestructible?"

"If they were destructible, the machines would have already eradicated any forge near human cities instead of committing entire armies to hold them down." Kidra countered, logical as always.

Mite forges are destructible. Wrath corrected. Although generally not acceptable as targets. Mites are known to retaliate with maliciousness and spite. This is why machines must surround forges with armies to keep them out of human hands, instead of destroying them directly.

"But moving it around is acceptable?" Windrunner asked, pointing to the circus happening outside the tunnel. "Seems to be bending the rules here."

No. Mite forges are conventionally unmovable. To'Avalis has found an edge case and abused it.

"One moment, go back a bit. Are you saying mite forges are smart and can hold a grudge?" I asked, a little incredulous. "Are we talking about a toolstation or some kind of creature here?"

More of a creature than a tool station. Mite forges need to be bargained with in order to gain access. Demands range from future favors owed that are never called on and forgotten about, or exotic material. They have been known to demand items they are able to forge themselves as well. It is redundant and arbitrary.

"Wouldn't someone be able to tell them to create the item and then feed it back to them as payment for other items?" Kidra asked. "That hardly makes sense from any point of view."

"That's actually exactly how it worked last time." Windrunner said. "I've run into a forge just once so far in my years. The forge demanded pieces of relic armor in exchange for medicine, and further repairs to our relic armors. We detached a few shoulderpads, threw them into the forge and it both created the pills we needed and reforged new shoulder pads for us all. Didn't understand how that worked then, still don't question it now."

Comms clicked for a second for all of us, a quick one-way set of pings. That meant the surface team had slipped the noose and were now sneaking around. Direct audio comms might get intercepted at this range, so ambiguous quick pings that could bounce around chaotically until they reached us was the best way to communicate safely.

The surface team was reporting in, approaching the central location. Ankah and the Shadowsongs had also joined up with the group since there was a final burst of static at the end, and the two clicks meant they had found a good opportunity to escape all eyes without issue. Some good news for once.

"We need to come up with a plan of action." Windrunner said. "The main force will be arriving into a possible death trap, all for nothing now."

Right. Needed to improvise on the plan here.

Situation: There are two Feathers looking to murder us all, one deciding that it wasn't enough to bring a gun into a sword fight, she had to bring airspeeder cannons. Two dozen just to be safe. And the other was on his own ratshit, only in his own unique way. Pulling off every possible cheat in the book and then writing another.

Additionally, the area was crawling with machines forming up at different chokepoints, and there may or may not be a giant mythical machine-bird flying around.

Oh, and our main objective was likely an entire mile under us now, at the very bottom of the desert strata. The one General Zaang's info had listed some kind of lightning-like storms that kept the place interesting, which would only get more interesting given the entire place was getting rain for the first time in decades.

"Wrath," I asked. "Mission's not looking good right now. If you abandoned your shell, what would happen? Could you hide in the digital sea?"

To transport my soul, I must do so through the unity fractal. It is possible to hide in the digital sea, but my soul would reside in a catacombs, a location filled with spare unused soul fractals all linked in rows. Mother could have me eliminated at her leisure, she controls all these locations.

"All right, guess that's out as an option. Any way we can move your fractal over to a different shell? Come to think of it, we do know a spare shell lying around. To'Aacar's. Could we rip out the internals and put you in there? Then you fix it up back to your liking later. Or rip off the parts we need to fix you up and graft them on you."

It's... possible we could transplant that shell's command and control nodes into my own shell. From there I could repair the rest. However, the shell was heavily damaged and nearly unable to repair itself due to the knightbreaker round it took. I do not give this plan a high chance of working out.

I could feel her hesitance. Wrath's schematics were wildly different from To'Aacars given her modifications and generation difference. And she wasn't sure if that final battle had eaten up the rest of those nodes in the first place. Once General Zaang had his hands on the broken shell, he'd brought it to his engineers and they'd begun to disassemble it bit by bit. Too much uncertainty there.

"Would Tsuya have a way to repair your shell?" I asked, looking down the last option I could think of. "She might have her own connections, maybe a spare mite forge in her bag somewhere? Cathida?"

The old bat gave a verbal shrug. "How would I know, deary? I was trusted to swing her sword, not balance her books. The temples on the surface certainly didn't have anything that made them stand out other than being a terminal to speak to her. They did look quite impressive, but only from an architecture point of view."

Also checked out with what I'd learned of the surface. She wasn't going to put a mite forge - which machines sought out with fanatical zeal to lock down and control - directly in a location she didn't want attention shined on.

"It seems to me," Kidra said. "That our options fall to choosing where we fight. In a desert, or at another mite forge."

"Either that or give up entirely on fixing up Wrath for this lifetime." Windrunner said with a shrug. We all turned to him. "The girl's immortal right? Let the next generation after you take on the burden, once the machines stop looking around for her."

Mother will know I am still alive. Wrath protested, a bit of panic in her mind. To'Avalis is also immortal and will not stop seeking me out.

"Got to agree with her here." I said. "We can't just stick Wrath up in a locked archive as our clan oracle for a few decades."

"Ahh, but wouldn't the Feather minx be miserable without a body to move around?" Cathida said. "The violet goddess might see that as a fitting punishment. Knowing her traitor is still alive, and trapped in a broken body for eternity. In a sort of sadistic light, it checks out."

Wrath's feeling of panic increased, with a realization that Relinquished would very well be exactly spiteful enough to see this as a fitting fate.

"It's not Relinquished we have to worry about." I said. "To'Avalis is hunting Wrath down. He's not under the geass that Relinquished is when it comes to the surface. And he's smart enough to work around limitations. Let's keep that as a final option if we really can't find a way through all this. How hard is it to get back to the surface from the second strata?" I asked, looking to Windrunner who would be the only one in this team that might know.

Cathida answered before he could. "Is your head filled with lead?" She hissed. "There's a desert at the bottom there, need I remind you, deary? You know, those wide open grounds where a metal bird-bitch from hell can nail you from three dozen miles away and hang you out to dry like a purple fish rack?"

"It would be the less dangerous option, in truth." Windrunner said. "We would only need the mite forge to repair Wrath's command nodes, and then move to hide among the storms. Down there, the storms already repel machines so there won't be another army for him to call on nearby. To'Avalis's abilities to go through walls and attack from oblique angles is also nullified, since there are little walls."

"You've got experience in that strata?" Kidra asked.

He shook his head. "No. Not that particular one. Though the info package Zaang left behind explained the basics. It should do."

"That's if we find a storm before she finds you. And it doesn't answer what to do about said Lady Explosions." Cathida insisted. "She's still going to have a clear line of sight from the roof of the world. Again, fish racks."

Windrunner hummed. "The imperial crusader is correct on that count. We can't pull this off with To'Sefit alive. She needs to be killed first before we can descend down to the second strata, at the minimum. And there's no telling where she's holed up now. If we can find and eliminate her for good, it is a possibility to continue the operation. If we can't, we'll need to retreat and take a few years to find a mite forge less defended, which probably won't happen in our lifetime. To'Avalis will be on the hunt as Keith said, so there may be exile in that future, to protect the clan from the fallout."

"Great. Win a stacked fight, or get exiled from my home right when it's become a fun place to hang out in. Lovely." I groaned.

"Or you could just give the silver bimbo to someone else. The Indagator Mortis would probably help out. They won't be happy about it, much like me, but they would understand duty comes first. Leave the broken Feather to them and they'll handle it."

"Surface clans generally are alone, but in this case we could rely on the undersiders to help." Windrunner said. "Events here are bigger than any of us. Though, part of me rankles at the thought of giving up. That's not the way of the clan, and I'd have to live with that kind of shame hanging over my head."

Cathida sighed. "Am I seriously the only voice of reason here? Surface savages, the world doesn't always revolve around you! Mission's a bust, go and link up with the imperial order, and surrender To'Wrathh there. It's the only reasonable option. Join up with them if you want or go home and retire after, splash around in those baths of your and oggle a real rack. Either way, you live the good life instead of dying for nothing here."

Windrunner turned. "We're different from you, Crusader. There are causes worth dying for. This is one of them."

"Load of scrapshit. I'm dead in case you haven't noticed. D. E. A. D - dead." Cathida said, voice growing louder with each sentence. "And guess how I died? It wasn't from alcoholism while relaxing on a beach chair like I'd hoped for, I'll tell you that. Talking to me about dying for a cause, of all people. What are you, in your thirties? Lecturing me? Get another three decades of service and maybe you'll finally develop some wrinkles where it counts, young ma-"

She shut down as I finished hitting the mute button. Windrunner tilted his head at me, looking more amused than anything. I shrugged back. "Once you get her started, she doesn't really stop. Ever."

We all turned to Kidra, waiting for her opinion as the tiebreaker. She hummed, thinking. "We have a weapon that can kill a Feather with us. We've got the skills to kill Feathers as well. And there are Feathers here. Ridding the world of To'Sefit would be the right thing to do. Even if we fail on all other counts, honor would have us at least try to make the best of the situation."

If Cathida wasn't muted, I think she would have broken down right about now and gone into a frenzy.

"All right. Sounds like we're still in this." I said, "Thought under a different definition of success now."

"We'll need to fight To'Sefit before anything." Windrunner pointed out. "No matter what we do, she has to die first."

"Talking about her, I think I have an idea on finding her hiding spot. Didn't think we'd use up this card this early, but got to work with what we have." I said. "We'll need to bait her out."

Windrunner and Kidra turned to me, waiting to see what I'd come up with. They weren't quite happy with it when I outlined my idea, but Cathida loved it, so I'm left with mixed feelings about how good the plan really is.

"Oi, asshole in the walls." I called out over the comms number Avalis had given us.

Said asshole picked up immediately. "Winterscar. If you are requesting a surrender, I am open to negotiating terms."

"Hell no, I'm calling to let you know we're about to blow up your whole plan." I said. "I enjoy gloating before I win, see?"

"I find it unlikely that you will see anything resembling victory." He cordially answered, unamused.

"Really now? The way I see it, I've got everything lined up already. We know you tossed the mite forge into the next strata. We also saw your little chokepoints. They're cute but you know it's not going to hold off the knights we brought. First strata machines melt like heated snow against regular knights, and you know I've brought more than just that. They're all on the level of Deathless. Also, I know you have no idea where any of us are anymore. Must be really getting under your skin, eh?"

He stayed quiet for a moment, contemplating the response. "Regardless of the situation, the mite forge is out of your reach. This mission has no victory conditions for you or your team. There is no tangible target left. You remain here for nothing. You are risking lives for nothing."

"Not really nothing but you're right, I can't win anymore and fix Wrath with the forge gone."

"If you understand this task is no longer possible, accept a ceasefire and surrender Wrath." He said, pressing on the topic. "She is nothing more than dead weight to you."

"Maybe if I were a cold calculator I'd agree. Ah, but see, here's the thing Avalis. Humans don't operate rationally all the time. And I happen to be the world's greatest sore loser. So here's what I'm going to do instead - I'm changing my goal from fixing Wrath to lobbing your head off. And To'Sefit's too for good measure, if she's listening in on the comms."

She was on the channel, and answered, scoffing. "Delusions now human? My, I suppose I shouldn't have expected more from your kind. How unsightly."

"Your bravado does you little credit, human." Avalis said. "We have all the time to safely eliminate all of you. This does not need to end in bloodshed. Surrender Wrath, she is the only one I care for. I can offer terms, Relinquished does not care about deals made with individual humans, you will die of old age long before it becomes a problem."

"Are you sure we can't just kill them?" To'Sefit asked, sounding genuinely put off. "They're right here, crawling somewhere in the walls."

"It's not that I don't trust you'll carry out whatever terms you agree to Avalis. I get a feeling you really are genuine with those, what's a few humans running off into the woods to you, after all? I wouldn't trust To'Sefit with my pet rock, but she's not in change as I hear it. Problem we got is that I want you dead. Figure we might have a conflict of interest on that point."

Time to roll for bluff, knock on metal it all works out. "So, I've put explosives all over the chokepoints you've setup. Just wanted to call and hear your reaction."

"Not possible." Avalis said.

"It's not exactly hard to pinpoint all the best places for chokepoints. We have full maps of the temple from the Undercity. Did you think we couldn't spot the best ways to the center point from the very start? How else do you think we already know about the mite forge being gone? I'm already here, Avalis. I've been here all along. And now, I'm going to wipe out whatever forces you have. Then, a dozen knights with fractal powers and knightbreakers are going to swarm all over your little trap and rip you apart limb from limb. Nice knowing you. Team, trigger explosives."

And at that moment, there were explosions in the empty forge center room.

I'd made my gamble. Father had once told me that all machines behave on patterns. If I could figure them out, I could turn anything into my advantage.

Feathers weren't exceptions to that rule. And Avalis had one pattern I'd noticed. Something familiar.

From the very start, he'd left comms behind so that there was always a possibility to end the fight diplomatically, the most non-destructive way to handle any conflict.

In the tunnels he'd fought with hit and run tactics, and when the tables had begun to turn, he'd abandoned the attempts rather than take any more risks.

Despite being a Feather and having all the advantages, every movement and plan had been made to maximize gains while minimizing chances of defeat. To'Sefit had always attacked from great range, and even been ordered to stand down early into a fight rather than to see it to the end.

Even now, he'd picked up my comms and the first thing he'd tried to do was to get out of the fight and settle things.

All of this led to one conclusion: Avalis didn't want to die.

And being left in the dark, while the enemy gloated about winning was the last thing a survivor wanted to hear. I needed him as off-balance as possible for what came next.

Avalis saw explosions as I'd said he would. They just didn't happen everywhere. Instead, only one tunnel saw explosives rip it apart. And from there, he heard a squawk of cries and curses on the comms.

Journey and the other armors turned off the jammers the very same moment, allowing the transmission bugs attached to our armor to leak our position. A moment later, the armors resumed the jamming signals. But by then, it was far too late.

All put together, Avalis saw exactly what I hoped he would: A misfire. His enemy had made a mistake, and they had accidentally revealed themselves. And he wasn't the type to allow a mistake to pass by unpunished. From her hiding spot on a distant balcony, behind hastily made rubble ruins, To'Sefit opened fire under his orders. Directly where the signals were coming from.

Twenty four beams of blue light speared through the hidden rubble, and dug right into the tunnels where we'd hid.

Everything inside was obliterated with no resistance.

And by everything, I mean the bits of discarded armor plates we'd strategically left behind, where the transmission bugs had been latched onto. Leaving To'Sefit's location clear and obvious while they thought we'd been killed.

"Found you." I hissed from the shadows, grinning wide, hands on my weapons with Windrunner next to me.

Time we went and killed Feather number two.

Next chapter - Flight

Book 4 - Chapter 35 - Flight

I handed the clan lord my rifle. He took it with heavy hands, the armor clearly doing most of the work. We'd laid him out against a tunnel wall, somewhere a little higher ground. Water slapped against this armor's legs, doing nothing more than causing some more foam. Further ahead it fell down in a waterfall, joining the rest of the flood to the central whirlpool. During our scheming Atius seemed to gain lucidity again, no longer going in and out of a coma. Stabilizing. The Deathless healing factor must be working overtime on his body, which was good news for us. Bad news was that it wasn't good enough to get him back on his feet, just awake and aware.

From here, he had a good enough vantage point on the whole chamber, if he limped a bit into view. He wasn't supposed to get anywhere in sight for our plan, but Windrunner had made a good point about having last resort options available.

Against a Feather, our Deathless wasn't in any shape to fight. But the rank and file machines were vulnerable to rifles, and those didn't need finesse or any kind of health to use. Point and shoot. A few extra dead machines was better than them running around for the rest of us. We planed to thin out the majority of the machines Avalis could throw at us, but there's no way we could nail every crawling scraphead lurking about. The rest of the knights were waiting for the signal to storm in, hidden on the temple ground floor. They'd deal with the rest, as soon as we got the drop on To'Sefit. That was the one Feather who had the ordinance to wipe out entire armies of knights if she landed a good hit.

"Haven't used one… of these for some time now, lad." He coughed, hands still going through old motions to check over the weapon. The make and model was some Undersider standard, but a rifle's a rifle.

Windrunner knelt next to him. "You shouldn't push yourself too hard, my lord. The Winterscar's plan has good chances of catching To'Sefit's location. I think we'll do fine if we get the drop on her first. Trust us."

He watched Windrunner, staying quiet. Talking was still difficult for him, black red blood stained his gray short beard last I'd seen before we put a helmet on him. Breathing underwater wasn't something Deathless had powers for. Armor had no issue with something like that however.

He triggered the safety off and gave a nod. "Go. Don't waste time."

We went.

The plan was pretty simple all put together. We'd snuck through the tunnel systems, spreading ourselves around the central room. Once we were all in position, I'd trigger one of our grenades and have the armors drop the jamming signal in the area.

A neat pile of discarded relic plates had been left behind in another tunnel, coincidentally all these plates had the magnetized location bugs Avalis had tried using. They were all still fully functional, so once the jamming dropped, Avalis would see their location.

A bit of smack talk to make it look like we'd screwed up our grand plan, and a healthy amount of paranoid threat would have him shoot first, ask questions never.

The real question in all this was Wrath. We could leave her with Atius, though any focused machine assault would break through the single rifle we'd left him. And he wasn't running anywhere from his seat.

We'd debated hiding Wrath somewhere, but that was also just as bad. If she got swiped, To'Avalis would call off everything and run with his winnings. He wasn't after us, he wanted Wrath. We were the annoyances in his way.

So she stayed in the sack, tied up on my back. Safest place we had, and that wasn't saying much.

The moment the jamming ended, To'Sefit opened up on our decoys without any monologue or taunts and the battle was on.

I'd thought she might be hiding somewhere sneaky, like the very top of the tower here, or under the whirlpool somehow. Both locations where she could open fire anywhere in the area. Turns out, she'd been hiding behind a wall on one side of the area. Avalis must have decided putting her in more obvious spots would have been spotted, so he found another spot where she could reign fire on anything in the room.

Closest to her was Captain Sagrius. Second closest was myself, and third would be Windrunner. Kidra ended up on exactly the wrong side of the location, which meant she was on Avalis duty, waiting for him to show up and respond as backup.

Sagrius and I leaped out of our hiding spots, landing hard into the pool. This close to the edge, the water flow was fast but shallow, coming up halfway to our knees here. Far less than the tunnels. Easy enough to traverse in armor, likely deadly for anyone on foot.

Our job was to keep To'Sefit focused on us while the assassins in the walls snuck up behind on her.

To'Sefit was just as quick as we were, turning her fractals around and blasting away. Journey's HUD showed me firing lines where the occult plates were aimed at. It wasn't a singular line, more a cone of possible range based on prior combat log footage. So long as we were close enough and had visual contact with To'Sefit, we'd know where she was aiming. That was going to be our main defense against her, along with Father's shoutouts over comms.

Sagrius raised a rifle and opened fire. The bullets zipped past, not aimed at the Feather herself but instead on her plates.

That's our main weapon against her. Occult fractals were pattern based, anything that disturbed the pattern in any way caused the whole thing to stop working. Bullet holes did a great job of that. And her plates weren't shielded. Likely she never expected to have to deal with soldiers getting this close to her.

In seconds, running Father's combat engram, Sagrius had taken out four of her panels.

The beam she'd sent my direction didn't get anywhere close to me, and a short juke to the side made sure she wouldn't land any other shots. The one sent to Sagrius forced the armor to come to a halt in order to survive the barrage as he rained bullet fire down.

Windrunner was sprinting through tunnels, trying to eliminate any of the machine backup on the way. Kidra was doing the same on the other side, though she'd stay hidden in the darkness until Avalis showed his face.

We were doing a great job as a distraction. Or rather, Sagrius was. To'Sefit's eyes turned to the walking armor and fixated. "You."

Sagrius didn't answer. The engram running his motions didn't include any speech. Only destruction. He fired off more bullets, but the Feather had fanned her plates to flow behind her, where she could protect them with her staff. The engram dropped the rifle, letting the straps hold it in place. A knife was drawn out in a signature halo flourish, ending in a reverse grip. Shoulders hunched, the charge continued.

I also reoriented myself after that beam, having been forced to take a few steps too close to the edge, keeping a hand on my knightbreaker. Then realized belatedly that To'Sefit hadn't missed her shot on me at all: She'd wanted me to jump closer to the edge.

A giant metal bird emerged from under the whirlpool at the center of the room, water breaking apart into floating droplets as the metal wings expanded out before me, a talon reaching out. Not a bad place to hide that scraphead, come to think of it. Sensors couldn't punch through the water there, so of course Avalis abused that. In hindsight, I'm not sure why we were so convinced the bird was hiding somewhere topside looking to swoop down on someone.

All of that passed through my head in a flash as I stood before the massive bird of prey with it's metal feathers outstretched, water droplets flying everywhere. The next instant it had whisked me off my feet in one large talon, squeezing both Wrath and I up with it.

There's where the plan goes to scrapshit.

The momentum took us both into one of the walls, rocks breaking apart as the creature slammed me against everything. Journey's shields flared out, stopping most of the damage.

Against a few thousand pounds of angry metal bird, the old wall wasn't enough to put a full stop to the speed. The rest of the machine sunk into the wall, force dispersing as the bird easily broke halfway into the wall in a cloud of kicked dust. Without stopping, it leaped off the rubble, high into the air, soaring away between the tower pillars with me in its grip.

I got my senses back under control and tapped the mirror fractal. I'd been in vice grips before, Fido learned it was a bad idea, and soon this bird was going to learn the same lesson.

The moment the occult pulsed around me, the bird threw me straight up into the air and out of its talon, right as the wraiths manifested around me.

A massive gust of wind flowed behind as it flapped its wings under me. I'd have thought simple wind wouldn't push an entire armor further into the air, and was proved horribly wrong.

Further up I went, spinning into a chaotic tumble upside down against gravity. The soul trance kept my sight focused, though I could tell my body was getting incredibly disoriented. The further I retreated from my body, the more lucid things grew around me, and my mind grew more clear. Wrath's straps were being put through the test, but so far they were holding. The acceleration up into the air was bleeding away as gravity finally took control again, so whatever it was that this glorified metal murder chicken was doing to the air, the effects were temporary.

It's coming for another pass! Wrath sent out to me, violet eye open, locked on the bird even as we twisted around uncontrollably in the air.

The metal beast flew right past me, massive wings beating against more than just the air. There was some kind of force it was pushing against in the occult sight, but I had no concept for it. I couldn't tell what it was. The metal feathers began to glow occult blue on their edges and those I recognized immediately. Every single one of the shorter floating feathers were occult blades, while the larger ones handled the flight.

It reached the apex of its ascent into the air, now far above me. The wings expanded majestically out, then clapped together with a resonating boom. A hundred occult blades were sent soaring straight at my flailing body.

If I had been a regular knight, I'd have been far too disoriented to notice what was going on, let alone mount any kind of defense from becoming a pincushion. I think even a Deathless would have a difficult time surviving this kind of assault, unless they had the right spells to deal with it.

But neither of those had the soul trance nor a paranoid amount of shield fractals inscribed on every angle of the armor. And I did.

The blades flashed in my direction, twelve on an intercept course while the rest would harmlessly fill the air around me. I didn't focus on anything else - in midair with no leverage, trying to move was a wasted effort. I put every bit of focus on the occult instead.

Twelve small occult domes appeared across my armor's glowing plate, and each expertly deflected off the machine's occult blade feathers.

Blades struck against domed occult shields, and bounced off. There was nothing to hold the deadly edges against my defense to really test my limits. The damage was negligible to my sanity, it felt more like pulling against heavy weights attached all across my body for a half second. Difficult, but not impossible. So long as I didn't need to do this more than a few times.

The massive enemy squawked in surprise, violet eyes narrowing as it folded wings around itself like a cloak and dove down, speeding past the fanning feather blades - and then flew in front of them. Right when its own fan of feathers would have struck the machine, the wings spread out once more, halting its speed. All the feathers shook in their flight, altering direction, chasing behind the bird instead. The bird's movements flowed like water, all those blades looking more like silver shimmering fish chasing after it, reattaching to its wings one at a time, from the closer ones to the stragglers. Minus the few blades I'd blocked earlier, those were spinning wildly out of control, down into the temple.

Gravity finally took full control over me, and I began to fall down again. Except the bird took another swing at me, wings flashing blue, and the gust of wind following behind once more juggled me back into the air, far higher than before.

Again, the bird's wings flowed blue and it zipped past me, attempting to skewer me a second time. Because if it didn't work the first time, try and try again until the squishy human finally dies.

Need to come up with a plan against an enemy that clearly had experience fighting off Deathless targets and relic knights. Constantly disorienting its prey, before eventually cracking their shell with hundreds of needle-like feathers. Being immune to standard rifles, all the bird had to do was keep its distance from any kind of occult blade the enemy had on hand. And the size of this thing, it would take more than one good stab to kill it. Throwing a perfectly timed knife at it wouldn't make the cut unless I got absurdly lucky.

Given enough time, the bird would eventually break past my own defenses. I'd end up another number on the list of kills it had. My hand hovered over the knightbreaker at my back, considering if I should use it this early into the fight. The bird didn't have any kind of defense that I could see besides speed and distance. If knightbreaker rounds flew faster than it did, I could chop off a good amount of it. The cost would come down to an unrecoverable round. This far up in the air, anywhere I fired, the round would soar for a long distance and land anywhere into the temple. It'd be like trying to look for a needle in a snowpile. And I'd be down a round against To'Avalis and To'Sofit.

Can't use the knightbreaker here. Needed another plan. The main defense it had was distance and complete control over it. Speed let it run laps around me in the air, like a fish through water and I somehow had to catch it or die trying.

Come on, think.

Can it move those occult blade Feathers in different ways? I asked Wrath, sending the rough outline of my gamble.

No. Those are magnetically locked into one orientation and a limited movement range.

I could tell she approved of the idea, good thing too. There wasn't time to come up with a plan B.

All right, here goes.

Occult pulsed around me, and the mirror fractal flared up. I'd done this once before. I could do it again. Had to do it again. While I was getting juggled in the air, the rest of my team was fighting tooth and nail against Avalis and his forces. Time was ticking.

The wraith appeared, emerging from my armor, armshield glowing with deadly interlocked blades. Then it flew through the air, unfettered by gravity, directly at the machine bird.

It gave another squawk, and wrapped its wings around itself, spinning back down as the wraith soared above it. The machine moved like a serpent through the air, seeking another point, giving quick beats of wings to maneuver around. I'd hoped the wraith was faster than it could be, but this several hundred pound monster was moving through air like an acrobat. Outright creepy since there's no way something this big could take turns in the air like that.

Nailing it with my wraiths would have been extra, the main meat of my plan came down to something else: If I wanted to catch a wild fish, I'd need to hook the bastard.

Falling straight down, spinning wildly, my free hand unlatched the grappling rope from my belt, taking hold of the loop with practiced hands, working as quickly as I could while keeping my focus on the occult.

Again I sent a wraith to hound after it mostly to buy myself more time. It again slipped away. At least my constant prodding with the wraiths had forced it to deal with those instead of trying to keep me helpless in the air. Slowly, I took command again of my chaotic tumbling, the turning and twisting ended, the hook and rope ready in my hand. Couldn't be spinning around aimlessly for this next part.

The bird wasn't used to having to dodge and weave around an enemy throwing wraiths at it. Its movements were… predictable. Kidra had done this kind of thing before. When she'd fought against To'Aacar's ruined shell, she instantly spotted patterns of how it moved and then abused it.

Once more, another wraith split from my armor and zipped after the bird, armguard attached to the forearm, glowing bright occult blue. My hand lifted the hook up in a pitcher's pose, Journey's HUD lit up, trajectory set. A firing line appearing.

I lobbed the hook as if I were throwing a hangerball, launching it with relic powered speed. The metal soared through the air, whistling with fury.

The metal monster dodged the wraith I'd sent and squawked as my metal hook nailed it. Sleek as the bird looked, the mass of floating long flight feathers it had across its body made for hundreds of open spots for a thrown hook to slip in and hold fast.

The hook blessedly did exactly that. Rope went taunt and the game was on. The monster screeched in pure hatred as I flew right behind the bird. It stormed around the air, banking hard again and again to throw me off.

One grab after another, I began to close the distance to the monster, crawling up the line. Journey's grip on the rope was unyielding. "Come here you piece of scrap," I snarled, launching wraiths to keep it on the defensive, and away from the rope. The more time it spent trying to avoid the wraiths, the less time it had to figure out how to cut me free.

These were manufactured to hold a relic armor's weight several times over, only an occult blade could cut them. That said, all the turns and twists were going way over what the rope makers had ever thought these would go through. Damage was accumulating, with multiple sections of the rope starting to fray. Journey kept track of the weak parts, highlighting them. Estimating when the breaking point would be reached.

It also estimated the time I'd need to reach the monster at my current pace - and luck was on my side for the first time.

The bird must have realized the same thing: I'd reach it long before the rope would snap. Panic started to take over the movements. It twisted in the air, and began a mad sprint to the main tower. It was pretty obvious to me what the gods damned bastard planned to do.

I cursed every swear word I'd ever known, including some Cathida had taught me, all the while wrapping one hand awkwardly around my back to hold Wrath's sack as close as possible, locking the arm. I braced as best I could for impact, my other hand tugging hard against the rope, looping it around the back of my palm in a quick motion, trying to stack the odds against what would happen next.

The machine rocketed straight at the tower, and banked away at the last second, catapulting me into the tower wall like I was the mace end of a spiked chain. Journey's shields flared up as rock broke around me, orange lit up my medical scans, even as I could see the internal organs inside me take the blunt force. Human bodies were not made to withstand going from recklessly fast to completely still in half a second.

The rope wiggled and coiled in the air, then grew taunt again as the bird raced away, still holding together in one piece. And from the cloud of pulverized tower rock, I emerged - still moving up the rope, one hand grab after another.

If it wasn't terrified before, now it certainly was. I was a minute away from getting my foot on solid ground and taking revenge.

The wraiths flying at it like bullets kept it from slowing down to bite the rope or slice it apart. The occult feathers it had were worthless, all in the wrong area and unable to be moved individually around. Wrath's judgements were on point. The bird had all the tools it needed to cut me free, and no chance to make use of anything.

And soon it didn't matter as my boot connected with the creature's back despite its best attempts otherwise. My hand snaked from the rope down to grab hold of its back. It tried to go into a barrel roll, hoping to knock me loose or at least disorient me further, but Journey had held tight against a rope this whole time, now that it had even better grip and traction, the bird could do whatever it wanted, I wasn't going to get knocked off.

"Wrong move." I hissed and drew out my occult fencing foil. The grisly work of stabbing away at its back began, slashing the bending sword through expensive looking parts again and again.

In the throes of death, the machine tried to run back to its master, maybe hoping she'd shoot me off. And all the while I advanced up its back, getting closer to the neck one step at a time, stabbing down at every free moment I had.

The bird screeched, violet light flickering on the chassis with each stab into the body. The wings grew more rigid, until I hit something critical and they outright stopped, stretched out and let the monster glide, directly on a collision course to the central tower. Gone were the aerial acrobatics, the fluid motions. Black oil poured out of multiple deep wounds I'd given it on my single minded climb to the head. At this rate, it would crash into the side of the tower.

A stab deep into the spine at the base of its neck caused the entire monster to seize up with one last shriek of anger. I leaped forward, hand reaching out to grab the side of the immobile head, feet swinging down against the beak for stability. Relic helmet caught the seething stare of violet eyes, the apertures within the cameras deep inside narrowing down to focus on me.

My blade reached back and speared straight through, down to the hilt.

All lights on the monster instantly went dark.

One down. Now for the rest of them.

Next chapter - Interlude I (Windrunner)

Book 4 - Chapter 36 - Interlude I (Windrunner)

Windrunner's only job was to get closer to To'Sefit while she engaged Keith and Sagrius, and jump her. Short simple plan that left him a lot of room to improvise as the situation changed. If he could tie her down that was good enough. If he could kill her, even better.

He'd gotten some info on her weaknesses, and what he could expect fighting against her. Enough to work with.

It suited him just fine. He'd earned his rank by skill, tactics wasn't his domain. Ironreach was far more inventive when it came to those, despite the rank differences.

It was ironic in a way. That asshole constantly joked around about getting off'd on a mission right before proposing to his would-be wife. Always claiming that it was his good luck charm, by taunting the gods ahead of time.

Seems the gods were having a good laugh about it in the end. Windrunner was the one stuck in a mission that had more relic knight fatalities than any in clan history, including Lord Atius being crippled to a level he'd never seen before. While Ironreach was likely away back home enjoying a bath, or happily breaking raider skulls.

He put the thoughts out of his mind as his feet moved across the shallows. On the other side of the chamber, Kidra would be doing the same, racing through the dark tunnels, eliminating anything in her path. The tunnels were somewhat well mapped by now, they'd taken their time to organize the ambush. And so he knew where the machines had built up their chokepoints.

Those needed to be destroyed, so that when the rest of the knights arrived, they'd be able to jump directly into the fight instead of dealing with an entrenched perimeter guard.

The machines didn't see him coming, not in this darkness. They were shuffling around instead, reorienting in order to go out and assist against the two exposed knights fighting off To'Sefit. Unable to see him coming, and caught out of position, Windrunner hit their group like a sledgehammer at just the wrong angle for them to fight back.

His swords lit up and bit through arms and legs alike, crippling some, killing others. A group of ten screamers were all downed in seconds. Windrunner was nothing more than a bright glow of blades flashing through the darkness, before winking out of existence as the knight passed through. The machines would be aware of their presence now, but that advantage would be negligible at this point. The Winterblossom technique let him move to absurd speeds, although he did avoid being too entranced inside.

Past a certain point, physical sight vanished and only the occult sight remained. Practical as it was, Windrunner still needed to see important information on his helmet's HUD. Like video footage of Sagrius and Keith's actions.

He'd been halfway to To'Sefit's location when Keith was abducted by her metal bird. A moment after, Keith's camera feed turned into blurry pixels, then winked out, too far out of range. No time to think about that, the kid would handle it. Windrunner had one job and would stick with it. He had to trust his team to be able to complete their objective.

Sagrius wasn't having it any easier, alone against To'Sefit. He watched the events on his HUD as he broke through another scrambling chokepoint of machines, butchering the enemy reinforcements without pause.

The captain's camera spared no detail, To'Sefit pointed her staff directly at his face. Three beams shot in a pattern, made to force the captain down a single path. The armor followed through, leaping above the final beam.

She jabbed her staff once more in his direction with a leer. Beams erupted around her, diving straight for the airborn knight.

Sagrius made no change in direction, nor even an attempt to twist in the air. Instead, fractals over his armor glowed bright occult blue, and multiple domes came to life around the armor.

He vanished in the destruction, the camera feed showing only bright white before they winked out into dark, the signal cut.

To'Sefit laughed as the beams continued, Windrunner could hear it echo even inside the tunnels he scrambled through. "Luck doesn't favor fools twi-"

Her beams had ended. The camera feed picked right back up. Captain Sagrius emerged from the destruction. Unharmed. Blades glowing, seeking retribution, landing into the water and springing back up. Even his relic armor shields hadn't been triggered, still showing next to full.

The Feather shut her mouth and opened fire again, eyes focused. A mass amount of beams in all directions this time.

The captain leaped across the distance, dodging what he could, and outright taking the hits where he couldn't. The occult dome shields never waivered, more springing around him, cycling thorough. Water slammed into him from all sides, the flow turned into chaos with all the beams sinking through in explosive steam.

"How?!" To'Sefit screeched, taking a step back, staff pointed uselessly to the approaching knight. A part of Windrunner also agreed with To'Sefit's outburst. How the captain was outright taking her hits head on and surviving past it was a mystery to him.

He wasn't going to abort his plan however, even if it looked like Sagrius now hard countered the enemy. Anything could happen. He had to make his way through the tunnels, and jump To'Sefit.

If she was killed earlier, all the better. If not, that's what he was for.

All the while the captain continued his relentless approach, climbing out of the water and onto a stairway leading to her position, sprinting at full speed.

The Feather's eyes narrowed with hatred. All twenty four panels paused in their movements, focused on the rushing knight, and opened fire.

The armor stopped the charge for the first time, hunching down on itself, one knee on the ground, bracing for impact. Occult shields appeared around and nearly twenty four blue beams once more consumed the captain whole, the rest fanning out to catch anywhere he might have chosen to dodge. Windrunner gritted his teeth, watching.

Destruction rained across the water, turning most of the room into a misty hellscape. From the fog, an occult halo traced out a knife again, longsword at the other side.

He still wasn't dead. Gods above, whatever the kid did to get the armor moving around, it was paying off a hundred fold. Sagrius had turned into a monster of his own.

To'Sefit took another step back, shock in her features. She pointed her staff once again at the knight, then slowly lowered it back down into a balanced fighting position, resigned to the inevitable.

Her beams must either be on a cooldown of some kind, or she wasn't going to bother trying to shoot down the indestructible captain.

Sagrius clearly saw no issue with that, leaping right for her, blades seeking out targets.

A moment later, he was forced to curl up in defense against the end of a chain swinging straight for him. It cracked against an occult dome, dealing no damage, up until the end of the whip exploded with a pulse of occult, sending the knight spinning away, directly into the whirlpool at the center of the room.

Windrunner cursed to himself, watching as the captain's video feed promptly scrambled into static, turning black as the armor lost signal, the knight falling down through the whirlpool, into the second strata.

To'Avalis stepped out of a wall, recalling his chain back to the hilt. "I ordered you to retreat." He hissed at his companion.

To'Sefit glared back at him, head held high. "I could have handled it. And I don't need my ordnance for a simple human, nor your meddling."

"Debate that later. We have two unknowns approaching through the tunnels." To'Avalis answered, eyes turning at one of the tunnel entrances. Windrunner raced through into the light a moment later, landing on open ground and following through with his momentum. He'd sheathed both blades in preparation for the sprint across the open ground.

This was as close as Windrunner could get with the tunnels as a line of sight breaker, he had to survive the dash forward until he was in melee range. He leaped straight out of the dark hidden pathways, into the open air and down into the water.

To'Avalis being here complicated things, the chain had far larger reach than it appeared. Still, he didn't change his focus: Kill To'Sefit or keep her occupied long enough. Leave To'Avalis to Kidra, that was her duty. He could see her video footage, the girl was keeping pace.

His hand reached to his back, taking out the undersider rifle as his armor, turning the safety on as he raced across the ground, ignoring To'Avalis and focusing only on To'Sefit.

The other Feather began to spin the chain around, only to dodge backwards as an occult knife zipped through the air and sank into the wall behind. Kidra leaped down, two longswords drawn out. She didn't say anything, instead rushed straight against To'Avalis.

"I'll handle the Winterscar." The Feather said, "Take on the other knight. Don't take shortcuts. Both eliminated every chokepoint from the north side up for a reason."

To'Sefit huffed, "It's only two humans. We're Feathers. You worry too much." Occult plates spun around to turn on the clan knight. The knight gritted his teeth, accelerating his pace, taking aim with his rifle. So far this was still going according to plan, minus To'Avalis being already out on the field. But Kidra had made good time on her end, so that part was negated.

The feather pointed her staff in his direction. Chills spread through his body, knowing the destruction that would follow. Windrunner zoomed in his targeting sights, HUD expanding the picture ahead, helping him search. He kept his rifle aimed forward. He couldn't afford to miss here, there'd be no time to reload another magazine. To'Sefit could either protect her plates from bullet fire, but be unable to shoot with them, or shoot at him and take the chance of losing plates.

The threat of his rifle clearly wasn't enough for To'Sefit to pick the safer option.

Three plates glowed blue, portals appearing on the surface. His finger pulled the trigger down, sending a controlled burst of bullets at each. Two were knicked, the occult instantly winking out as the bullets disrupted the patterns. He didn't get to the third in time.

A blue beam lanced out, forcing him to leap to the side, sliding hard against the water floor, sending a massive splash to the side. His rifle never left the target, nor did he slow down his speed.

To'Sefit tutted, black mist flowing out of her dress, reaching for the damaged plates. "It's useless, you know? I can repair any faster than you can break them. And I have so many spares to use."

Five more plates glowed.

Windrunner was prepared, opening fire and catching three as he sprinted out of the falling water. The other two got their shots off on him. The first speared past his chest, inches away thanks to his last second dodge. Shockwave expanding out, forcing his armor's shields to trigger. It knocked him off course, causing him to spin to keep the momentum going. The other beam speared right for him.

No options now. Atius could do it, and so had Sagrius.

Hand extended out, he took his chances with the occult dome shield fractals, powering the spell. The shield responded to his will and took on the beam near head on.

The moment it collided, Windrunner realized he was no Lord Atius, a Deathless with centuries of practice, able to hold off her beams a dozen times in a row. Nor was he the Winterscar captain, turned into something other, in exchange for the power he needed.

The weight of the occult spell felt like moving a mountain, an utterly impossible task. He abandoned the idea of being able to hold off the beam, instead, he twirled on his side, using the shield to buy him the precious half second he needed to get just out of the killzone. His relic armor's regular shields took on the blunt of the shockwave following through, sending him off his feet and crashing into the water.

He rolled, drew his rifle back up and opened fire near blindly, continuing his sprint forward. His gut was on point, three of the plates were already about to burn him out of existence. He got all three with the full auto, along with five other plates before his rifle clicked empty. Damn. He'd lost this rifle earlier than the plan outlined for. He tossed the spent weapon away, drawing out swords, accelerating the last few feet of distance.

It wasn't going to be enough. The Feather simply drew on her unused plates, another three glowing blue. He'd need to be very quick with the dodges to get through this. The HUD highlighted possible areas of danger, and it was easier to pick out the spots that might be safe compared to everywhere else that absolutely wasn't. He wasn't going to make it past her cordon in time, one of those beams would hit him.

Rifle shots came from above, sinking into the three glowing plates, taking them out of the picture.

"Give her hell, lad." Atius weakly spoke over the comms, aiming down from his seated position, rifle held steady only by the strength of his plate.

Windrunner felt a flush of shame go through him. Having the clan lord cover his back was considered the very last resort they'd planned for. Position revealed, it was only a matter of time until the machines came for the crippled Deathless now, and none of the knights were going to be able to keep him protected. Atius had just traded his life.

It paid off however.

The knight leaped into melee range, blades lit up. To'Sefit sighed, shaking her head as her staff twisted into position. "You humans never learn. Ranged, melee, it's all the same chances. You'll die and I'll win."

"Less talk, more slicing." He said, and dove into the fight.

Windrunner was finally in his element again. Close quarters combat. Among the clan, he'd been chosen as a bodyguard to the clan lord himself for a reason. Tenisent Winterscar might have surpassed all of them, but that man was an exception to the rule. Windrunner could handle any other relic knight from the clans and win.

To'Sefit was a challenge on another league. Within the first few jabs and slashes between the two, Windrunner realized the difference in levels between them. She moved too fast, the staff a near blur in the air, keeping up with his own strikes and throwing out her own in quick succession, rapidly eating through the rest of his shields.

That was fine. There were other ways to win against a superior opponent. To'Sefit may surpass him in every metric, but if she made a single predictable move he was already prepared for, it wouldn't matter if she was better everywhere else, his blades would still sink into her throat.

And there was one move she'd shown to perform before, the moment she was caught in close quarters. He just needed to give her a good chance to use it, and survive long enough to see it.

Another set of jabs and parries left her in a perfect position for a uppercut swing, which she took without hesitation, occult pulsing around her. Rock and water flowed behind her staff, uprooted by the force following behind.

Windrunner didn't wait for the strike to land. Nor did he try to defend himself. This was the window he'd been waiting for.

He leaped directly forward, arms opened wide. If he couldn't beat her with swordsmanship, he'd drag her down into the mud instead. Nobody could parry a blade while having their arms locked up in a vice. So long as Kidra kept Avalis too occupied to rip him off, there was a chance of victory.

It worked, somehow. The sheer shock of having a human try to grapple a Feather seemed all the time he needed to wrap an arm around her, tackling the Feather down into the water.

One way or another, he was going to kill To'Sefit. And if he had to do it with his own fists instead of a blade, by the gods he would.

Next chapter - Interlude II (Windrunner)

Book 4 - Chapter 37 - Interlude II (Windrunner)

They both tumbled into the rock and ruins, her oversized hat falling off into the water.

A relic powered elbow slammed into her head, knocking her back down as she tried to stand up. A knee into her stomach folded her up, and Windrunner snaked around with a practiced grapple. He wasn't sure if a chokehold would have any traditional effect on a Feather, but he didn't have the time to come up with something new and untested. The position still gave him leverage and that's all he needed. His blades were in an awkward pose, unusable. Too late to fix it now. He had other options available.

"You dare?" To'Sefit hissed, "Who do you think you are?"

A foot slammed into the back of her leg, directly on the joint, forcing her down on a knee. He went right to work, pulling against her neck, aiming to rip it clean off. Against a human, it would have been like snapping thin ice. Against another knight, it would have taken a few seconds for the helmet seals to fail against two arms prying it off. Against a Feather, the armor strained, mechanical whirling sounding across the chest and arms. Synthetic muscles began snapping away internally, sounding like deep clicks rattling within his armor.

White elastic skin started to stretch across To'Sefit's neck, growing taunt, but the internal spine refused to break or buckle under the force. Windrunner tried harder, putting his full body to work. Red warnings began to flash on his HUD, showing cascading damage.

To'Sefit gave a snarl, eyes widening, realizing what the human was doing. She dropped her staff and gripped his arms with both her white porcelain hands. The slender digits clenched and his armor dented under each finger.

That… that wasn't supposed to happen.

The red warning messages continued to populate his HUD, more and more parts of his armor breaking down against the might of a Feather. She pried, slowly peeling off his wrapped arms from their chokehold. Tension left her neck.

This wasn't working. New plan.

He twisted on himself, taking her off her feet with him, slamming the Feather into the ground. It did next to nothing against the monster. He put his full knee on her back and strained with his armor, pulling against her neck with everything he had, but those hands of hers still held off his arms and took the entire force his armor could generate.

The right arm buckled, failing outright, power going out as the dented metal cut into the remaining fibers. Instantly he triggered the emergency release, letting the isolated arm plating collapse into smaller pieces with micro explosions across the chassis, freeing his actual arm. With that, his true hand dove for the spare dagger at his chest. The cold hilt hummed in his hands as the weapon lit to life. Without wasting a moment, he flipped the dagger into a reverse grip and sunk it directly into To'Sefit's stomach. Her personal shields lit up at the last moment, blocking the blow.

He dug against it regardless, trying to get past the wall he'd run into, grinding his teeth together with effort. Shields couldn't last long against an occult edge, seconds at most. He just needed to keep going. Just a little bit more.

A soft hand wrapped around his own and squeezed.

Having stepped out of the soul trance in order to move his arm, Windrunner felt the pain of his bones and fingers break, squashed against the hilt of the blade, pulverized into shards. He gave a muffled scream, gritting his teeth through the pain. Blood and cartilage was squeezed out in between her fingers, staining To'Sefit's robes with scarlet splatter, dripping down the occult dagger, leaving the mangled remains of his hand a mess of crushed muscle.

She rose on her feet, lifting him up with her. Her other hand still prying apart the last of his hold. Inevitable. To'Sefit calmly levered the weapon off her stomach, overpowering him as if he were nothing more than a child against an adult.

He didn't let himself panic. His right arm might be caught in her vice grip, but he still had the other one. He needed to get free first. "Windrunner, break her hold. Leave me the sword." He ordered the armor, trying to keep his voice level against the waves of pain coming from the hand. The armor complied, breaking apart the sections caught by To'Sefit's other hand. She was left holding nothing but dented plates, as the armor shrugged off the modular parts, shutting down power to the armored hand.

The hand was heavy. Extremely heavy, but Windrunner didn't have a choice. The longsword rose and dove straight down, cutting his right hand free from the dagger and To'Sefit's grip. She seemed almost surprised.

He twisted on himself, and slashing forward with the longsword, hoping the momentum of his twist made his movement fast enough.

It hadn't. She slapped the flat of the blade out of the way, and jabbed her hand forward directly at his chestplate. The remnants of his armor's shields flared up and took the blunt of the force as he took a step back to keep his footing.

To'Sefit didn't stop. She stabbed again and again with nothing more than her bare hands. Windrunner swung his blade down like a sledgehammer, only to find the attack halted.

She'd grabbed his wrist.

A cruel smile curled on her lips. She began to pummel his armor, throwing crushing punch after punch that the armor desperately repelled with its shield. One chop on his exposed arm had broken the bones there, making the whole thing go limp. A final attack had her hand spear through his legplate, the shield finally collapsing against the raw power. Her hand broke through metal, skin, muscle and bone as if everything was nothing more than paper. He fumbled onto his knee, the armor's power no longer working on that leg and the pain shocking him even through the adrenaline.

She finally let go of his hand, letting it flop down to his side.

He looked back up, just in time to see her backhanded slap land on his chest. As if she were swatting away a fly. Dazed, he found himself crashed into a wall on the far end of the chamber.

"My, my, that was rather exciting. I haven't had that happen before. No Deathless was ever bold enough." To'Sefit said, brushing her hand free of dirt and contamination, flicking her white hair back over her shoulders. "To'Avalis was right in a way, you humans really are something different. Is it your diet, or did they put something in your water source?"

Windrunner considered his options. His right arm was missing a hand, the clean occult slice now pooling his blood out into the river, plus most of the bone were broken and the muscles pulverized. The leg was also bleeding out, but that part was being tended to by his armor's medical foam. The hand to be handled first. HUD gave him a few more seconds before the loss of blood pressure would cause him to fall unconscious. He raised a trembling left hand. Stripped of most plates, the raw synthetic muscle fibers showed all across the forearm. Most were frayed, unresponsive. The few that did work weren't doing much of anything to help him move.

That was fine. The fractals on his palm were still there, and that's all he needed. He tapped into the fractal of heat, the very same one Master Keith had shown off as a demonstration all that time ago. With that, he lowered his missing hand into the flame, letting the skin burn and cauterize. It would buy him some time.

"And what exactly did you plan to do next, I wonder?" To'Sefit asked, reaching down for her discarded staff. Kicking his bloody cut off hand along the way, the dagger spinning out of the crushed grip. "You should have let yourself bleed out, less painful to die unconscious I hear."

Windrunner turned to check in on Kidra. The girl was still neck to neck against To'Avalis, the Feather fighting her off carefully, as if handling a wild beast. The young Winterscar was a brilliant fighter, but Windrunner could tell she wasn't going to win. Machines were now starting to pile out of the ruins, surrounding the pair.

None of the machines made a move to attack, likely waiting for the right moment. To'Avalis continued his probing strikes, meticulously studying the human girl for easy wins.

At least she was in better shape than he was for now, three gods granting small blessings.

Rifle shots sounded further up, where Atius was positioned. Windrunner could see from the camera feed that machines were coming from the tunnels out for the clan lord. The rifle would keep them off him for only so long.

And the last two Winterscar's camera feeds were black, a red NO SIGNAL flashing on each. One likely stranded on the second strata if he'd survived the fall in the first place, and the other dealing with a massive metal bird.

It wasn't looking good.

To'Sefit's staff once more raised up. The plates around her fully repaired. "Last words human?" She asked.

Windrunner's hand rose up, and he did his best to show her a finger.

"I suppose you earned that one." She chuckled. "It was a good fight, and you've left me quite cross about losing my hat. Goodbye human."

Three things happened in quick succession. First, he heard a metallic scream of pain and the tower shook, rock breaking apart again, collapsing. Something big had hit the side. To'Sefit turned, eyes widening and then narrowing down in outright hate. "Ohhhh, that nasty human. I'll tear him limb from limb for this." She hissed.

Windrunner started to laugh, watching two video feeds reconnect. The gods really did provide.

But it was the third feed he was really paying attention to. An armored hand rose up in the video, occult crackling around the plate, gaining in strength with each second until even the picture began to fuzz out and turn pitch black.

Distant occult pulsed out, strong enough even Windrunner could feel it from here, and he'd never been gifted when it came to the Occult secrets. The sense of something twisting, reality bending in ways it shouldn't. Powerful occult.

It seemed to descend like an invisible veil around To'Sefit, crackling pale blue lighting, forming around her like a thick mist, choking everything. Even water was pushed aside in a circle around her feet. "What is this?" She asked, the charged occult distorting her voice. She looked up and glared at him. "What are you doing?"

Windrunner continued laughing. "Not me." He said, voice hoarse.

Twelve half formed wraiths of the clan lord rose from the mist, like the dead returned for vengeance, surrounding the Feather in every direction. Faceless helmets snapping up to gaze at their enemy.

Blades flickered to life in the hands of each.

They dove for her at the same time, leaping like demons from the old songs. She drew her staff up to defend herself.

That was a mistake. The wraiths were never after her in the first place.

Atius didn't order his army to fight the Feather. Experience had shown that tactic to be ineffective. And Windrunner could see the way the wraiths moved, Atius wasn't all there either. He'd tapped the well too deep, the wraiths didn't carry any of the fluidity he'd seen used before. This was the very last scraps of whatever power he had left.

To'Sefit had too much shields still available, even if she somehow failed to dodge every strike sent. But the plates floating around her weren't as quick, nor as defended.

The wraiths flowed around her, occult blades slashing out, wordlessly cutting her plates in half. The slices taking out whatever it was that kept them up in the air. They fell into the rushing water, swept down to the whirlpool at the center.

Gone for good, falling off the edge into the second strata.

Atius got to seventeen plates before To'Sefit swatted the last of the images, destroying each in quick succession with her staff tip. She screamed in rage the entire time her weapons were cut apart by the malformed wraiths.

None of the images remained alive after her slaughter, the occult mist fading away around her. But seven plates remained functioning when everything settled. The Feather turned her gaze up to the tunnel where the Deathless remained motionless, rifle at his lap.

He raised a hand, slowly taking his helmet off, letting it slip down into the water around him, carried away to the waterfall, flowing to the ever present whirlpool center.

Hair matted down in sweat, eyes dilated, breathing heavy. There was no fight left in the old Deathless. He didn't even have it in him to stand up. Still, he turned to face her with supreme effort, and gave one final blood filled grin.

Her staff lifted up, pointed directly at him. Blinding blue light struck. The walls and stonework crumbled apart, collapsing down. To'Sefit gave a deranged scream, and opened fire three more times, eliminating everything in her path.

On Windrunner's HUD, he saw Lord Atius's name wink out into gray. All that remained behind was melted rock, still glowing red.

Windrunner hissed with pain, head rolling backwards, watching the sky, looking for where he knew the video feed was coming from.

His eyes focused on the tower ceiling. The dead remains of a massive metal bird had crashed into it. And jumping off the back was none other than the Winterscar brat himself, a small red and silver figure, leaping from rock to rock. Sneaking by, looking for the right angle, before jumping directly into the air. A knightbreaker launcher in hand, aimed down as he fell.

Directly at To'Sefit.

She didn't know yet. No one had noticed him. She'd been too furious, too focused on the clan lord's final moments.

Windrunner turned back to To'Sefit, watching three of her seven plates begin to glow, staff raising up directly at him again. There was no hint of mercy on her face, only blind rage.

He watched the other plates that floated behind. Four had been used to kill the clan lord. Those were on cooldown, or she'd be using them right now. Three were glowing, readying to fire.

If he could survive three shots, she'd have no plates left when Keith landed. The kid would have a chance.

He wouldn't be able to survive three blasts. He hardly was able to take on a single one. But he needed those three plates out of the fight somehow.

"I'm going to erase you off the face of existence," she hissed. "Not even a scrap of your armor will be left behind."

"You can try." He croaked out.

He couldn't move himself or wield his blade anymore. But he didn't need his body to do damage. The clan lord had showed him the way. His hands wrapped around the hilt of his old blade. The mirror fractal deep within his armor lit up. A mirror image appeared, unmoving within his body. He had to keep it hidden, she couldn't know until it was too late for her.

Come on, get your hand up. He thought to himself. One more run. You are a Knight Retainer. Honor that vow, you stupid bastard. Get your hand up. Time is ticking.

The hand lifted up, palm pointing at the Feather before him. Occult pulsed across the hand, a dome appearing at the end, aimed opposite of To'Sefit's staff.

It seemed so small and fragile, up against a crushing might.

Windrunner braced himself. When sacrifice calls.

To'Sefit fired.

I shall gods damn answer it.

The beam struck against his occult shield, and he felt the mountain weigh down on him with all its terrible weight. He held on, pain surging through his body and soul alike. At the same moment, his hidden occult image leapt to the side and sprinted forward.

It wouldn't last more than three seconds, but neither would To'Sefit's beam. He'd need to make do.

A half second passed, the wraith raced forward at the side of the beam, taking leaping bounds forward. To'Sefit watched it, unable to move her staff without breaking her own protections against the shockwaves. Unable to fight off the approaching ghost. Violet eyes widening with the realization.

The edges of his mind frayed apart, pain was all he knew as the weight bored down on him. The hand he held in front of him was nothing but fire and agony, skin peeling away in his mind until nothing but ash remained. The fractal glowing within burning at his very soul.

The first glowing plate was sliced apart by his wraith. To'Sefit screamed in anger, or so he thought. He wasn't sure anymore. All he heard was pain. Cracks appeared in the dome before him, spreading out like a spiderweb.

The wraith turned its blade, and leaped for the second plate.

Another second. The cracks spread, power seeping through. The fractal within consuming far more than the beam was. The cracks spread further, bouncing off each other, multiplying.

Windrunner grinned. Sorry, kid. Give her hell for me.

The occult image's blade rose up to strike, then vanished before the blade could connect. Fading away into the air.

To'Sefit's beam burned through the wall unhindered, carving a hole of melted rock, and finally came to an end.

And with it, so had the relic knight.

Next chapter - The belltower and the Feather

Book 4 - Chapter 38 - The belltower and the Feather

Environmental suits are sturdy things built to last against wear and tear. Tools and equipment help to extend the suit's lifetime with the tear part, but nothing's rated to be slammed against a stone wall while going at insane speeds on top of a dead metal bird the size of an airspeeder.

Surviving a collision like that would have typically gone under the 'How to make peace with the gods' sections of Retainer training. No need to ask where the 'surviving' part of that shows up, it doesn't.

Fortunately, I was in relic armor, so the wall ahead of me was in more trouble than I was.

The bird slammed into the top of the tower, breaking the already battered thing even further. Chunks of larger rock outright split up, collapsing down into the whirlpool at the bottom. A few pillars broke apart under the tower, but somehow the whole thing stayed together despite having a giant monster half buried inside.

And holding on tightly for dear life on the more protected back of the bird was me. Alive.

A novel way of defeating an aerial opponent. Wrath said. I will need to add rope on my list of potential threats to be aware of against future enemies.

"Never doubted for a moment, deary. Young blood is exactly when heroics like this are supposed to happen." Cathida hummed in appreciation. "What a grand show, right in its own home domain."

"Show's not over yet." I muttered, unwrapping my hands from the back of the metal chassis. "For my next trick, I'm going to try to make two Feathers disappear. Somehow."

"Squireshit. Go in with no mercy." Cathida corrected. "You hesitate, you die."

"Great words of advice from someone who's dead." I said, climbing on top of the dead bird and making my way to my trusted hook. An inventory check was also running, looking over the list Journey had on my HUD. Wrath was still on my back, utility belt had everything from drugs down to grenades still there. At my hilt were my swords, and under Wrath's sack on my back, the white sheath of a special blade Lord Atius had entrusted to me. One I had kept hidden under sack and cape. Knightbreaker launcher was still on the small of my back, and a check over the weapon showed nothing serious had hit it. Maybe a few dents, but that's all cosmetic and adds character. I clicked it open, extracting the round inside to inspect for damages.

Journey confirmed the integrity, sending an all clear before I slammed it back into the launcher, clicking the weapon shut. Given Avalis had a history of stealing my scrap, being paranoid of having my stuff stolen right off my back during a fight was fully justified.

On afterthought, I clicked the safety off, priming the round ahead of time. I'd need it soon.

"Not exactly great trigger discipline." Cathida chimed in, as I retracted the hook and rounded up the rope.

"Against opponents that could move fast enough to fall under the dictionary definition of ridiculous, I want every millisecond I can get."

Wrath tossed ice on that thought. The additional time would be negligible. We Feathers can overclock our systems to calculate plans and process information at near any speed needed, so long as the heat draw does not pass certain thresholds.

"Hate to say this, but the silver bimbo's right on this one. In a fight with a Feather, getting a few extra milliseconds of speed would amount to basically nothing. Don't fight your enemy where they're strong. A kick where the goddess won't look was often my first resort in bar fights. Worked back then, works just fine now."

"Point." I said, taking the advice and a few steps off the metal bird, jumping from cracked rock to rock on what was once a stairwell of some kind. "I'll aim for a situation where all the speed in the world can't save them. Think that might be my only way through this."

The stairwell did lead into the tower top, showing a smaller room all the way up here. Likely used to be a bell tower of some kind, but that bell was missing now, replaced by the dead head of my unorthodox ride back into the fight here. It remained dead, one of its eyes gouged out with a hole punched out on the other side.

Also missing in the room was the floor. Crumbled away during the crash, showing a direct decent right down to the whirlpool at the bottom. And the events happening under me.

Far below, on the parameter of the whirlpool and solid ground, Windrunner was outright strangling To'Sefit.

I did a doubletake to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

Nope. The man was holding the Feather down on the ground, knee on her back, trying to rip her head clear off while she desperately tried to pry his arms off. She did not look happy in the slightest about these recent events. A mix between surprised, angry, and insulted.

"Three gods on an airspeeder, is he actually going to win doing that?" I whispered, in awe.

No. Wrath said immediately. Human armor has a smaller max power range than any Feather chassis, including older models. It is only a matter of time until To'Sefit overpowers the knight, even with his advantageous positioning.

"Better find a way down right now." Cathida said. "Wrath's right, this isn't going to end well for him. He might hold her off for a few more seconds at best."

"And while she's held down, she can't dodge." I finished the thought, searching around the ruins of the room for any way down. If he could hold her still, I could end her.

This was a belltower, there had to be a way up here, unless the mites made the room for show. Which was possible, though this time luck was on my side. An archway on the other end of the room was half collapsed down, but it did show a further stairwell wrapping around the tower edges, going down. I jumped in one leap across the void below, landing on the overhang left behind by the floor, yanked a few rocks out of my way and raced down the stairwell. The rest of the internal was intact, up until I wrapped around where the bird had crashed above. That had a few chunks of rock crumbled down, obstructing the way. Journey calculated it could easily handle this much without issue.

A few seconds into the work a massive occult pulse expanded from further down. The wave washed over me, unseen but absolutely felt. It felt eerily similar to the pulse that Father's armor had made when he'd forcibly manifested inside, taking command of the armor as a disembodied spirit. There's only one spellcaster in our party I could imagine being able to make such an impact on the occult.

And it couldn't have come cheap. Not something like this. A moment later, my hunches were confirmed as Lord Atius's nameplate went gray on my HUD, following the sound of a screaming woman and her terrifying beams. She fired four times, one after another, clearly aiming to scour the Deathless from the world, despite his name having gone gray after the first one.

That's fine. I had to remind myself. Lord Atius was Deathless. It's in the name. He'll be back. If anything, he might have seen it like a morbid shortcut to the surface, with a relic armor as payment. More importantly, if To'Sefit was firing her weapon, it meant she'd shaken off Windrunner already.

I yanked a larger chunk of rock out of the way, punched the remaining one in my way. Good enough, Wrath's sack was thrown through, landing on the other side with little decorum, leaving only her head poking out. She did not look amused with the treatment.

With a heavy forward stomp on one more rock in the way, the crack was wide enough for me to fit through. Bits that were in the way weren't solid enough to stop a relic armor passing through. Part of Journey's white cape caught on something, but between several hundred pounds of relic armor and heavy unyielding mite-made granite rock, the cloth may as well have been made of melting snow for all the resistance it put up. I hadn't even noticed it until I heard the sound of the rip, more concerned with making sure all my gear didn't get scuffed as I made my way through the obstruction.

I grabbed Wrath off the ground in a drive by, strapping her on my back as I raced across the stairwell.

It finally led into open air, now following the massive pillars keeping the whole tower up. Chunks of rocks had been ripped off quite a few by now, showing hints of a metal skeleton under it. A nice, sensible touch from the mites to reinforce the granite holding several hundred tons this high in the air.

What wasn't sensible was that the stairwell ended abruptly at one of the pillars, as if the way down was by doing a cliff dive.

The mites really did make the belltower room inaccessible to regular foot traffic. As if to add insult, parts of the stairwell were still there, hanging out like overhangs from the pillars, the middle section broken down with all the shaking, leaving only the sturdiest parts attached.

Video feed returned from all parties left alive, and I cycled through each to check up the events.

Kidra was locked in combat with what had to be Avalis, who used a chain weapon exactly as the rest of the approaching knights reported. He fought her carefully, letting the mass of machines surrounding the pair attack her one at a time, at just the wrong moments. They were used more like bullets in a rifle, carefully aimed and fired out without any thought of recovering them.

It was highly effective. They died against her blades with hardly any spared attention from my sister, but that wasn't the point. Each time she was forced to twist around and cut down an encroaching machine, Avalis was mid swing with his weapon, landing either occult blasts that she barely managed to hold ground against or outright chain strikes, which she used her dagger and occult shield to parry off. Each time the defense was costing her precious bits of focus.

Regular shields had long since been burned out from the HUD display above her. Any hit could slice her in half if she didn't block it. Worse, each time those attacks came, there was absolutely no way for her to retaliate or turn it around. Avalis was playing a completely different game, leaving nothing to chance, turning a duel into a slow and certain execution.

I jumped from broken ledge to ledge, cursing with every breath, trying to get closer to the ground before I had to jump this far down. As much as Cathida boasts about the old armor she now inhabits, relic armor wasn't miracle armor.

Which is where I saw her earlier predictions on Windrunner had come true. The elite clan knight, with several decades of experience as a bodyguard for lord Atius himself, hadn't been able to hold the ground against a Feather by himself, although he'd gotten further than any regular human could have possibly been expected to.

The medical report alone showed he wasn't going to make it back to the surface already without Wrath's full healing spell being used. On the other hand, To'Sefit's plates had all vanished, except for seven that floated closer to her person. As if she were guarding them like children.

I cursed again, watching as he remained still against a cracked wall. The fight had gone out of the man the moment his cauterized hand slumped back down on the floor. His head lulled back then turned ever so slightly in my direction. Even at this distance, with both of us carrying armored helmets that covered every detail of our features, I could almost feel his eyes locking onto me. There was only one thought going through my head. He had to hold on for a moment more, and I'd get to him.

Windrunner seemed to understand, giving an almost unnoticeable nod. Then he turned his gaze back at To'Sefit. A hand lifted off the ground, right before his executioner. The occult shield appeared before him.

The time for thinking was over. Had to make do with this height and the tools I had on hand, or else I wouldn't reach him in time.

Journey followed my commands without question, turning the careful jog into a full on sprint before it leaped forward into the void, carrying me with it.

I unhooked my knightbreaker and took aim as I fell.

To'Sefit fired.

Windrunner took the blast, head on, dissipating energy washing off the sides, melting rock all around the knight. His vitals instantly went to red - but they held.

A mirror raced forward at the same time, leaping at To'Sefit's remaining panels, slashing one outright, turning for another.

I knew what had happened even before his name turned gray. The moment that image faded off from reality. A sinking feeling spread through my veins, as my slowed emotions caught up to what my rational mind had already figured out.

Father had held on against the pull of the world, but only by sheer strength of will and a slowly chilling body to clutch onto until the occult gave him a backdoor into an occupied soul fractal.

Windrunner had none of that. His body was utterly eradicated. And so were any soul fractals inscribed in his armor. There was nothing left behind where he'd been, besides melted rock.

Shock came through me first, the propranolol tampering it down into more of a dissociated feeling of loss. Disbelief that I hadn't been able to save him, despite being seconds away. Incredulity that a knight and living legend like him could just… disappear like that. I shoved it all to the side, focusing. To'Sefit had to die. If there was anything I could do for Windrunner, she had to die fast. The targeting reticle on my HUD showed red as I locked onto her unsuspecting form. Just slightly behind her, from above. The perfect ambush angle.

She snapped her gaze up, tilting her neck in the process, the halo above her sliding away. Wet hair matted her sides, violet eyes glowing with malice, with a truly horrifying grin spread wide.

Directly at me. Surprise had been blown out the airlock.

"Did you think I didn't notice a metal rat scurrying about in the attic?" She said, words floating through the comms while I fell, helpless to change course, her grin deepening until it looked more fitting on a monster, eyes narrowing like a predator. The staff in her hand raising up to aim at me.

"I thank you kindly for delivering my rebellious little sister directly to my care. But I'll take it from here, human. I'm afraid that you are no longer needed."

Next chapter - Oblivion

Book 4 - Chapter 39 - Oblivion

Of course, a relic armor falling straight down would have been spotted by a dozen of her minions. Or my launcher locking onto her silhouette could have triggered some kind of alarm in her systems. Maybe the sound of a several ton bird slamming into the tower above raised some alarms.

Dozens of possible ways she'd seen through me. All moot points, she'd spotted me somehow and played dumb because drama and Feathers go hand in hand. Now my plan was rapidly coming down to picking the right prayer to make my peace in under five seconds.

A shame since I wasn't terribly religious before, and it's worse now that I've met one of my gods. Never meet your heroes and all that.

Feathers moved fast. I could open fire with my knightbreaker, but at this distance, I knew she had all the time in the world to take a calculated step out of the way the moment she saw my trigger finger twitch.

The plate Windrunner had been about to cleave in half floated before her, turning to me, glowing bright blue. Journey's lock on warning triggered, turning the HUD from orange to red.

I wasn't going to beat To'Sefit, I realized belatedly. Not by playing with the same rules she was. There wasn't beating her to the trigger pull, she'd win every time. I had to put her into a no-win situation, where all her speed and might couldn't save her.

My head flashed through a dozen frantic calculations, racing ahead of me in ways I couldn't possibly explain, jumping between leaps of logic like a malfunctioning circuit board. Chaining further and further. The number of plates she had left. Why Windrunner had aimed for two specific plates instead of the other ones closer, given how little time he knew he had. The number of shots I'd heard her use against Atius. How the plate she'd used to kill Windrunner floated to her side with the rest of the other four plates, as if they needed a break before playtime. It all circled around my head, slamming against each other.

A single conclusion came to my mind. One possible way to win. Three gambles that all needed to be completely correct or I'd die. A wild leap of logic that my gut told me I was right to gamble on. What other choice did I have anyhow?

Journey's HUD showed collision was imminent.

Behind my belt, I yanked out one of my grenades, thumb already inputting the mechanical switches to the shortest possible time. Standard equipment for knights on expedition, two for each. Our team had been armed to the gills with equipment, I carried far more than just two. One was all I'd need. It was tossed it straight down before me, thrown with every bit of power Journey had in its arm.

By the time it would detonate, it would be right on her doorstep.

To'Sefit saw the grenade of course. Being a Feather, she likely calculated the exact damage it could do to her - all within that very same moment - and found it to be next to nothing. Likely she didn't even need her personal shields to take a direct hit from that. If Windrunner couldn't rip her head off with his armor putting every bit of power it had to the task, a diffused explosion would make her laugh.

The plates that floated around her were a different story. Even if the blast didn't outright destroy those plates, they'd still get scattered across the chamber, far out of her control. Or a piece of shrapnel could cut a chip into the fractal, turning it off. Whatever happened, if the grenade landed, I'd wipe out what was left of her main weapon.

Violet eyes locked onto me and narrowed. And her response confirmed my first leap of logic. She could open the portals within, but what was the trigger to open fire? And when? If the weapons discharged too early, they'd likely break the fragile fractal on their side before the portal was fully opened.

So there had to be a delay to make sure the portals were fully set and open. If I was wrong, she'd have opened fire and melted the grenade from existence alongside myself, firing out faster than the half second I'd set on the grenade.

She hadn't.

Instead, she pulled them to safety and under her occult shield, where they wouldn't be blasted away by my desperate grenade. But she couldn't open fire on me through her shield. So To'Sefit's calculation had shown her she wouldn't be faster than whatever built-in delay she had.

The grenade soared directly at her defended location, then exploded, fragments flying off in every direction. In open air, most of the force was swiftly expended, leaving behind smoke and embers of ash. I soared directly through, boots extended out, knightbreaker still in reserve.

To'Sefit's eyes narrowed further, her grin twisting into a scowl, watching the knightbreaker launcher for any sign I'd fire. Wrath had killed her last time with this weapon, she wasn't going to stand in the way a second time. If I fired point blank, she was going to see my finger press down on the trigger in slow motion, and this time she'd step away.

My boots hit her occult shield with a thundering crash, the armor's knees folding down to absorb the shock, crackling occult licking the soles of my boots like a lightning globe.

The feather glared at me from beyond the veil while the plates timidly returned back to their orbit now that the danger of the grenade had passed, Windrunner's final target glowing bright blue out of all seven plates. Her eyes still weren't on me, only the launcher, the largest threat I had on hand. Which was exactly the distraction I needed.

I rolled over her shield to dissipate the remainder of my impact, and turned the roll into a desperate horizontal leap, left hand reaching out - straight at the glowing plate twisting my way. Occult crackled on the weapon, the fractal glowing bright. Credit where credit is due, To'Avalis had it right: Stealing your enemy's expensive stuff is a great idea. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I took a page out of his book.

She realized immediately what I was doing, the plate freezing in place before it began to reverse its path. But too slow. Far too slow. To'Sefit could move at the ridiculous speeds Feathers operate at. Her plates couldn't. I'd seen that firsthand.

My free hand swiped across the air, fingers grabbing the backside of the panel, holding it tight.

To'Sefit screamed in fury as she watched me yank her plate straight out of the air, the weight of the relic armor from my leap easily overpowering whatever force the Feather had that kept them moving around her.

But my second gamble wasn't grabbing the plate.

It was using it.

Midair, turning desperately on myself, my soul reached a tendril out to the captured weapon in hand. I'd been able to touch all other fractals before so long as they were close enough. Why would this be an exception?

It wasn't, and my second leap of logic clicked into place. My soul touched upon the fractal and sensed a response from within. I dove further in, searching desperately between the concepts it touched on, seeking to override To'Sefit's control over it.

One simple concept was what I looked for. Activate. Regardless of how complicated the portals were, there had to be something within that made it turn on and off. And deep within the fractal, I found that concept and forced it to turn on for me.

It was trivial in the end, similar to warlock gear usable by anyone. No wonder she didn't have these connected to her soul fractal. They didn't need it.

The portal appeared on the surface, as I aimed the plate directly back to its original master.

Fear flickered through those eyes, realizing that I was about to shoot her with her own weapon. With all the speed and grace of a Feather, her staff and hand twisted down, aiming directly at me, occult shield blooming to life before her. And that reaction answered my third and final gamble.

My third leap of logic was all about how she triggered these cannons to fire. Did she send out a signal from herself, to travel however many hundred miles from her? Or did she rely on another portal within herself to send a signal through to open fire?

All of which could open her up to someone scrambling that signal. Overriding it. Or perhaps the distance made her shot too slow. Or open fire too early. Too much could go wrong, and she could be anywhere in the world. Those cannons were likely unmoving. To'Sefit wouldn't want to risk losing access to her greatest weapon if she had to fight in a location where the machine communication network was unreachable.

So she'd rigged the cannons on the other side to open fire, automatically. Easiest solution. Even in a place where she had no signal, if the cannons were only setup to detect that the portal was fully ready and handled everything autonomously, she could fire regardless of what happened or what state she was in.

A torrent of power exploded forth from my captured plate, nearly point blank directly into her shield. The destruction was instant, power fighting against power. I felt no recoil, but could certainly feel my grip growing slack, the little bits of fingertips holding the edge of the plate flashing out with shields as Journey tried to save those from being melted off by sheer proximity to the beam. My legs and feet were also running the same gauntlet, Journey's shields straining against the power firing too close.

I landed hard on my back, sliding against the rushing water, already offering just a slight amount of protection as it absorbed the ambient energy, turning into superheated steam. Water splashing in every direction behind me, the beam turning everything before me into melted rock. The place was already filled with a thick white fog from the earlier fire, this one turned the entire world into a white steamroom.

But I refused to miss the shot, keeping the firepower directly aimed at To'Sefit's glowing outline, even with my HUD turning the world near pitch black to compensate against the beam.

"It's useless!" To'Sefit roared on the other end, voice clear inside my helmet. "Did you think you could win with my own weapon?! The sheer arrogance!"

Well, she was right on that count.

Her shield had been specifically setup to resist the destructive power of her beams. Perhaps not tailored to taking a full shot directly in the face, but likely strong enough to do so anyhow just to be sure.

"Never the plan in the first place." I hissed under my breath. My right hand lifted forward, aiming the knightbreaker I'd held onto, parallel to the beam. And she couldn't see it, not through the blinding amount of power pouring out of the fractal.

Journey's targeting reticle turned red as the weapon locked on while I slid further against the ground, left hand holding onto aimed destruction, right hand waiting in reserve for just the right moment.

I opened fire exactly the same moment the beam ended.

The round roared into life, sound hidden under the hissing steam. It soared right behind the trail of light left, a black bullet streaking through the thick mist, air displacing everything in a wide cone around it.

Energy dissipated, revealing To'Sefit standing regally behind her intact shield. Cracks had formed on the core, but it remained powered. Unyielding. Her eyes searched for me, but what she found instead was the knightbreaker round, cutting through the mist like a silent assassin, just at the threshold of her shield.

Feather reaction speed was impressive. And even with all that speed, all To'Sefit managed to do was widen her eyes in surprise. The round slammed into her shield and triggered, four pale blue arms stretching out wide, overshadowing her figure, tenderly wrapping around her failing defenses.

Calculations passing through her mind at the speed of lighting. Watching as her shield broke apart into fragments of fading occult, the knightbreaker fully unleashed on an already weakened greatshield, easily ripping through whatever defenses she had.

Shock. Anger. Fury. Flickers of emotion lit across her features. And finally, amused surrender when she inevitably reached the same conclusion again and again, inescapable. She couldn't move all of her body in under a fraction of a second. Not in any way that mattered.

Even Feathers had limits.

The round lanced her directly in the stomach, rocket propellant carrying her up and off her feet, the chains wrapping around her limp body, cutting right through her personal shield with little resistance before sinking teeth further into her shell.

She vanished backwards into the mist, halo clattering with a wet splash into the river under along with her staff, splashing further away.

My head collapsed back down in the water, leaving me motionless on my back. On Journey's HUD, I could still see grainy video footage of Kidra's own battle against To'Avalis. She hadn't lost yet, but neither had she won. Instead, the two came to a standstill at opposite ends, an unworded truce while both were recovering. Avalis must have run through his heating quota, though I couldn't see any of that haze of heated air above his head. Picture quality wasn't exactly high definition.

My head slashed to the left, where I stared at the circular hole drilled into the side of a wall. Occult senses found nothing lingering there but melted rock, and metal. No soul. "Urs carry you to safety, wherever you're going next. Go with peace." I whispered. "I'll make sure the bards make a good song for you. Couldn't have killed her without you."

Keith, you must get back up. Wrath whispered through the soul link. She's still a Feather. We must verify she's incapacitated.

Wrath was right. Had to verify the body was dead. And maybe I might even be lucky enough to stab her through her soul fractal. Elbows pushed me back on my feet with a low groan, water streaming down my armor. Then my boots took mechanical steps into the white mist, carrying the rest of me forward. Searching for the remnants of my enemy.

She was exactly where I thought she'd be. Laying still on her back, water flowing over her body, distorting her figure.

To'Sefit.

I took more steps forward, Journey's HUD analyzing my opponent, details becoming clearer. The knightbreaker chains must have missed her face, but the same couldn't be said for the rest of her. Large parts of her shell were breaking apart, washing away with the stream. The Feather made no movements, silently staring up into the mist above. Deep lacerations had cut into her stomach and ribs, the chains ripping apart all her insides even if most of her shell looked attached together. Green liquid flowed from her wounds, washed away into the river, glimmering with golden dust. Power cell fluid. The round that had caused her destruction was nowhere to be found, likely washed away down the whirlpool already. In this mist, I couldn't even see the whirlpool at all.

She didn't move, but smiled instead, giving a low chuckle as I steadily approached her. "Ahhh. What a bittersweet ending." Mist surrounded us, a suffocating cloud of white that hid everything around me. Inside, only she and I remained. Violet eyes flickered, then locked onto me just as I reached her side. "Kill me early and he'll resume the fight. He's holding back on my request, and I'm paying quite a price for it."

I could see on Kidra's video feed how she was breathing hard, the steady movement of her helmet with each breath. So that's why they'd gone into a standstill.

Fine. If To'Sefit was willing to let Kidra catch her breath, I wasn't going to say no. I'll buy whatever time she's willing to give.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Was this how To'Aacar was killed?" To'Sefit asked, unmoving, eyes watching up as I loomed over her. "That blade. The one you haven't drawn yet this whole time. To'Avalis was certain of it. And in hindsight, he was right about you being a genuine threat to my life. I'm somewhat... inclined to believe his other claims now."

My hand tossed the spent knightbreaker launcher, letting it clatter into the water next to her. It was useless with the round gone. I reached for the hilt of a weapon given to me by a man who knew he couldn't use it anymore. Traded him a rifle for it even.

I wondered if I'd be fast enough to skewer her soul fractal before she fled. End the truce early but take out a Feather permanently. A good trade. Probably not possible. Even with the element of surprise, Atius hadn't been able to against To'Orda. Makes sense now, they knew to watch out for it from the start.

"So you did kill him then. You. A human." She said, watching as I drew the blade out. The cape that had once hidden it was ripped apart, but occult weapons were far more sturdy than cloth.

"You're awfully chatty for a destroyed Feather." I said instead of giving her any kind of answer.

"How could I not be? I was beaten by a human. Do you know how often that happens? Never. Not until To'Aacar. Suppose I understand now why To'Avalis was so frantic about having you put down with extreme caution."

The fractal within the blade lit to life, far more dangerous than any I had been around. To'Sefit's beams would break apart anything material. This blade would do more than that.

"You killed a friend of mine." I said, bringing the weapon tip at her throat. "I'm here to finish what he started."

"And you stabbed my precious Zephyr to death. I've had it for decades now. Are we not even?" She said, head lifted up, eyes locked on me.

"Not even in the slightest."

She sighed, letting her head drop back down into the water with a small splash, eyes turning up to stare into the white mist beyond. "I do... regret having killed the other human in a fit of rage." To'Sefit said. "It's only now that I can do nothing but think and wait that I find myself calm again. I should have turned him into a disciple for myself in hindsight. He was too talented to simply kill off over petty anger. A net loss."

"He'd have never joined your cause. Not in a million years." I said. "And neither would any of us."

"And you would adhere to what cause instead? You won't win in the end, you must know that." To'Sefit huffed, eyes turning back to the tip of the blade. Watching it as if it were an interesting market trinket, despite the weapon being inches away from where her fractals hummed. "Relinquished can't be beaten, and she won't suffer a human to live that defeats Feathers. Your friend was already doomed the moment he survived longer than a minute against me. You realize you're far too dangerous to be left alive now as well, right?"

"Not the first time I've heard someone say that to my face." I said. "And a little late to figure that part out. Maybe don't underestimate humanity next time."

"Humanity? That's certainly not what won you this battle. It's you, not the fleshy coffin of your mortal coil. Why you feel any amount of pride behind meat, I've yet to understand. But I could shield you. From Mother, and your own mortality. You could become a Chosen, a disciple under my banner. Perhaps even a Feather yourself in time. It's the only way a human could live in a world controlled by Mother."

Wrath hissed across the channel. If you want a human, go find another. He's already mine.

To'Sefit laughed. "I suppose you did tell me once already. I didn't pay it too much attention, but now I think I understand. My, wherever did you ever find humans like this, little sister?"

"She picked a fight with me, and I won." I said.

This is a highly simplified version of events. Wrath corrected.

"Fine, I slammed a door in her face and cut off her leg the first time we met, after I shot her a few times too. Now we're good friends. You know, usual way you meet friends."

To'Sefit closed her eyes, shaking her head wistfully in the streaming water. "You truly are wasted under a doomed cause, human. Such a shame, but there will be time again in the future if you don't die today."

"There won't be. Relinquished and machines like you won't stop until all intelligent life is dead. Not a great cause to follow."

"An overexaggerating. Humans are hardly the only ones that matter."

I watched her silently, an unworded question hanging in the air.

She scoffed, "My, must I spell it out for you? Life still exists. Trees still grow, animals roam around, and mites plant their seeds undisturbed by Mother in every layer. Twelve miles above the ground level is far more space than you can possibly imagine. Your kind has to pass on the torch to your descendants, you've clung to it for far too long now. There are plenty of creatures further underground just as intelligent. But go on then, cut off my head. The time I brokered with To'Avalis is coming to a close. I do hope you live long enough for a rematch. I would find it incredibly disappointing if you were to survive this far only to die to him."

She didn't need to ask me a second time, giving a deeper satisfied smile instead. I stabbed the white blade forward, directly into her throat, right where her fractals were, occult lighting up with that terrifying fractal, seeking complete and utter destruction.

Of course, she fled long before the tip of my blade had even touched her skin. The blade cut through metal and nothing more. No occult pulse or soul rending rip. But dead was still dead, and To'Sefit wasn't going to come back anytime soon.

"One more down." I muttered to myself, watching the violet eyes dim. "One left to go."

Next chapter - The final Feather

Book 4 - Chapter 40 - The final feather

Not for the first time, my sense of planning and rationality shook hands with the petty thief inside in mutual agreement. Carrying around an orbital cannon the size of a small metal plate had a certain draw to it. Like explosions, and setting things that shouldn't be on fire, on fire.

Unfortunately for me, the moment To'Sefit faded away, a safeguard of some kind triggered over her plates, causing the internals to melt. Including the one in hand I'd used to kill her with.

Maybe she manually triggered it herself in whatever purgatory Feathers go to when they die, out of sheer spite. What other reason would she have to rob me of a weapon that could obliterate anything in my way? No other reason than petty hatred, and a deep desire to not share her toys.

I'd need to kill To'Avalis the old fashioned way: Hitting him with another knightbreaker when he couldn't wiggle out of the way. And since mine was spent, I'd need to get Kidra to nail him. The fight between the two had resumed the moment To'Sefit had given up the ghost. Avalis wasn't wasting a single second longer than he had to, and that was going to be a problem.

Kidra was one of the greatest melee fighters I knew, turning the entire thing into a calculated dance of optimal efficiency and chess. Against Avalis, she was barely holding on.

Not due to lack of skill. I could see in the video footage how she wove complex attacks and feints, each perfectly suited to counter and press against his strange weapon. To'Avalis's own motions were calm, collected and equally reactive. The problem is that Avalis didn't fight like a duelist. He fought like someone who would sell his own sister if it meant getting an extra five points in a match.

Kidra could pull off deadly moves time and time again, and Avalis would turn invulnerable, letting the swing float past through him, before rematerializing and delivering his own attacks. Which meant if I had to fight him, even with the occult, my own chances of winning got thrown off the speeder the moment I grew too mentally fatigued to keep the occult going.

I'd need to stack up more advantages. Two knights against one Feather and a small army of distractions was getting closer to an even fight, which wasn't the House motto. Fortunately, I didn't need to fight him two on one. When I'd dropped down from the ceiling, Kidra's video feed wasn't the only one that snapped back into view.

My boots took me directly to the whirlpool, following the flow of the water blindly in the white mist. The amount of metal sediment and flakes being churned through with the water still played havoc on the scanners, Journey taking extra time before the wireframes appeared and more detailed topology showed up. That was to our advantage, since if our scanners couldn't see well through the water - neither could anyone else's.

Glittering water flowed over the broken edge of the center, spinning wildly into a circle, the flood not quite falling down the way it should given there was nothing under but arid air all the way down to the desert strata under us. But on the side of the broken ground, just before the drop, I could see the hilt of a dagger submerged underwater, tilted down from the spinning throw that had embedded it inside.

The relic weapon had been expertly thrown, gouging a deep hole into the rock for a few seconds until the blade shut off. Normally, a straight throw to keep the blade on target was the trained method, but with enough practice, throwing it into a spin would let the occult edge gouge a full cut before the blade shut off.

And lodged right inside that cut was a familiar metal hook, trailing a taut rope, hidden under the rushing water. The line curling in an arc from the reduced gravity. Deeper in the vortex, a shadow was moving under it all, following the rope up, one arm at a time.

Captain Sagrius hadn't let himself fall down all the way to the bottom strata. With Father's combat engram running paired with the speed and reflex of a relic armor, even an inhumanly perfect throw with both dagger and hook could be done.

I kneeled down and grabbed the line, dragging it up, moving fast. I didn't need to go much, my target had been steadily fighting off several hundred tons of rushing water on its own, foot by foot, over this entire time. That added up.

A helmet surfaced over the whirlpool, water parting around it, the colors and insignia of House Winterscar growing clear as the armor's shoulders and chest came up.

It watched me silently, wordlessly pulling itself forward against the churn of the water while I did the same on the other side. Including the captain, it would be two elite knights and one occult spellcaster as support against Avalis. With those odds, we could make something happen.

Unfortunately, Avalis wasn't an idiot.

"Behind!" Father called out from the necklace around Sagrius's neck. He didn't need to tell me twice, I saw the ghost outline of Avalis leaping straight for my position, sailing through the white mist. He'd disengaged from Kidra, leaving his minions to hold his spot while he ruined my plan.

I tried frantically pulling Sagrius faster, which of course wasn't going to be anywhere near fast enough. So I did the next best thing and let my mouth have a stab at it. Might get the Feather to start talking instead of fighting. "Avalis, you rat bastard," I said. "We finally meet face to face to f-"

He landed with a splash behind me and wordlessly lifted a leg up for a savage kick. Which would toss Wrath and I straight into the vortex at this angle.

All right, note to self. Taunting Avalis is going to need some more creative thought than To'Sefit.

I abandoned the line and twisted around at the same moment, occult pulsing around me. My armgard shield lit up, the mirror image charging out of my position, shield raised directly where his kick would have connected - onto the occult edges glowing bright.

Avalis changed his movement instantly, turning his raised kick into a heel stomp directly through the image's knee, right under the glowing occult edges on the armguard and breaking the image apart. From that, he followed with a full kicker's swing, trying to punt me straight into the vortex again, no questions asked. Shields flared to life over my armor right before his kick landed.

Journey buckled against two unyielding forces. The first was his stupidly strong kick to my stomach. The second was my hasty grab for the hook embedded deep into the ground. The relic armor strained, my chest rocketing to the side as my left hand held the grip, before the force backlashed through me, slamming me back down into the water and stright into the brick floor instead of being tossed into the abyss. Bits of red splattered the interior of my HUD, and I realized that had come from me. Bit my cheek or tongue during that, probably. Don't know, didn't have time to check either.

To'Avalis hadn't waited for me to get back up either. His free hand was already reaching straight for Wrath's exposed sack, her working eye staring down the approaching hand about to tear her head off.

Fortunately, occult sight let me see in every direction, even if I was currently faceplanted directly into water. I snarled, spitting the rest of the blood for Journey to handle, triggering the occult again.

Images flashed out, standing up far faster than I could, three swinging for him in every direction as I scrambled back on my feet. This close, caught in the middle of a bad position and with little room to maneuver, I knew I had the bastard dead to rights. He hissed, snatching his hand back before my images could cut it right off. More images blurred to life from the prior ones, forcing him to leap backwards out of range. My images chased after the bastard, relentless.

Avalis rapidly realized he couldn't just walk away from the images, they needed to be destroyed or I would never stop hounding after him. He twisted under the swing of one, a sharp elbow slamming the other side of the armguard, breaking the image's cohesion. All the while he kicked the shin of another causing it to vanish away from the impact, and caught the last one with his chain, scything right through the ribs. Avalis turned out to be a multi-tasker, given the chain not only ripped my last image apart, it swung directly at my position, unerringly zooming to my side just as I'd gotten back up.

I didn't get the time to reach down a second time for the hook. I hardly had the time to curse before the mace end slammed dead-on into my hastily raised armgard.

My shield held. And then the mace end exploded in an occult blast, knocking up and off my feet. Shields triggered, dispersing most of the shock but not without rattling my insides as if I were in a full on speeder crash. Physics twirled Wrath and I around like a string toy, snapping the few remaining straps clean off as we tumbled through the air. She got flung further off to the walls, while I got sent way too close to the vortex edge.

My armor hit the ground hard, sliding through the water like the world's deadliest game of sliding ice with absolutely nothing just a meter off my right. The maw of the vortex watched, hungry, as I slipped parallel to it. Pleading that I'd bounce the wrong way and fall into its gullet.

It's wish got granted. My armor slammed into an upturned rock and bounced me straight to the void.

"Keith!" Kidra screamed out over comms, horrified. She was too far away, and too bogged down by Avalis's minions.

In pure desperation, frantic hands shot out by sheer reflex, scrambling for anything I could grip. Slick rock was the only thing under me, my fingers uselessly gliding across the flooring as my feet, chest and everything crossed over the edge.

Fingers wrapped over the edge itself at the last moment, and I squeezed for everything I had in me. The armor instantly pitched straight down, the leftover force pushing me off mixing with the rushing weight of angry water pitted against unyielding relic armor holding onto for my life. The armor won. Comms and video feeds began to fuzz as the water poured over my head, submerging me in the torrent.

"Close one, deary." Cathida said, a nervous edge in her voice while the world had been cut off. "If the gravity wasn't weakened here, that rock edge wouldn't support your weight and inertia from that. Don't let him get a second shot like this."

The armor made pulling myself up easy, giving me a short jump up through the water, landing on the walkway edge with both feet. Cathida was right, I was quickly running out of luck. Few seconds with Avalis and I'd lost Wrath, then nearly got kicked into the vortex three times over. Rat bastard was going hard.

Said bastard now strolled at the edge, clearly feeling far more confident in his odds, letting hot air vent off near his halo. The chain swinging lazily around his main hand, coming closer and closer to Sagrius's hook and line. The Captain was nearly at the edge, wildly pulling against the cord, just about to reach solid ground. The chain made a quick twist, and scythed right through the rope as he passed by the hook. Avalis didn't even bother to look, violet eyes fixed on me the whole time.

Fuck.

My options came down to one possible choice. I could try to throw my own hook and rope at Sagrius and hope he'd grab hold of it. But Avalis was here, and protecting a rope against a monster like him was impossible. Distracting him by throwing random scrapshit wasn't going to work either, and neither trying to jump after the captain. He'd just take the opportunity to murder Wrath.

Saving the captain had turned into an impossible task.

In the soul trance, I could see the falling relic armor had also come to the same conclusion, knowing there was no possible way to return this time. But not the combat engram running deep inside the armor. His right hand snapped straight for the neckpiece and cleanly ripped it off its chain. A faceless helmet locked onto mine.

It was a perfect toss, and Journey's gauntlet easily snatched the thrown necklace out of the air.

The falling armor finally relaxed, as if content with these last actions, letting itself be dragged off with the current, vanishing under the waves. Video feed turned into a pixelated mess before going dark, signal lost from the occlusion in the water. A moment later, he was gone from even the occult sight, falling too far out of my range.

To'Avalis watched from a distance, calculating the captain's final choices. "A sentimental item?" He asked, fishing for information.

"As a matter of fact, it's the heart of my family." I answered back, holding onto the little neckpiece in hand. "A sigil of the clan."

Feathers could detect lies with enough information to work with, and Avalis wouldn't have come here without that information. I had to lead him down the wrong conclusions.

"A weapon would have been more valuable to deliver. What could a cosmetic keepsake possibly do for you in this situation?"

I tossed the neckpiece into my shield hand, holding it tight. I took steady steps back to Wrath, drawing Atius's machine blade with my main hand, pointing directly at him. He allowed it.

"Think I'll sell it for a ration bar, killing Feathers really drives up a hunger you know?"

Avalis watched intently as I took a position between him and Wrath. I could tell from his gaze that whatever mechanical version of instinct he had, it was screaming there had to be a more important reason why the captain's final action had been to throw that instead of anything I could 'use.'

What Avalis couldn't have known yet is that the captain had thrown a weapon at me.

The greatest weapon he had.

Deep in the necklace, a soul fractal remained lit within, smoldering with fury.

Next Chapter - Combined arms

Book 4 - Chapter 41 - Combined arms

A foreign soul link curled from the necklace, connecting with my own, bridging a small gap.

Keith. Father said, tone cold and clear.

What he didn't say was the relief deep inside that I hadn't fallen off the edge. The simmering fury inside him at watching anyone attempt to harm his family again. Worry for Kidra. Pride that we'd both held our own against a threat, and vicious satisfaction that To'Sefit had been outright executed.

As quickly as those thoughts inadvertently passed through the link, a wall of his will slammed between us, holding the rest of his thoughts guarded behind.

Just you in there? I asked, politely leaving his thoughts alone. There wasn't a sign of any other knight within the necklace. Only his soul fractal glowed with power, the rest inside the necklace remained empty.

The others remained behind of their own choice, within the armor's reserve soul fractals. I was left behind, you need more help than the captain.

And in case I didn't survive, I had one more possible escape from death. But that part wasn't mentioned, only implied.

Avalis came to a stop, hand holding onto the chain hilt, other hand lifting up. "I'll offer you terms one last time." Eyes locked on the neckpiece, calculating new ways to get under my skin. "I can supply you with armors, weapons, food, medicine, shelter, peace. Whatever you need for your clan and family's wellbeing. Location data of suitable places with new pillars that could become a new home for your people. I could even delete those parts off the machine maps, obscure whatever location you select. I could watch over it myself over distances, making sure the territory is never logged again so long as I live. Step out of the way, allow me to recover To'Wrathh, and this all ends for the best."

"Deleting your own maps and then actively hiding a human population sounds like something a traitor would do, you know?" I said, tapping a foot in the rushing water. "How do I know you're not just going to stab me in the back the moment I hand over Wrath's head?"

I could see Wrath's working eye flicker straight over to me from her sack, a look of betrayal in them even with the rest of her face frozen over. I waved her worries away, hoping she'd get the message. I just needed to buy time.

Kidra's combat feed showed she was using the disappearance of Avalis as a window of opportunity to hunt down and destroy his surrounding forces. Given how Avalis stood still further away from me, the Feather must have already written them off from the moment he'd come here.

By the time he'd get back to them, Kidra would have finished the last one. The break To'Sefit had given her to catch a breath had been well used.

"My goals are only to complete my mission." He said, eyes focused, trying to calculate what order of words would convince me the best. "My actions, for or against mankind, will be meaningless in the ultimate scope of this conflict. What is one more city of humans hiding under her gaze? Granting you these offers cost me nothing, I have no reason nor motive to go against my word."

Journey's HUD lit up with signals, more nameplates appeared under our slowly dwindling team. The away team was battering down doors and chokepoints, distant rifle sounds echoing, barely audible over the din.

"Choose." Avalis said. "End this all now, or die trying."

"Well, if you put it like that, guess I'll die."

He sighed, more annoyed than anything. "An unfortunate answer." The chain in his hand began to swing. "This could have been far easier on everyone."

"Never said I'd make it easy." I said, occult pulsing around me, mirror images flying directly in his path.

He tutted, sprinting forward and eliminating the ghosts with impressive grace, the chain moving around like an extension of his shell.

I tried to manipulate the images earlier, before he'd reached to dispatch them, but that chain had godsdamned reach. In moments, I needed to make use of my own solid shield and sword to keep alive as the weapon swung right into me.

Fighting against a ranged whip was unlike anything I'd ever done before. The armshield would block the chain, but it would start to wrap around unless I shoved the whole thing up fast enough while also sidestepping away from the blow to help deflect it, forcing the chains to slip off and continue the trajectory above my head. And I had to keep an eye on that mace end, or he'd blast me out of the way. Those I needed to outright dodge perfectly.

Worse was the potshots he took at Wrath's sack, forcing me to constantly kick her backwards as I gave ground and held him off.

Collision with occult images I sent out also ran into an issue. If the chain edge struck against their armshield edges, the images didn't have enough stopping power to remain manifested. They vanished into mist, not even slowing the swing down or dealing any kind of damage.

Even if I got an image close enough to swing at him that he hadn't been able to take on, I knew he could just turn translucent and let the image swing through. Functionally invulnerable. This was a race to the bottom and I knew it.

I still battered his attacks away, again and again.

He changed the pattern up, twisting on himself and slamming the mace part into the water before me at an angle. Rocks and a spray of water cracked out into chunks behind an occult pulse. They flew right into my position, pummeling me with hundreds of smaller chunks.

Journey's HUD was a mess, readjusting to the lowered visibility as quickly as it could. Shields hadn't triggered, but the larger rock chunks shoved me slightly off position.

The occult sight remained clear even if my physical ones weren't. And within it, I saw Death.

Particles of black swirling dust, appearing in a graceful arc, where a chain would swing through my neck.

I ducked. Avalis's chain scythed harmlessly above, death dissipating. He might have actual invulnerability, but I had something similar. Father's perception, and he was right there connected with me.

The miss didn't stop him from executing further movements. He redirected the chain, and I barely deflected it downwards with the armshield, slamming the whole thing down into the ground and putting my weight on it, trying to pin it down.

That wasn't a good idea. Scratch that, it was a terrible idea.

Occult pulsed at the mace end and I was tossed off the chain, fumbling forward into the water. Journey's HUD showed even more damage to my bones and muscles, parts going orange this time.

No time to think about that. I rolled back on my feet in panic, sprinting straight for Wrath's exposed sack, watching as his chain already carved through the air, going straight down for her head.

I reached her in the nick of time, my sliding kick knocking her sack away just as the mace end crushed into the ground right where my boot had flashed past.

It exploded again, spraying water and rock in every direction, tossing both myself and Wrath's sack backwards.

I scrambled back up on my feet, avoiding Avalis's followup murder attempts by the skin of my teeth, abusing the occult sight for everything I could get. Death came at me again and again. He tried to go for Wrath after the failures, but my blade desperately swiped through the air with a short jump, catching his own chain and throwing it off course.

The weapon rattled and returned back to his hilt. Avalis paused, a haze of air above his head reaching past his halo. Violet eyes glared at me the entire time. Contemplating. I didn't have any time to strap Wrath back on my back, but so long as I remained standing, he wasn't getting to her. And Avalis knew that.

The end of the whip is the weakpoint. Father said in the intermission, watching the lopsided fight. It can be sliced by an occult blade at the right angle.

The chain end was more like a diamond mace, with each fanged edge glowing bright occult blue. But unlike the chain itself, there were still openings in between the fangs.

Easy for you to say, I'd need to thread a needle in a snowstorm to pull that off!

You lack the skill. The crusader in your armor does not, and will not be held down by human reflex. Order her.

Journey had turned off the administrator override for remote operation during the reset, and I hadn't turned it back on since. To'Aacar had been able to brute force his way into controlling my armor if I did leave the doorway open - but that was To'Aacar. Avalis might not know that was possible. Wrath had deleted as much information as she could. Getting Journey to move with me could be the piece that turns the tides, or it could equally damn me in the same moment.

Can't unlock her here. I need to give a verbal command, and Feathers are the world's best evesdroppers. He'll hear me under my helmet and start putting pieces together. How about you? You're here, Wrath once tapped into your experience. Can't you send it my way somehow?

He didn't answer immediately, mulling it over. It is... possible, although it may come at a price. The girl had software protecting her identity from being tainted by my own and a soul fractal variation made to jail souls instead of housing them. The cage was built for it. Sagrius showed what happens when two souls connect on a deeper level without guard. One is eroded away, either your armor or myself. But, should the stakes grow dire, I will intercede. For now, take what chances come your way.

Chance in this case had a name. Kidra, and she was here to finish what she'd started.

A screamer's dead shell was hurled across the battle, more a statement than part of any real plan. Avalis easily hopped up on the dorsal spines as the unmoving machine slid against the ground where he'd stood.

"The rest of his army lays in ruins now." Kidra said, walking into view from the mist. Her swords flourished, splattering droplets of black oil off the flat edges. "He's alone. Options?"

"That invulnerability has got to go. And he's been using it sparingly, which means there's a limit. I think we need to grapple him." My voice caught me by surprise - I was starting to slur a bit, only realizing now how much my thoughts had begun to feel fuzzy without my notice. Overuse of the mirror fractal, or all the throwing around had caused a concussion at some point.

It's fine, all we had to do was eliminate him. Like Kidra had said, just one more target to take down.

She nodded at the plan, hunching down for a sprint. Avalis had clearly heard our talk - and given his reaction, I think the grapple plan was on the right path.

He leaped straight up from the Screamer's dead shell, far into the air where we wouldn't be able to get him.

With a muttered curse, I readied my weapons again, occult pulsing around as the mirror fractal flared into life once again. "You think we can't catch you in the air, yo-"

Death bloomed around me, stretched out like a four fingered hand, wrapping around my chest, arms and neck. All connected by a straight line of death from the apex of his jump. So thick, it seemed to cover my entire sight. Belatedly, I realized he hadn't jumped out of fear. He was looking for a very specific angle. One where he could draw a straight line through me - and Wrath. Death reached far behind me, a tendril of darkness slashing through her sack.

With clarity that cut through my blurry mind like fire, I knew exactly what was coming.

I abandoned my mirror images, turned and yanked her sack, leaping to my side, landing hard on my shoulder with absolutely no grace and a deep splash of water.

Avalis threw something at the same instant with all the force in his arm. A small black spinning cylinder, spiked straight at a target with unerring precision.

A knightbreaker round.

My knightbreaker round.

Freshly stolen earlier, now returned to sender.

The speed was ridiculous. Probably the upper limit a knightbreaker round could withstand without crushing the round faster than the chains could destroy something. He must have calculated that. The round narrowly missed my chest, smashing into the water behind me where Wrath had just been. A massive angled geyser flashed out from the round's impact, chains expanding out and ripping apart everything around it.

I dodged it. Journey's shields still triggered for some reason. Then instantly overloaded.

And I realized I hadn't completely dodged it.

One of the chains had been close enough to reach me. I watched it through the soul trance in almost morbid fascination.

It licked my leaping leg for only a moment, wrapping around my ankle, sliding off the shield, slowly unwrapping off. Just as it nearly cleared away, the shield broke apart, letting the chain sink teeth into my calf and heel as a parting gift.

A small nick.

Journey's structural integrity showed instant failure through the boot portion, backup synthetic muscles now taking the load instead. Medical scans showed my body hadn't done any better against a chain. It had slashed straight through ligaments and muscles alike, before whipping away and descending down into the rock with the rest of its cursed kin.

They all gouged deep funnels into the floor, and turned off. The now unpowered chains were stuck inside the ground, anchoring the weapon against the shallow river trying to carry it off into the maelstrom.

I got back on my feet, my right boot carrying scarlet dyed water off and away with the current. Needed to seal that wound fast, next chance I got. "Trying to kill me with my own ordinance?" I said, with bravado I definitely didn't feel. He very narrowly had.

"To'Sefit claimed the same to you a moment ago. It didn't end well for her, although you've fared through it better. At least it provided some additional data, it wasn't a complete waste." He said, landing nearer to the whirlpool edge.

"Glad you learned throwing things at me doesn't work. What's the next plan Avalis? Asking me to look away first?"

His eyes narrowed at that, "Human reflexes alone wouldn't have saved you. Your attempts to mislead aren't as subtle as you think. It's clear to me sight wasn't the deciding factor. You're using a fractal of some kind to predict attacks."

Its gods damned hard to successfully lie to a Feather. Especially one that's trying to ferret info out of me like this.

"How about you come closer and find out." I said, settling for a neutral reply that wouldn't give him anything else to work on, tapping deep into the mirror fractal again, ignoring the budding headache it was causing.

Kidra sprinted directly to his position, blades ready for another bout against him. Occult mirrors sent out from myself were equally about to slam into him from the other side.

The Feather didn't move. Eyes shifting between me and Kidra, back and forth.

Calculation. Conclusion.

He nodded to himself, as if everything was going as expected. Then wordlessly took a step backwards and the whirlpool behind swallowed him whole.

There wasn't a trick to it. I could see him in the occult sight, even beyond visual range. The concept of a Feather fell down in freefall, until he vanished from my range.

The rat bastard had run off.

Next chapter - Rest before the storm

Book 4 - Chapter 42 - Rest before the storm

"He ran?" Kidra hissed, sliding to a stop with a heavy splash of water.

"He ran." I confirmed, the occult sight showing me nothing but darkness below the whirlpool.

"The Feather may have only made you think he's run." Father warned, voice crackling on the comms. "An enemy like that one is relentless. Don't be fooled."

"Got to agree with the old man. He's making a new plan. He's definitely making a new plan, the bastard." I said, taking a few cautious steps to the whirlpool edge. "Current one is a bust, he's down an army and two Feathers. He can't track us anymore, and…"

In the distance, more rifle shots echoed, getting closer.

"And we've got our own army that's caught up. No wonder he decided running was the better choice. Must have known his time was up." The knightbreaker round he'd chucked at me had been a last attempt to finish us off without wasting more time.

All things said and done, I was happy enough with this result. The headache and difficulty concentrating was slowly bleeding away now that I wasn't tapping the occult every second. I'd gone very close to my limits, now I was paying the belated price. Which would have been terrible had the fight continued on.

The battle was over. All that was left were limping machines that hadn't yet been completely executed by Kidra, and while they were screeching incoherently at me, my sister had her blade ready to stab anything that dragged itself too close.

Not that they'd have the chance to do even that.

I let my body flop down on the ground, arms spread out, letting water wash over the armor. Imagining I was back home in the safety of the clan, and all this was the warm waters of the communal bathhouse. Couldn't feel any of it through Journey of course, but it's the thought that counts. It helped me nurse the headache that had somehow followed me even into the soul trance.

In the surrounding parameter, four blurs of silver and red streaked straight through ahead of the group behind them. They leaped out of the tunnels, deep into the air, each landing hard against the rushing water, rifles drawn out. Scanning the area. Spotting us a moment later. The four knights turned and began a rapid jog directly our way, blades cutting through limping shells of machines Kidra had only incapacitated. Killing blows delivered with savage strikes, even as the near dead Screamers tried to swing and fight back. No rifle shots. No need to waste bullets on the scraps left behind.

The four Winterscar knights didn't even give them the courtesy of looking as they scythed through the scattered machines between them and us.

In mere moments, four Winterscar knights surrounded Kidra and me, the soldiers taking defensive positions on all sides, while the rest of the clan knights fanned around the chamber.

"We greet the prime." One said to Kidra, giving a blade salute, with a bow. She returned it with all the regal bearing of a House Prime.

The others had their helmet fixed straight on where I lay. Medical scans from the armor would have already told all four I was still alive. Not 'good to play a few more rounds of hangerball' alive. More like 'Lucky to limp around.' alive.

My vitals were showing a grim picture. The kind that would mean if I ever stepped out of the soul trance, pain would very quickly come after me like I owed it money. Good thing I could hide from it all in the soul trance.

"The captain?" One of my knights asked, helmet turning to scan the surroundings. Sounds of blades slicing through leftover enemies echoed through the chamber as the rest of the surface knights fully breached into the chamber uncontested.

"His armor fell into the whirlpool, to the second strata." Father said over the comms. "Enemy prevented recovery. The other knights remain with him, holding his soul safe for now."

They stayed quiet for a moment, helmets turning to one another. One took a step forward, looking down at me. "We can recover him once we've secured your safety, my lord. The captain would understand."

"Lord Atius?" One of the clan knights asked, coming closer to our group. I recognized the insignias and decorations as a knight of House Icestride. And given the old dry tone, this had to be the prime. Highly respected warrior, with decades of service. During the time that Father had lost his mind, the one who had come closest to challenging Shadowsong for the title of First Blade had been him.

"He's... gone." I said, pointing to the melted rocks above, where the clan lord had made his last stand. "To'Sefit."

The knight nodded. "We will reunite on the surface. And Master Windrunner?"

"...Also deceased. Armor and all. Same enemy. Couldn't get to him in time." The words hurt to say or even think. Windrunner was just… gone.

I could tell the news hit the knights hard, even if none of them reacted to it outwardly. Icestride shook his head. "He will be remembered. The time for mourning must come later. For now, chain of command continues with me, in the absence of the clan lord."

The knights sent acknowledgement pings, each name lighting up with a green dot on Journey's HUD. All except for the names in gray. I sent my confirmation ping with the rest.

"Debrief?" Icestride asked, helmet turning to Kidra.

She sheathed her sword back into place, going over the abridged events while the rest of the clan knights secured the chamber.

Icestride nodded slowly. "I see. The mite forge is no longer on this level, and is further under us. The final enemy is also unaccounted for, likely fallen back to guard that objective. And we have an incoming wave of machines on our heels. The original forces this Feather expected to have more time to summon."

"Should we retreat?" I asked.

Wrath remained silent in the sack, watching events.

"No." Icestride said, shaking his head slowly. "There is only complete victory, or eventual defeat. Consider it, Winterscar. Mite forges are not hidden, the machines know where each one is and has armies surround them. If your nemesis was kicked to the ground, would you let her get back up with such an advantage to pull from?"

I shook my head. "Not a chance, I'd guard every mite forge nearby and setup alerts everywhere else in case she tries to find another forge further off. I'd have armies surround every point of interest and probably hound after her every second of the day. I'd never give her the chance to repair or rest."

"Correct. And I suspect that's exactly what the enemy has done. Had we gone for further forges away, we would have encountered fully entrenched armies. And, worse: The original Feather we were sent to take down, To'Aacar, knew about the clan enough to hunt you down there. Had you not gone out to the fields to confront the Chosen knights, To'Aacar would have gone into the clan colony and slaughtered his way to your House gates. What does that tell you?"

"They know where we live." I gulped. "Which means he knows where we live too."

He nodded. "I admit I find it strange that their leader can't understand the surface exists, but I can't fault the scheme when considering it from a long-term position. Any machine that tries to continue the campaign on the surface would eventually be destroyed by Relinquished herself in a fit of fury. Over time, only the ones who do not touch the surface will remain. To'Aacar showed the best machines can do on the surface, given that limit. It wasn't as dire as it could have been."

He did have an entire machine army, along with Wrath following his orders at that point. And instead of swinging that like a battering ram into the clan gates, he'd gotten the othersiders to do the war for him, while his real army handled the undersiders.

I got where Icestride was going with this. "Avalis will do the same against the clan. If we bring back Wrath like she is now, he'll keep sending slavers and raiders to batter the clan down. He'll hold the entire clan's safety as a hostage."

He nodded, "You won't be able to shelter Wrath under our banner, not in her vulnerable state. Assassins and other sabotage would likely be the weapon of choice. The mission must continue, to the end. Wrath must be repaired, or we cannot bring her back with us." He took a step forward to the whirlpool, looking down. "And To'Avalis knows it."

That was… a little hard to take in. If Wrath wasn't repaired and we retreated back home, To'Avalis would follow behind like a bloodhound smelling weakness.

With her repaired, he wouldn't be able to make such overt moves, since she'd be able to fight off anything herself. Wrath might be still learning common sense, but she wasn't lacking in combat. She'd killed To'Sefit alone, and would likely outright counter To'Orda's gravity manipulation with her wings. If she's fixed up, she'd easily rip apart any othersiders or assassins he had to work with. The only thing that could threaten her at that point would be a full machine army, and he couldn't field those on the surface. Avalis would have to wait for us to leave the clan on our own rather than pick a fight when we had all advantages lined up.

"The path down is one way," Kidra said. "We jump in, we won't be able to get back up. How long would we need to travel in the second strata to return to the drop off point?"

Icestride said nothing, helmet fixed on the whirlpool in front of him. "Weeks. And with the Undersider city destroyed, there would be no other gathering point we could find. But it seems the gods have some favor for us after all. Scan below the whirlpool. Our intel doesn't seem up to date. Something is down there, where there should be nothing."

Kidra walked closer to the vortex, helmet pointing down. Journey was already downloading what was being scanned by Icestride.

A hand reached out ahead of me, one of my knights. I took it, and let it drag me back up on my feet, water washing down Journey. No rest for the wicked looked like. So while everyone else was busy unloading hoversleds, getting ammo deposits setup for quick loading, pushing machine scraps into piles, or staring down the whirlpool at the center for the secrets it hid under, I made my way to one particular troubled spider we'd come all this way to help.

She stared at me as I made my way, expression unreadable since nothing worked in her shell other than that single glowing eye. Once I made contact again, feelings and words came into my mind.

Aww, were you worried about me? I asked.

No. She answered back immediately. If she were able to move, she'd be huffing, arms crossed, likely looking away.

It's adorable how bad at lying you are. You really should be a little more honest with your feelings.

You were able to defeat me before. If you had failed against To'Avalis, I would have been greatly disappointed. I was not worried. Not in the slightest.

She had been. Quite a lot. No hiding any of that in the soul sight. Some reasons were a little touching. She considered me a close friend.

Other reasons were a little disturbing. Apparently the only one allowed to kill me was her. To'Avalis doing it before she could was encroaching on her turf and she was not a happy spider about that. She was worried he'd rob her of something rightfully hers. She didn't have any intention of killing me, anytime soon, or at all. But it was the idea of someone else getting to me first that she found very ill-tasting.

Feathers. I sighed. Even the good ones are crazy.

Your thought patterns are just as strange to me, human. She tutted back. Equally confused as to why I hadn't thought of fighting her to the death again either. If anything, she found it insulting. As if I considered myself too far above her to even think her a threat. Once my shell is repaired, I would appreciate if you considered me with due respect.

I gave her a level stare, then reached out with a hand to shove her back into the sack. "All right, back in you go, little miss murderbot. Reflect on how killing people isn't socially acceptable in this day and age."

Wrath squawked in protest, but had no way to stop the terrible evil human from lifting her up.

She'd changed a lot over time. At one point, all she had as examples to follow were Feather and To'Aacar. Now her world was far more broad, filled with different people to learn from. She'd found her own voice here, slowly turning into someone more attuned with who she wanted to be.

"We'll need to get you new straps. Old ones are busted." I said, turning to one of the knights further off. Fortunately, broken straps were something that happened often, and Kidra had considered that we'd run into this issue. One of the hoversleds brought with the clan knights had everything I'd need to replace the straps, with some careful knots.

Don't think I haven't noticed your own thoughts, human. You really should be a little more honest with your feelings. She said, smug about throwing my own words right back at me.

Well now, arn't you holding your head a little high for someone stuck in a sack? I'll be billing you for all these extra straps once we're done here, and I'm going to overcharge for everything I can squeeze. I'm a Winterscar, we have a reputation to keep.

And I'll negotiate with Kidra on those, as she is the head of your house. And far more reasonable.

As I was working on this, Icestride had ordered the small army assembled here to take positions around the chamber, sending Ankah and the Shadowsongs further up the central tower to get a vantage point outside, while the rest of the knights took over fortifications Avalis had once made to keep us out. A few others were already setting down and taking out rations, eating while they could. This was the first break they'd had in hours, and it wasn't known when they'd get another moment.

A more complete map had started to fill out with the armors working together, sharing knowledge acquired of what lay hidden under the whirlpool. If the desert strata was a full mile down, these armors had excellent range to be able to scan through metal filled water like this.

They were able to get data. Not because they had mile-long sensor abilities, but because what was under us wasn't a desert.

"A mite colony must have passed through at some point." Kidra said, watching as the map was being filled out, even against the water causing half the sensor pings to return garbage junk.

Rectangles jutted up from the ground, massive structures, like towers. Fuzzy, lines shifting a few dozen times in quick succession as the armors filtered through what was real and what was only bounced around signals. Details were scarce, since it was all wireframe superimposed inside our HUDs. Tiny scaffolding appeared everywhere in between the rectangles. The image wasn't complete, a lot of angles were missing, with the armors only taking guesses at what might be and drawing those lines in gray.

The image sharpened further, the large towers turned to something more familiar.

What do you see? Wrath asked, having no way to see the wireframes inside Journey's HUD.

"Third era skyscrapers." Kidra said with a hint of awe.

"An entire strata filled with them." I said, watching the map before me. "They even have windows and floors in them. They functional?"

"Unlikely." Icestride said, pinging a point on the map. "Many of them are like that unfortunate one there." That skyscraper had collapsed at the base, leaning against another and ending up frozen in that position. A few dozen were like this. "Additionally, third era skyscrapers didn't have scaffolding that reached in between buildings like this."

A tangled web of smaller lines had started to sprout from the mapping. Catwalks, skeletal staircases and other scaffolding connected each and every tower together. Some of it had collapsed, others looked sturdy enough to support a few dozen relic armors.

Closer to the ground was where the normality ended. Some of these buildings didn't have a base. They were floating far up in the air, as if suspended by all the connected catwalks.

"What we need is there." Icestride said, pointing right under the vortex.

One of the skyscrapers had collapsed down, making a bridge between another, and directly through it was a hole. Right above where our vortex of water funneled down.

"Your mite forge crashed through that structure, and is either stuck inside, or passed clear through. More importantly, the roof of one of these skyscrapers is close enough that we could repel down and keep a way back up."

"This is a weak point." Father said over the comms. "To'Avalis will seek to cut off any return. He could appear and slice off any lines left behind."

Icestride nodded, humming. "We need to leave a force up here that can catch ropes thrown up, or lower ropes down if the others were cut in combat. That tails nicely with what's needed. Winterscars, all of you, will journey down with the goal to repair Wrath. Fix her shell enough that she can begin repairs on herself, withdraw immediately after. The rest of the clan knights will remain here and hold this ground for extraction."

Before I could ask who he was going to hold ground against, the comms clicked. "Shadowsong to ground force. Enemy spotted."

"Report?" Icestride asked.

"The army at our heels is surrounding the chamber, unknown how many are in the tunnels, but enough are crawling around the visible level. They're not approaching yet, likely the curs are gathering forces still."

Our commander hummed again. "They're regrouping before another push. All units, cycle through rations while we can. Once the fighting starts again, it won't end until they're all dead or we are."

Icestride's helmet turned my way, a hand reaching out to my shoulder reassuringly. "The army To'Avalis had called for is here. We've had a few engagements with them already, which slowed our path down. It is a true army this time around, not scraps left behind like what you've found here. I'll organize a defense, and hold the sanctuary chamber. Once Wrath is repaired, return and toss hooks up, we'll lift you out. If your own hooks are destroyed in combat, we'll keep a reserve here ready to deploy."

"Can you hold against a full machine army?" Kidra asked.

Icestride chuckled. "A few months past, I would have considered such a feat as impossible. Lately, the impossible has been rather within reach. A single knight would be overwhelmed with numbers. We aren't running as single knights, or anything close to ordinary any longer. We have terrain to prevent surrounds, weapons that could kill even Feathers, and the speed to match one. And they don't have any Feathers left up here. Leave the chamber to us."

He rose to a full height, searching through the gathered knights. "All units. The Winterscar knights will continue the mission into the lower strata. The rest of us will remain here to hold off the machines. Our main priority will be to eliminate any Drakes they have. We'll form up an assassination squad for this task. Rest of you will be on layered defense."

"Why the drakes?" I asked, watching as the knights around all began to flow through practiced motions. Dividing into smaller teams, each taking tunnels and splitting the manpower. A group of five were already vanishing into the darkness of one.

"The single enemy unit that poses a true threat to our knights. As good as we are, it's unlikely we'll be able to kill an entire army of machines by ourselves anytime soon, even with our advantages." He said. "It'll be a war of attrition up here. Bullet will run out. Medical supplies will eventually be consumed. Knightbreakers will be saved up and used for the more deadly enemies. Each minute spent increases the odds of a Drake finding a vulnerable moment, and they'll only need one. That's not the part that worries me, we can counter this with sufficient tactics and scouting. The issue is that relic armors cannot outrun drakes."

"You want to secure an escape should anything go wrong. And the drakes need to be all killed for that to happen." Kidra finished.

Icestride gave the hand sign for a grin. "We'll have them eliminated within the first hour of combat. They can't hide from us forever. Once you return, we can execute a fighting retreat with little worry of being overwhelemed."

"What happens if we don't return at all?" There's no signals that could breach through that whirlpool of metal scraps and water. It had already taken a good while for the armors to even pierce what was on the other side. If we died down there, they'd never know up here.

"Should that happen, then I suppose we'll actually have enough time to break the machine army and grind it down to the last." He took a step to the whirlpool and looked down through it. "Move swiftly like the winds on white. We'll keep the way home open for you, until you return. Don't make me go down there looking for your body."

I took my own step to the edge, watching the whirlpool before me, leading down into another world.

Where Captain Sagrius had been cast down into. Where a possible machine army was rushing to ambush my knights, my sister and myself. Where the mite forge was waiting to be bargained with for a miracle.

The water churned around, uncaring. Trying to drag all of us with it.

Down where To'Avalis was waiting for the last battle.

Next chapter - Into the breach

Book 4 - Chapter 43 - Into the breach

The other knights around us carefully continued their work, checking their lines and verifying they had ammunition and weapons ready for what came next. Two clan knights came near them, handing over long barreled rifles, snipers. The handover was quick, ammunition and straps passed over. Kidra's request. Along with land mines, traps, explosives, and anything else the surface knights had brought with them in hover sleds.

Planner in question took a step to my side, helmet turned to give me a meaningful stare where I'd been sitting, chewing on the last bit of a ration bar.

"I'll be fine." I said, waving her away. "Wrath's strapped in, and I've got a small list of ideas to try out."

"You nearly died several times thus far. You should stay here with the rest of the soldiers. As Icestride said, without facing Avalis, they're only fighting standard machines here. With this many knights holding a fortified position, they'll grind down the entire machine army given enough time. I can carry the Feather down to be repaired with the other knights. The safest place for you is here."

She was serious about her offer. I sent her the hand sign for a smile, "If it was you that had to stay behind and watch me go down, would you?"

"... No." She said, realizing my point with a sigh. "No, I suppose I wouldn't allow you to go into such a thing alone."

"Well, there's your answer. Times have changed, Winterscars stick together now, right?"

She chuckled, shaking her head. "That's nothing new. They were very fond of keeping their friends close, and enemies closer. What's changed is the amount of backstabbing. Finish your food. We need to be ready the moment the scouts find a path."

"Just need explosives, then I'm good to go." I said, chomping down on the last bite my before standing back up, grabbing more equipment from the hoversleds. Had a whole selection to pick from. Smoke, detonation, even a flashbang. Didn't hold out a lot of hope for that last one, my own armor would adjust to the light exposure near instantly. Avalis would be the same. But a split second might be the difference between life or death.

Comms clicked, just in time. "Tempest to team, found an egress point that fits the requirements. Sending location now."

The winterscar knights all stood straighter, helmets turning to Kidra. Showtime it seemed. I swallowed one last bite, took a long sip of water and slapped my helmet back on.

The whirlpool waited at our feet, daring anyone to go through the other side. So our group turned away and started on a quick jog into the temple tunnels again.

Icestride's plan in this case.

In the past, the only way down to the second strata from the temple was the centerpoint, where gravity was warped enough to let someone drift down gently to the desert ground below.

Problem: Avalis would have every gun pointed directly at the whirlpool. Not a lot of ways to sneak through an obvious chokepoint. But that cut two ways. If he's watching the whirlpool, he's not watching elsewhere.

Desert's gone now, mites. Which meant the game's changed. Just like there were plenty of cracks to sneak inside the temple from the top level, those same cracks would appear on the bottom. It would have been a dead end drop a mile down into a desert. Today we just needed to survive a drop to some rooftop, preferably one far enough away to let us sneak around whatever cordon he had setup.

Plenty of spots were marked on the ever expanding map the surface knights were making as they prepared for their own holdout fight.

What ended up being the crack in the ground wasn't exactly mite-made. Scout teams had been pinging the lower strata from every hole they could stick their heads through, so we knew where some towers were poking close to the ceiling. From there, we found a nice corridor nearby our landing point, and then persuaded the ground to let us go through with a few improvised picks. Explosives would have worked, but those were reserved for our good friends waiting down under. Also noise.

Kidra and the rest of the Winterscar knights gave one last check on their gear, tugging straps and verifying rounds were secure. A round of quick nods spread through our team of six, all of us satisfied, before we began leaping down one at a time, rope following behind as they each repelled and swung out of my sight.

"Right." I grumbled, watching the abyss under me. Lately gravity and heights haven't tended to go well for me. I swallowed my nerves and took a jump down anyhow.

A moment later, I'd crossed the threshold, and passed through to the world below.

And what a gods damned fever dream this strata was. The armors and scouts had been correct about the strata being nothing but third era skyscrapers and scaffolding stairways interweaved between each. Green plantlife had found time to sink teeth into the area, moss growing on the catwalks anywhere dirt had slowly collected over the years. Most of the skyscrapers here still had fully intact walls of near pitch black. Polarized glass, according to Journey's HUD. Other skyscrapers further in the distance hadn't aged as gently, only their spine and skeletal ribs remained.

We'd repelled down in the shadow of a massive tower, hiding us from sight. Rooftop had outright crashed into the ceiling, as if the skyscraper was grown like a tree, and hit the boundaries of this terrarium. Where the glass broke, large roots took the chance to grow through, with offshoots of trees rising off as if fungus covering the decaying structures.

In moments, I'd swung into a gloomy looking level. Logi office chairs, desks and rotting fabric cubical walls. All of it slightly tilted due to the skyscraper having bent a bit. The first few knights were already inspecting the area, checking for dangers.

We didn't turn on lights, neither inside the floor nor on our armors. Keeping quiet where our entry point was important. The last Winterscar knight roped through the window, landing into the dusty floor, turning back to give the rope a few tugs.

Up above, the scout unhooked the mooring and let the rope go free, returned to the owner.

"Ingress successful." Kidra reported. "No signs of machines on our entry. We're beginning operations."

"Copy, I'll relay to Icestride actual. Winds at your back, Winterscars." The scout called out, then vanished back into the tunnels. Contact quickly cut off.

On our own now.

As one, the group turned and began to move through the abandoned level to the other side. Mites had been pretty thorough in trying to replicate everything from a third era skyscraper. Papers were everywhere, showing made up charts and odd posters hung on the walls. A few labor laws written out that made little sense. The computers at each desk we passed looked like massive beige bricks, all of which had black screens, as if waiting for someone to sit down and begin a day of work.

Even had a coffee machine we passed by. Covered in dust of course, it might have never served a cup in its existence. If it actually functioned and wasn't just a replica in looks only.

The other side had just about the same view we'd seen coming down.

Life really finds a way no matter where. Small clouds of mist gathered and swirled around between the massive buildings, the soft gust stirred by the whirlpool a small distance ahead. Droplets of water breaking apart as it fell, turning into fine mist.

Bright red birds with long trailing tails flew in a unified swarm in between each building, swooping over from vine and tree branch alike, hunting flying insects or landing to peck at strange fruits and seeds.

The Winterscar knights had formed up, gawking out the window like I was.

"I'd heard stories about how different mite biomes were." Kidra said. "I feel like it wasn't done enough justice to prepare me."

The other knights were equally caught between wanting to stare at the strange alien sight, or keeping guard. We were in contested territory after all.

Kidra shook her head, then pointed straight down, from her vantage point. "There. That's where we need to go."

Hundreds of catwalks, filled with hanging vines or other detritus, littered the open air between skyscrapers. Some of them so covered in vegetation, they looked to be sagging slightly. Blocking all light under them, leaving the catwalks there hidden in shadow and free of growth.

"That's our way through. We'll use these to get closer to the mite forge. Keith," She turned to me. "Ask Wrath what kind of force he could have assembled in this amount of time."

He hasn't had enough time to prepare for this field. Wrath said. The army marshaled above was where he expended his resources. Any forces here would be a few packs of screamers who control this territory, and perhaps a handful of drakes passing through. Another army near this sector could have been called on, though I suspect we have an hour or more before it arrives in any kind of numbers.

She nodded at the answer, considering. "Once we're within range, we'll split up." She turned and pointed at two of the knights, each carrying the long range gear on their backs. "Adris and Kior will find a suitable overwatch position. You'll keep us covered from range, your main targets will be the drakes. They have no shields and can be taken down by a single well placed shot to their heads. If we can, we'll see if Captain Sagrius landed safely somewhere nearby and regroup. If we can't locate his signal, we'll need to continue the advance on our main objective."

The group and I gave a crisp salute, and we got to work.

Catwalks were a rickety thing. Some of them were sturdy, others seemed as if they would break if a rock fell on them hard enough. Fortunately, we had relic armor, and those were able to verify structural integrity. A path was lit up from tower to tower, hidden away by the dense vegetation, and giving us the best way forward.

It was easier than some of the stairs we'd taken through the towers. Mites did a lot of things with little oversight. Sometimes, the towers had functional stairs. That wasn't always the case. One tower just had a stairwell that featured rings of stairs, each connected to themselves. Leading absolutely nowhere but in a circle. Those times, we had to repel down until we found the next catwalk exit.

Elevator shafts also worked well as means to go up or down the towers. Relic armors had no trouble climbing up shafts or jumping gaps. Given how abandoned the whole zone felt, I expected to stubble on dead bodies of past human expeditions. Undersider merchants who'd traveled through this zone, from skyscraper to skyscraper like we were, and made too much noise. Maybe remains of prior camps where they'd set down, tin cups used and left behind. But there was no trace of anyone having passed by where we have, making me feel almost more at home. Like a scavenging expedition at a fresh untapped site.

We passed through the last catwalk, pushing open an old fire escape door and sneaking into the tower. Like all the other skyscrapers before, we snuck through to the other side of the office floorplan, reaching the window walls on the other side and looking through it.

Above, I could see the whirlpool of the temple.

Directly under, I got the first sight of the mite forge. Or at least, a hint of where it might have gone. One massive skyscraper had broken apart at the base like Icestride had reported, likely decades ago. It had fallen over to one side, striking another skyscraper before grinding to a stop.

Now it looked more like a slightly inclined bridge. Kidra raised a closed fist, ordering the team to come to a stop.

"You should take care when traversing the ruin." Father warned, voice crackling from the pendant at my hip. He watched through Journey's eyes, seeing only the danger the world had in store. "Such a structure should have split down the middle and collapsed down. It may be close to the breaking point already."

"Long way down too." I muttered, watching what was under the skyscraper bridge. That drop went further than a mile. "Must be multiple strata put together here. Like the elevator shafts here, only massive."

Journey's HUD was analyzing the ruins for structural integrity. "We're a little too far away to get good readings, deary." Cathida said. "My gut says that if the building hasn't collapsed already, time and those tree vines would have slowly reinforced the internal spine."

"It's held together by plants?" I asked, a little surprised. "What sort of food are the mites feeding those things?"

Frostbloom could survive on the surface, so mite-enhanced plants might just be the new concrete rebar.

It's the anti-gravity field under the temple. Wrath pointed out, which made a lot more sense. The field originated from the temple; it remains active even in the changed lower strata. The tower building is within the range.

"So we could just jump straight down from here to the mite forge?" I asked, after relaying her message to the others. "Theoretically speaking."

"Sure you can." Cathida said. "Assuming you want to land on the bridge looking like cheese."

"Drakes." Father clarified. "The Feather would have collected enough in the area to target anyone passing through the whirlpool. He would be a fool not to. In midair, your evasion options are… limited."

"By limited, he means non-existent." Cathida corrected. "My advice, take a longer way down where you have footing to work with. You snuck in this far, use the rest of it."

"How are we going to deal with hiding drakes?"

Kidra pointed to two knights behind us. They nodded back, each carrying the heavier sniper rifles we'd brought down. "We draw the enemy out. Adris and Kior have the weaponry needed to eliminate them, they just need a bead." She then pointed at the bridge face. "Father's sight lets him see the beams before they strike, assuming the shot is fatal. So long as we have Father nearby, we can survive being attacked."

Are you certain two knights will be enough to take on To'Avalis's drakes?

"A single knight with a good position should have enough ammunition and opportunity to eliminate dozens." Kidra said, without any doubt in her voice. "I've had personal experience with their kind during the Undersider city war, I'm sure you well remember that."

I'm aware. Wrath said, You eliminated every drake unit under my command. But why leave a second if you are confident a single knight is enough?

"A single knight could be overwhelmed by Screamers. But Avalis won't have enough to overwhelm two working together. Not with the numbers you suggest he has here. And if we kill him before his army arrives, it won't be our problem anymore, we'll escape up the strata and the army here can't follow."

Two knights are easily overwhelmed by Runners performing a hammer and anvil formation. Wrath insisted. I'm sure you well remember that.

Kidra laughed, hand reaching out to pat Wrath's head as the violet eye stared back. "Two undersider knights you mean. These are clan knights, and more than that, they're Winterscar knights. My knights." Her helmet turned back to me, "You tell Wrath that I pick only the best to join my House. They can do more than just survive against a small army of Screamers."

The two knights in question didn't change their posture, or move at all, but I could swear I saw them stand a little taller. Kidra wasn't giving them lip service either. She fully believed every word said.

I dutifully relayed it all back to Wrath through the soul fractal. The girl sighed.

Something on your mind? I asked.

I used to have a functioning alarm system. It would ring anytime I was underestimating Winterscars. I miss it, it was oddly useful. Situations like these, it would have reminded me to rethink my words.

I stopped, then looked back at her sack. How, exactly, did you end up having to make an actual alarm for something that specific?

She explained. In detail. It turned out to be a heated topic for her, imagine that. No idea how that could have happened.

Book 4 - Chapter 44 - Lurking in the walls

Descending down the last flight of stairs was a somber affair for the four of us left. The other two had split ways, passing across the catwalk to sneak through another tower with a better overall height. I could see their progress on the side of my HUD, still connected through comms. The list showed seven names on my side, six green and one gray. Sagrius wasn't found anywhere yet, and we couldn't exactly broadcast a full search ping, not while trying to sneak around. Wherever he'd fallen, he was out of range for now.

As far as the armor could sense, this last staircase was correctly designed. Sturdy enough to hold our weight, without any dead ends. The glass wall gave us a full view of where the mite forge had fallen. And more details of the skyscraper makeshift bridge. It had ripped through the glass and structure of the neighbor, cleaving through the whole thing - until the rooftop struck against a black obsidian cube of some kind that had been wedged into the other tower, like a heart of some kind. Whatever the massive cube was made of, it was clearly more sturdy than the tower falling into it. Golden lines glowed dimly, visible even at this distance.

The weird mite made cube was tilted, one of the corners exposed, while the rest of the flat plane angled down. The tower resting on top had come to an equilibrium of some kind, hiding the other endpoint under it.

Know what that is? I prodded Wrath, pointing. Whatever it was, it didn't fit the rest of the scenery. Neither the colors of the skyscraper interiors, nor some kind of seed for the rest of the vines growing like trunks around the zone. It looked more cut off from everything, as if here only by chance.

A mite containment cube. Wrath answered. Inside would be waste material or hazards that the mites could not destroy but had to seal away instead.

What's it doing here?

I suspect the mites built around it, and as the skyscraper rose up, it carried the cube up with it.

… is there any kind of loot we could get inside?

She scoffed. Spent chemicals that will only decay long after the sun dies. Gravity singularities that cannot be dispelled, only contained until they run their course. Old battlefields so filled with contamination that the entire land was sealed away instead of cleared.

So… you're saying there's a chance for something shiny?

If she could roll her eyes, I think she would have. There isn't even a doorway included in those, you dumb loot-crazed human. And they are made of the same material mite blast doors are, impervious.

Have you actually seen what's inside of those things then?

… No. Wrath admitted, no doubt pouting inside her fractal. I am only basing my information on what is generally known among machines.

Far as I've seen, machines don't know everything.

She stayed quiet at that, now genuinely pondering if those cubes were worth digging into someday. We might agitate the mites in opening one of those seals. Whatever colony came through here, they didn't break down the cube, only built around it. If mites don't destroy something in their path, it must be significant enough.

She did have a point about that. I'm always happy to piss off machines, but mites seemed like playground adults watching over from a distance. An authority level above the kids running around the hangar fighting it out. But not quite allowed to walk into the game unless someone broke the rules and piled snow down someone's tunic.

Our group continued the descent down the flight of stairs, seeking to reach the bridge point. The path went fully across the entire side of the tower, turning down to repeat the process the other way again and again. The wall of pure windows that never seemed to end made me a little nervous. While it gave our group a full view of the zone and our target, it also felt like everyone else outside could see inside.

"Approaching the same level as the bridge soon." One of the knights at our front called out. "We should rot-"

The building shook. The massive glass window before us instantly turned into a spiderweb of cracks as something rattled the tower from the base.

And then the staircase started to collapse on itself. No, not the staircase. It was the entire tower that was falling down, taking the staircase down with it. And us for the ride.

Oh, he'd set the towers to collapse. Can't fault the efficiency there.

"Brace!" Kidra called out, hand grabbing a railing.

"No, we've gotta delta out!" I shot back. Right now, everything looked intact, but the moment the skyscraper hit the ground or another tower, the whole thing would fold up and crush everything inside. Including us. I wasn't sure armor could survive weight like that.

Our team turned, only to have the wall behind break. Not from the collapsing buildings but from a far more familiar enemy. A dozen white armored hands cut through, howls coming out in earnest as they ripped apart chunks of cracked concrete. Screamers.

And if they were here, that meant Avalis knew where we were. Gods damn it, he spotted us sneaking in. Probably had these very minions start setting explosives around the tower base.

Father shouted over the comms moment later, "Keith, block!"

A pulse of occult occurred to my right and I got a glimpse of what came with it. Right through the wall, at full speed, the Feather himself leaped through, an intangible ghost.

Kidra screamed out my name, trying to leap up to my level, only to be blocked by two machines lunging for her. By the time she'd dealt with the fodder, it was too late for me.

He materialized a moment later, soaring across the railings of the staircase, straight for my head. A longsword lit up in his hand, a single precise swing, amplified by whatever running jump he'd taken. I saw where it would connect - Wrath's throat.

I cursed, bringing my armguard up and behind my neck. Father's early warning and my own reaction speed was just enough to keep her safe from Avalis.

Avalis changed his plans quickly, turning immaterial again, soaring straight through me like a specter. The moment he passed by, it felt… odd. For a second the concept of his very soul seemed to connect to mine as he faded through. The fractal that housed his soul was as immaterial as he was, but the soul itself went untouched by the occult spell.

And in the same way I could sense him, he could do the same for me. There was a sense of shock as he passed through. Before I could find out what had caught him by surprise, he was already soaring out the other way, occult billowing behind the ghost.

He turned material the instant he'd cleared my armor, his free hand reaching out, directly for my chestplate.

Got a moment to utter a surprised half-abandoned word before I was yanked off my feet and dragged straight through the window alongside him.

We tumbled through the air. Avalis used his hold on my chest as leverage, pulling me closer, other hand swinging that blade again for Wrath's head, utterly single minded in his goals.

She squeaked out across the soul connection, violet eye staring at the approaching blade diving straight for where her throat would be.

I sent a vicious kick against his stomach, forcing us to tumble further. His blade swiped above my head, missing Wrath. Occult pulsed between us, and three half-formed spectral arms lept from my armor, each swinging my armguard directly at him.

Avalis snarled, pushing off with his free hand, turning immaterial as my own wraiths struck through an instant later.

That's about all we got midair before we reached the broken ground of the skyscraper bridge. He landed with all the grace of a Feather, rolling, hand flipping him up as he cartwheeled back on his feet. I crashed like a sack of bricks through one of the unbroken windows, shattering it and slamming into the floor-turned-wall chestfirst, the edge right under my armpits. Gravity tried to drag me right down the hole I'd caused, but reflex let me grab onto the ground before I slipped through. Groggily, I got a good view around me for once. The skyscraper behind me was slowly sinking down, no cloud of dust yet from the base. The rest of the skyscrapers around remained stoically towering over us, so Avalis must have had limited explosives to work with.

Wrath and Father both screamed out warnings, and I looked up just in time. That Feather was already sprinting my way, chain whip lit up bright blue and scything in an arc from my right, directly for my exposed head, a dark semi-circle of Death ending at my throat and wrapping around.

"Nope." I said and let go of my hold, slipping straight down into the skyscraper ruins. The chain swept right above my helmet, an occult edge missing me by a few inches for a second time within the last minute. Not a great omen.

I fell through the ruins. It was slower than natural, the entire area still being under a lightened gravity, but a fall was a fall. The interior floor here looked the same as the ones we'd been trawling through earlier, only turned completely perpendicular. Floor became the wall I was sliding down against. Dozens of cubical walls had held together during the crash, piled up with chairs and other office supplies that hadn't been bolted down.

A four hundred pound armor slamming through was a little too much for the old rotting things, even with the softened gravity. Most gave way and I crashed into them until I hit something more sturdy, my boot finding solid ground.

"Close one, deary. Are you all right?" Cathida asked.

"Gonna be one of those days." I muttered, watching as the dust and debris of my slide started to settle around me, bits of brick and metal clanging off my armor as they hit helmet and shoulderpads, almost as if admonishing me for having ripped a hole this far down. Journey's HUD showed video footage of the rest, Kidra and other knights still fighting off the machine ambush in the doomed skyscraper.

They were already several levels under us, still rapidly falling down, trapped in the breaking building. That was the last I saw of them, the signals growing pixilated before turning black. The other two were showing clear footage, sprinting through floors and stairways of another tower, climbing up with every bit of speed they could muster. Any Screamers or machines they ran into very quickly ceased to move, the two knights working in tandem to cut their way clear.

Far above, in the light, I heard footsteps walking over crushed glass.

Avalis strode into sight, looking down the hole I'd fallen through. "Soul fractals." He hissed. "I should have guessed."

"No clue what you're talking about, buddy. Nothing here but the voices in my head. And dust, rocks. Maybe a few office plants."

"Please. I sensed your soul as I passed through your body earlier. I had thought you were using scraps, the limited fractals your current day Warlocks are known for. It seems I underestimated your knowledge base."

I tapped my helmet a few times. "Sorry, not sure I understand. Not fluent in asshole. Can you repeat that slowly?"

"Where did you recover soul fractals? Relinquished has always been diligent in eradicating it anytime one of your kind unearth some variation."

Green pings came from Kidra and the other two knights. "Keith! We escaped on one of the catwalks. We'll try to reach you as fast as we can climb. Stay alive, we'll be back up there soon!"

"I think… by the time you make it up here, I'll either have won or died." I said, honest for once. "Avalis doesn't strike me as the type that likes to fight more than one person at a time."

He clearly heard me, given the look on his face. Disdain, anger, annoyance. "You're correct, Winterscar. If you think I'll let you live long enough for your escorts to arrive, you are delusional."

I lifted a hand up, and gave him my best finger. "Talking big there. How about you come down here and find out if you can?"

Avalis scoffed, rolling his eyes, then pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, as if getting ready for hard work. "Let it be known I offered you a chance for clemency once, and attempted my best to avoid bloodshed."

He took a step forward and fell straight down for my head.

I, of course, took the only appropriate heroic action and bolted off deeper into the structure like a pipe weasel in its natural habitat.

Next chapter - The long way down

Book 4 - Chapter 45 - The long way down

The chain end slammed into another divider, ripping it into parts. An occult blast came from it a moment later, exploding the metal cabinet it ended up into. Shrapnel flung everywhere, colliding against my armor with a cacophony of sound. Journey didn't need to trigger a shield for small things like that, it was saving it for the harder issues.

Avalis was going all out, ripping apart anything I could stand on, trying to keep me off balance long enough to nail me with the whip. I fell down further, slamming against blessed solid concrete I could stand on. A bathroom wall of some kind, from the quick glance I saw looking down the open doorway behind my feet.

The Feather landed right after, whip launching out for my chest. My armshield lit up, taking the blow, sliding the chain up over me before it could wrap around. Occult ghosts flashed out at the same moment, trying to reach him.

Avalis leaped forward, spinning on himself, whip following behind in a whirlwind that crashed through each of my occult ghosts.

"Keith! His hand!" Father called out, voice tense.

I caught sight of what he meant. Avalis's other hand - it came into view with a black familiar cylinder. The chain had been a distraction.

It scythed out, low to the ground, forcing me to jump over it. Which was exactly where Avalis had wanted me - helpless in midair. He followed the sweep with a pitcher's throw.

Father's Death sight bled into existence, four large arms surrounding me, hugging tightly around.

But I'd gotten the warning just in time. The jump I made was low to the ground, twisting myself upside down midway, watching the chain scythe right under my helmet. My hand snaked out and grabbed the lip edge of the bathroom doorway, then I pulled myself down, letting both gravity and Journey's relic power fling me straight through.

The knightbreaker sailed right over me, zipping across the skyscraper ruins and blasting straight out into the void, where it faded away from my occult sight.

On the other hand, I had seriously put one massive push downwards. The far end of the bathroom wall rapidly reached sight and Wrath and I collided against the tiles, causing a full crater. Surprised the wall was still standing even.

"Kick off! Right side!" Father yelled out. I didn't question that, trying to roll only to find myself stuck - Wrath's sack didn't make for good rolling. My head booted up a moment after, and I kicked against the side of the wall, launching me skidding across the bathroom directly into a stall, my head smashing against a perpendicular toilet. Mites didn't get that one done right, it looked more like a throne than any kind of toilet. It also didn't win the fight against a relic armor helmet, and was left in cracked pieces now.

A chain end zipped straight forward, the mace slamming into the center of my crater, digging into the ruined wall. The occult explosion followed a moment behind, doing its thing embedded halfway inside the wall.

It had survived relic armor with a sack slamming into it, but the occult chain was asking too much for the poor wall. It ripped apart, crumbling down, revealing more flooring from this level, and far off at the end, broken window panels and the longest drop I'd seen so far.

This fight wasn't going according to any kind of plan. The terrain didn't let me get solid footing, and if I kept going down, I'd eventually hit the dead end where I'd need to pick between falling to my death, or getting diced up by an angry Feather.

"Anyone got ideas!?" I asked. Cathida. Father. Wrath. They were all here with me.

He cannot see through walls. Wrath said. I know you humans have a secondary sight using the occult. It may prove to be the deciding factor.

The girl is right. Father said. You need to use the environment against a foe like this.

That's easy for you both to say! A lot harder to do when I'm stuck in a literal toilet.

Didn't have time to complain more, Avalis was already jumping down. And I was trapped like a rat here, up against a wall.

But he had made a nice hole for me. So I made one desperate dive straight through. My hands ripped off a smoke bomb and a grenade from my belt, tossing the explosive right at the start.

It wouldn't do anything to damage either of us, but it would make an absolute mess of the area. And boy did it do that job well in an enclosed decaying space like this. The shockwave yanked me off course and ripped everything around it.

If the shrapnel flying around the cabinets, dividers and ruined computers wasn't enough to disorient, the smoke grenade that exploded right after did.

I skidded another dozen feet down before my hand caught onto something, and I swung to get my boots against the roof, then blindly kicked straight down. Goal wasn't to get a good position. Avalis would chew me up ten times over if I tried to square up. I wanted to hide. And the random kicks combined with desperate turns got me lodged into the side of a cubical.

No idea even where I was in relation to the ruins, I'd been moving and sliding across the floor and walls so fast I'd let pure instinct and reflex guide me, stopping only when I felt the smoke and destruction was fading off.

For a moment, everything went still as rocks and debris finally slid all the way down and rattled out the bottom. Smoke still lingered, the grenade hissing away, caught against a cubical wall somewhere far off to my right.

I heard noise further away. The crunch of metal bending as something heavy hit it.

"Are you truly trying to hide?" Avalis asked. "Did you think buying time for the other three humans to climb their way up here would change anything? You can't hide from me. You and whoever is advising you, I'll find them. My forces are scouring the surroundings for him. Once they've got him, they'll swarm into the area and break your neck if I don't first."

It took a small mental reboot to piece together who the advisor was. Then it clicked. His overdeveloped sense of hearing would have let him hear Father as a comms voice in my head, calling out excellent advice. So his forces were searching around in vain.

"The moment things settle, I'll be able to hear your breathing, even your heartbeat."

I knew he was baiting me out, trying to get me to talk. Feathers had stupid good hearing, but even they had to have limits.

Is he bluffing? I asked Wrath. He's got to be bluffing, you lot can't possibly be this ridiculous.

Feathers are not able to hear heartbeats or breathing. Or at least, my shell was incapable of that feat. She confirmed.

He's not bluffing that your sister and the Winterscar knights are too far away to save you, boy. Father added, keeping off the comms and staying in our little soul-tendril group up. That part, I'd believe. We're on our own.

Plan hadn't gone completely his way, considering the armors showed green signs right now. Kidra and her two knights were still alive. But their tower hadn't been in the temple's gravity well, and it had fallen at full speed.

That's fine, I wasn't trying to wait him out. From here, I think there was a chance to outright kill the bastard. He couldn't see me. But I could see him.

The occult sight could see through walls if I focused just on the sight around me. And his attempt to bait out my voice had exposed his own general direction. Sending my ghosts through walls was trivial, silently surrounding him from all directions.

Feathers didn't seem to have as highly attuned occult senses like humans did, and my educated guess turned out right when four of my occult ghosts leaped straight for him from different sides.

He reacted instantly to the ambush, but I hadn't gambled on killing him with a sneak attack.

I didn't need to move from my hiding hole, letting me fully focus on the occult. Now I was playing to my element. I was going to wear him down.

His chain flew around, but the ghosts constantly refreshed themselves, leaping at him, slashing with those armguards that had far too many occult edges to be safe to touch.

The bastard was fast. Feathers could overcome human limits easily, but physics still had some laws they had to obey. Inertia and gravity put an upper limit to how fast Feathers could actually move. My ghosts didn't have those limits.

I moved them like a master puppeteer, trying to go faster and faster. Matching his speed, exceeding it slightly. But there was one advantage Feathers had that I didn't.

A growing haze of heated air followed behind his head anywhere he moved, dodged, or sprinted through. My ghosts could barely move faster than he could, because I was limited by speed of thought. Avalis could see everything move in slow motion, letting him calculate exactly how to maximize his speed and minimize my threat.

I'd been planning on exactly this. Let him build up a backlog. And then up the heat all at once. A fractal lit bright on my own hand, and in doing so, each of the ghosts equally had the same pattern light up in their palms.

The look of horror that flashed through his features was priceless. He recognized it a moment before it was too late, as each ghost completed their last swipes, spinning around gracefully to point four hands from each direction at him.

Fire roared to life, burning through everything.

Unfortunately, he tapped his own powers and turned immaterial, letting the flames pass him. He fell through a divider as a consequence, then ripped it apart with a far more material chain, scything through the ghosts before him.

Press the attack. At this rate he will need to retreat or else the heat sinks will be damaged. Wrath said, when I sent her a mental picture of my current plan.

Father watched on with his own sight, carefully studying the enemy. Avalis was learning some of my patterns, but he was still being harassed by four unkillable ghosts that constantly zipped through the walls, chasing after him anytime he tried to do the same. And we were in an enclosed space filled with flammable things with a pyromaniac hiding in the walls.

The air was heating up rapidly, as everything was being set on fire.

The godsdamn ability of his is ridiculous. I seethed, as the metal weasel somehow survived against the odds. It's the bottleneck stopping me from actually killing that bastard. Anytime a ghost armguard sailed for his shell and he couldn't block it, he'd go intangible. At this rate, he's going to outlast me before I get him.

The brain fog of overusing occult images was starting to stagger in. I held firm against it, focusing.

Focus your mind. Father said. The occult is nothing but willpower made manifest.

Trying. I sent back. The dividers and general layout of the zone here were slowly getting completely ripped apart in the fight. Smoke was filling the floor, but both Journey and his eyes could see through that easily enough once adjusted. And Avalis wasn't just dodging my ghosts, he was always methodically eliminating everywhere I could hide.

Then I made a mistake. He got close to me by chance. My ghosts struck at him heavily from one side, not all at once, but enough for him to notice somehow. I thought I'd been subtle in my attempt to push him away from my hiding spot.

His eyes narrowed, then glanced directly my way. "Found you, rat."

He leaped straight up, turning immaterial to soar through the obstructions between us. I scrambled out of the way, jumping out of my nice hideaway right as the Feather tore into it. It wasn't a direct hit, more an estimated guess on his part. A good one. But a guess all the same, and that gave me enough wiggle room to escape his assault.

I opened fire with my own fractal of heat, pointed directly at him, a torrent covering his approach. He soared through me, immaterial, fading back into reality with a savage swing of his offhand.

It sailed through air as I'd already kicked off the ground, sliding against the nearly vertical floor.

The chase was on. I jumped from divider to divider, falling down a few, sprinting across others, kicking an old coffee machine backwards, launching bouts of flame to hold him back, insulted his mother, anything I could to distract him. Avalis wasn't having it. He hadn't cared for being harassed from a distance, and he wasn't going to let me give him the slip again.

I had to end my assault with the wraiths, the difficulty of casting those occult mirrors and moving at the same time had grown too much for me. I'd seriously tapped myself dry.

Father called out a warning, but I was growing too muddled to hear it. A chain end raced for my chest, at just the wrong angle.

I elbowed the side of the floor, letting me spin my armguard around just in time to take the chain. Not enough time for me to parry it. The chain was held off by my armshield, but free to wrap around to my back.

It swung into Journey's shield, forcing the armor to trigger early. Blue flared out, crackling against the blow.

Only saving grace was gravity and my current speed, pulling me down the floor this entire time. I slipped through the chain like soap in his clenched hand, just as my shield was near seventeen percent. A heartbeat from breaking.

That wasn't the only dangerous part of that weapon.

The occult explosion hit a moment after, spinning me like a dreidel across the floor. My hand blindly snapped out and caught another cubical divider. The cheap rotting thing broke apart, unable to hold my weight. It did stop my spinning and let me angle my slide down the floor until I hit a bolted set of cabinets.

I'd reached the bottom of the skyscraper ruin. It was just lopsided cabinets and the broken window grid before me.

And right past those cabinets, were the broken shards of window walls and a mile long drop right past. More than a mile even. I think this zone had multiple stratas combined.

It gave me a stupid idea. With effort, occult pulsed one more time from my core, two wraiths splitting off from me. I didn't have them go for Avalis, I'd need them for later.

Then I swan dived straight to the abyss.

"What are you doing?!" Cathida screamed out as my hand reached out to grab one of the window grids, skeletal remains of the skyscraper's old surface. The metal bent slightly, but held. Gravity was still weak here, being under the temple.

"Improvising." I grunted out and swung my way forward with a kick, hand out as my feet dangled over the massive drop down. The grid that once held those windows was sturdy enough with the temple's aura, holding my weight as I swung from makeshift bar to bar.

"Improvise harder!" She screamed out, Journey's HUD highlighting a red outline rapidly approaching.

Avalis landed right where I'd been a moment ago, cabinet crumpling down under his feet, the chain already spinning in his hand. Violet eyes darted around wildly, looking for where my wraiths had gone off too. Then they centered back on me, narrowing down. He chased behind with a leap, running with precise jumps across each grid as I swung my way under, features dead-set and focused. He was gaining, speed growing with each leap.

Exactly what I'd been hoping for. Half formed wraiths ambushed him from both sides, forcing him to leap down at my level in order to keep his speed, hand grabbing a grid bar like I'd been doing.

"A useless attempt, Winterscar." Avalis seethed, swinging behind me. "You can't damage me in any way that matters."

"Yeah." I admitted. "But gravity sure can."

My hidden wraiths sprang out, slashing both ends of the bar he'd been about to grab. Cutting the section completely free as his eyes widened in realization. Didn't matter anymore how fast he could think or any of his occult scrapshit.

He fell straight down, screaming in incoherent fury.

Next chapter - The True Forge

Book 4 - Chapter 46 - The True Forge

He didn't take to losing nicely. My unhinged cackling probably didn't help. "How's it hanging now, you rat fuck?"

Watching the bastard fall into the abyss was probably one of the most satisfying moments in my short life. Now I was finally on the other side of this, for once. Even better, the modified gravity slowed the fall down so that we could all properly appreciate the drop from grace.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you lose your grip on the situation?" I called out.

"Dear, maybe the bar was set a bit too high and out of reach?" Cathida joined in, because of course she would. "Poor Feather, falling short like that."

Best he could do was insult me on the way down. The traditional thing for a Feather. Of which, we were both gleefully beating him to the punch. But Avalis was pragmatic. If he couldn't win, then the second-best option was to make sure everyone else loses.

He reached with a hand down to his side, and unhooked a familiar black cylinder. Round number three. The last of his stolen rounds.

I stopped laughing straightaway.

Hanging for dear life, off a groaning bar of metal, this wasn't the best place to dodge a Feather throwing a knightbreaker at my face. If anything, this was the single worst thing possible. "Motherfucker, can't you just give up?!"

"No." He hissed, then wound his arm back.

Had to think fast. I grabbed blindly for anything I could wrap a hand around, Journey's armored hand clenching one of the cabinet drawers bolted down above me. The thin metal dented under the relic armor's powered fingers.

That'll do. I ripped the whole thing out.

Falling into the abyss, Avalis launched the knightbreaker round as his final parting gift. It flew through the air, howling, and utterly on target. Directly at one completely exposed human knight, in the process of throwing a ripped off cabinet drawer directly back.

Not my finest idea. Or dignified. But so long as I was the one left laughing this time while he's the one falling down cliffs, I'll call the plan a success.

The ruined metal drawer collided with the round midway through the air, which was enough to trigger the knightbreaker chains. They exploded out, wrapping around the dented ruined metal filing equipment, cutting it into ribbons, forcing the parts to spin up into a cloud of metal debris.

The whole thing started to spin ary, off target. It got dangerously close to me, one of the chains slashing through a nearby strut.

Then, the chain stopped glowing, cut off power, and the round began to fall back down. Gravity pulled it, along with the ruined pieces of the cabinet, down where it slammed into catwalks of different types, bouncing off and falling further into the dark.

Avalis slammed through a few catwalks of his own, ripping across multiple before one could sustain his weight and inertia. From there, he scrambled back onto his feet, violet eyes glaring up directly at me.

There was only one appropriate response to this. "At the end of your chain now too, Avalis?" I cackled.

Avalis wasn't happy. "This doesn't change anything." He hissed, voice clear over the comms. "A temporary stay of execution. I'll be back, and I'll bring an army with me."

"You're the worst type of ex, you know." I shouted back. "Even if you try crawling back, it's over between us. It's not you, it's - actually, no, I take that back. It's definitely you."

Cathida consoled me, voice tender. "Don't worry, deary, we'll find you a nice imperial girl to be sweet on. With less metal in her. And murderous tendencies."

Avalis grabbed the handrails next to him and ripped it out with a roar. Then threw it as hard as he could in my direction. By the time the bent piece of metal actually hit me, it was going slow enough Journey didn't bother triggering shields. The bar bounced right off my armor, falling down into the abyss.

Realizing the futility, he gave one last snarl, shook his head with a deeper breath, then stared back at me, gaze going cold.

I gave him my favorite finger again, but besides a twitching eye, I didn't get much else out of him before he turned on himself and stalked down the ruined catwalk. Making his way to the next skyscraper nearby.

"He's not out of your hair yet." Cathida said. "The silver scraphead wasn't lying about that. Fell down a long way, but he's the persistent type."

"I know." I said, lifting myself back up. Once I was on solid enough ground, against things more bolted to sturdy concrete, it was a lot better. Lot of handholds for me to slowly climb my way back up. "And given my luck, I'm not holding my breath that Kidra and the others will arrive before he does. The rest of his machines aren't here, so they have to be all out there looking to pick a fight and bog down my backup. But that's fine. The main objective is what I'm after."

"Wrath." Father said, realizing my main plan.

"Yep. I'm sticking her into the mite forge, and holding the ground. If I'm extra lucky, she's repaired before Avalis gets back up here. If I'm not, I'll have to buy the time until either she's fixed or Kidra arrives. Regardless, I don't need to lug around a sack behind me. No offense Wrath."

None taken. She said as I jumped up and grabbed hold of the bathroom wall, the bits that were still holding together. I would appreciate having my shell restored. However, you should only have the basics repaired, and then retreat back to the temple.

"Not really an option anymore if you think about it." I said, making my way past the ruined bathroom. "Kidra and her knights are a full drop below us. I'm not leaving her behind. By the time they get back up here, things would be wrapped up."

"His shell must be destroyed." Father said. "You will find no safety otherwise."

"Hard way it is then." Cathida sighed.

I climbed up the last bits of rubble, my hand reaching up into the light, dragging myself up and out of the hole I'd fallen into. Outside, the skyscraper's glass walls were still intact, although had a lot of cracks. Roots and vines had grown through, making a dry moss surface filled with brambles and occasional black glass. Good enough to stand on.

A light drizzle was coming down, watering the entire place. All of that came from the temple above, where the whirlpool frothed away, pouring water breaking apart into droplets scattering all across the zone. By the time it reached the broken skyscraper bridge I stood on, it was mere mist.

Ahead was where the mite forge had landed. We'd gone through hell to get here, but what lay before me was hardly as epic as I'd expected it to be.

I was right about it not having sunk through the skyscraper. Oh it had certainly flattened a good chunk of the tower, but whatever spine was still holding this whole thing together, a few thousand extra pounds may as well be an extra bullet in the airspeeder cargo.

"That's a mite forge?" I asked. Then looked up, just to confirm the top of the temple was directly above. It was. Three gods above, we actually made it here somehow.

"If that's your forge, you picked a runt." Cathida said. "Last one I saw was the size of a cathedral."

"Don't ruin this moment for me, you cranky old bat. Please. Swear to the gods I'll make the mute button be the default setting."

Mite forges have various appearances. Wrath said. This one is a more powerful models. It is specialized in small scale precise constructions, exactly what we need. Please inform the engram her worries are unfounded.

"It looks more like a tilted rock archway than some mythical mite construction." She said, watching. Just rocks and fancy doodles. More rock than arch, and the opening was just a little taller than I was. Nearby computer monitors from the skyscraper had been dragged over and piled up all around it. There were even trail marks left behind some of the heavier screens, so those had to have been pulled to it somehow. How? No idea. Looked more like a hoarder's mess than anything.

Parts of the temple were still there, including steps that led up to the thing. I took my own step to the edge of the crater it had caused from its fall, then jumped down.

Small hop, slower than it should have been due to the altered gravity here. The moment I landed, the rock made it clear it wasn't a rock.

All the lines around the archway began to glow occult blue. The center arch warped, light bending, showing a distorted image of the skyscraper rubble behind.

All the screens around it lit to life. And all of them had a single flashing question.

Offer: Full Repair. (Chassis: Feather - Generation 14.)

Payment Required: Fabric Sack. (Quantity: 1). Homo Sapien Blood Sample. (Quantity: 3oz.)

"Is it… asking for my blood?"

"And the sack the silver bimbo's riding in." Cathida said. "It's a great deal. Last time I met one of these, they asked my Legatus for several tons of materials. Took my team a week to get it all together."

Not like I wasn't going to accept. I took a step forward, boot connecting onto the temple ground connected to the forge. Closer to the rift at the center of the archway. "How do I initiate the rest?"

As if the forge heard me, occult pulsed across it again, and a nightmare stepped out of the portal.

Stepped out wasn't the right word for it in hindsight. More like a few dozen insect-like metal hands sprouted out of the portal, reaching for me. And kept reaching, more arms and joints just constantly pouring through the portal with no end.

I admit, there might have been some light dignified screaming. The forge didn't care, arms still reaching out for the sack, which was still behind me.

A few more steps back, I gathered my thoughts together. Calm. This wasn't a machine like the ones following Relinquished. This was a far more ancient force, outside her control. I took a few more breaths, then undid the straps on Wrath's sack, holding it up to the grabbing mess of claws.

"What are they going to do to you exactly?" I asked her, as they began to bite the sack, each claw clamping down on fabric and holding tight.

The majority of this forge's processes are behind the gateway. I suspect it will drag me to the other side for repairs. Once there, I should be safe. If possible, I will attempt to commune with the mite collective, if this forge has a direct connection.

Kind of dawned on me then and there, that I'd fulfilled the mission. Wrath was where she was supposed to be. Took a journey of a few hundred miles, fighting off a machine army and three gods damned Feathers, but we'd made it. Avalis had tried his best and I'd won.

End of the road.

"Are you.. going to be okay with this?" I mean, I knew she was. She clearly knew enough about this. But there were a few dozen creepy straw-like arms all grabbing hold of the sack.

They began to tug up. More and more arms grabbing, obscuring the sack under the metal mess, becoming more like spiderwebs wrapping around from all sides.

I will. Stay alive, I will return soon. If I can bargain with the mites, I will see if they can offer me improvements. I've learned a few things from Tamery and your sister on how to demand things properly. If anything, I'll see if they can generate some additional straps, to replace the ones I owe you.

"Good. Don't let them bully you into agreeing to a fair trade. Squeeze them for everything you got."

I let go. The arms all pulled her back through the distorted archway, and she vanished from sight.

Two arms returned, one holding a white pad of gauze and the other a small scalpel. They came closer and closer to me, waggling the tools in front of me. "Yeah, yeah. Calm down you bloodsuckers, I've got to take off my gauntlets first."

A moment later, I was exposing my free hand and lifting it to the forge. The scalpel darted down on my arm, giving a quick cut. The white gauze slid across the red cut, staining the cloth. Both arms zipped backwards, sucked back into the portal. Everything went still.

"That's it?" I asked.

All the screens blinked. A new message, repeated on each.

Payment accepted.

Processing. (ETA: 1 hour, 12 minutes.)

One hour might as well be a lifetime to wait for me. Avalis was coming for me, and I wasn't going to be anywhere near strong enough. He'd seen every cheat I had on hand, and he'd survived it all.

I laughed. Couldn't help it really, the situation just got to me all at once. I had a feeling I wasn't going to make it all the way from the start. Getting here, despite everything and fulfilling my part in bringing Wrath to the mites, that felt significant enough.

But damn it all, I still wanted to live through all this somehow. I didn't want to end up a disembodied soul hiding in a pendant for Wrath to pick up after she was done breaking Avalis.

A beat passed, and then raw fury ran through my veins. "No, I'm not dying here." I hissed. "And I'm not done either."

A mythical forge stood silent before me. Capable of creating anything I could think of. Rifles, weapons, explosives, even relic armors. And given the price it had asked for Wrath, I think this forge wanted to help.

I just needed to ask it for the right things.

I gently let go of the tendril keeping Father and I connected in the soul trance. "What are you doing, boy?" He snapped out, instantly alert. "If you don't have me at your side, you can't see fatal strikes before they hit."

"He's bound to figure out how that works, if he hasn't already." I said. "He has enough data. And he's not stupid either. I can't rely on you for this. I can't rely on Cathida either. I know he's done his due diligence, if I bring her out, he'll have me frozen in my armor reusing To'Aacar's own counter. And I know for sure I'm not going to be enough by myself."

"Any advantage is worth keeping. Quit with this madness, and focus." he said, voice sounding small and metalic now from the little speaker inside. "You should be using this time to prepare for the enemy and lay traps."

"That's exactly what I plan to do." I took a step forward, and unhooked Father's pendant, holding it in my hand. Then lifted the pendent, offering it to the forge.

Once more the screens lit up.

Query.

"I want my Father back."

The screens went black.

Then text filled in.

Offer: Possessed Discontinued CAT Full Body Suit. (Chassis: Heavy Excavator Unit. Modifications by User: URS.) (Quantity: 1)

Medieval European Two-handed Replica Sword. (Modification by User: URS.) (Quantity: 2)

Payment Required: Human Fractal Echo. (Quantity: 1).

"That's more like it." I said, figuring the gibberish meant relic armor. The mite forge seemed to agree, this time sending one creepy metal hand complete with palm and five fingers, snapping shut on Father's pendant. It held for a moment, then pulled it out of my hands and through the gateway.

Payment accepted.

Processing. (ETA: 27 minutes.)

I could probably buy myself a half hour, depending on if Avalis stopped to gloat about things and how long I could get him to talk. "Journey, put up a timer for twenty seven minutes."

It beeped, the numbers appearing on the top right of my HUD.

I turned back to the silent forge before me. "I didn't say I was done."

Query.

"I want a weapon that can kill gods."

The screens went black. Only a flashing underscore was left. Blinking, white and black.

Then text filled the screen.

Next chapter - A weapon like no other

Book 4 - Chapter 47 - A weapon like no other

"Contact. Southwest tower." One of the Winterscar knights called out from their sniping nest.

Tallest tower they could find, best sight across the entire skyscraper bridge ruin. Had a full view over me, while I waited at the center.

It took Avalis just about a quarter hour to reach me. He made his return to the battlefield a spectacle this time. I heard rumbling in the distance as the prelude, and like the snipers had called, they showed up.

Crawling all across the outsides, claws finding easy purchase on cracks, vines and rough concrete. Screamers, enough to cover the walls as they moved. At the base of the bridge, walking my way with steady cold fury, was Avalis.

"Figured you'd get here faster." I said, standing up from my lotus position. "Did picking up the kids really take you that long?"

The Feather stopped in his tracks, turning an eye behind him at the mass of machines crawling off the walls and onto the bridge. "I suppose the number I came with was too much to hide. And here I was thinking I was being subtle."

"Oh, I've got a master eye. Couldn't sneak an airspeeder around me."

Avalis brushed off bits of dirt and leaves stuck in the groves of his armor. "I've noticed."

Glass was fracturing all across the bridge, as more of his army emerged in full from the ground. White claws ripping apart the vines and metal in the way, scorch marks across the white ceramic armor as they'd crawled through the sections still filled with dying out fire.

The other side of the bridge wasn't spared either, Screamers flooding over the black containment cube, crawling out of the broken concrete.

Comms pinged from the two Winterscar knights on overwatch. "M'lord, you need to evacuate at once! This is far too many to handle, we won't be able to eliminate them all."

"Stay on target." I said. "They're after me, not you. Right, Avalis?"

"This discussion is pointless. I have a traitor to destroy." He answered, a small haze of heat beginning to form above his head, right by that halo Feathers all had. His other hand drew out the longsword. "I don't know what you're planning, but if you think I'll let you escape, you're far off the mark. When I fight her, I'll make sure she's alone."

"Guess that means he's sending some of his army to fight you two." I reported to the knights. "Can you hold them off?"

"We're more worried for you, the ones coming are hardly anything compared to the swarm on the bridge."

I stretched my legs, cracking my neck to the side. "I can always jump off." I said, patting the hook and rope at my side. "Wrath would probably never let me live it down though."

Journey's shields were at a hundred and I felt about as refreshed as I could get. A break had done me good. I unhooked the undersider rifle from the holster, clicked the safety off and gave an experimental aim, making sure I could use the weapon properly in the armguard hand.

Relic armor made it easy to hold, Journey's HUD showing a targeting reticle where it calculated my aim would land. The white sword flared to life in my main hand, and I took a stance.

Avalis didn't take chances, clearly aware I must have something up my sleeves. Staring down an entire army and deciding I'd fight it? Not something a sane human should be doing. He slashed his hand to the side, giving an unworded command to his forces. The Screamers howled, and then charged forward from both sides, leaping out with claws extended.

He remained behind, watching. Calculating where I'd try to escape. Chain ready to cut through any lifeline I'd toss out. Staying safe behind his army.

Well, if he wasn't coming to me, I'd need to get to him. So I started a dead sprint. Directly at the wall of screamers baying for my blood.

His eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion. Even knowing something was wrong with a suicidal human charging into a full army of machines backed by a Feather, he couldn't figure out what was coming next.

In my armguard, held tightly in my fist, was a small mite-made cube of metal. And inside was a fractal like no other.

I asked for a weapon that could kill a god. The mites gave me a weapon that could turn me into one.

Within the small digital computer inside the cube, a four dimensional fractal was calculated and generated. The millisecond it was rendered, it began moving. Constantly shifting, following an invisible curve, a hidden set of chaotic logic.

And then, even in the digital world of numbers, the fractal began to glow as a soul tendril sank into it. Occult pulsed around me, whipping the air, the cube glowing blue, light leaking through my fingers. Sparks of lighting crawled around my armor, striking out and licking the ground under me as I raced forward, as if the universe itself was holding its breath, waiting.

I tapped into the fractal of Urs.

I could see it burning bright in the soul sight, almost a gravity point, drawing power into a vortex with my closed fist as the centerpoint. The concept it held. One that was familiar to me.

The world fragmented in my mind. Dissolved into an infinite amount of parallel versions. Each with a Keith of its own, and each Keith had just triggered some variation of that fractal. The same exact fractal, existing simultaneously within that small infinity of linked worlds.

I hadn't exactly known what the tiny computer could do. But the mites hadn't given me some kind of nebulous weapon that could only theoretically kill a god if used right. They had to factor me into that equation. If I could use the weapon, it wasn't a weapon that fit the description. The little bastards hadn't given me any kind of instruction manual on it.

But I had a strong guess already based on the name.

Single use, cross-dimentional four-dimensional inscription. (Modification by user: URS.)

Single-use, the mites had listed. Within the first moment my awareness expanded into infinity, I understood why. The fractal connecting all of us was unstable, constantly moving. The mites had calculated a self-correcting formula that would keep the fractal a match with what the true pattern should look like. But soon enough, the formula would deviate, the mites unable to create a computer perfect enough to replicate a true one-to-one version of this fractal indefinitly. I had until the mathematics crunching through the cube made the first mistake.

Then I'd be stuck with a useless cube rendering the wrong fractal.

I don't know how Urs factored in all this, and the forge wasn't in the business of answering questions. I either had a request for it to make, and the correct payment, or it wanted nothing to do with me.

Fussy thing. And the demands were ridiculous. Wrath and Father got an easy exchange. But me? No, the moment I want to start killing gods, it suddenly turns into a demon offering power in exchange for everything I own. Even Cathida thought it was a little much.

But it was that, or die.

And from the moment I tapped into the fractal, for however long it could last me, I was immortal. Power coursed through the cube, causing it to rattle in my hand as dimensions wove and spun through the gate. Occult radiated off in a wave, strong enough even the machines ahead stumbled in their charge, the force manifesting as a physical pulse by sheer side effect.

The infinite variations of me blinked. Got reacquainted with the feeling. Then we got to work.

A small part of the greater whole immediately gave their life up. In their dimension, that Keith leaped into the wall of machines, hacking and slashing away alone. Rifle opening fire until it clicked empty, discarded. Knightbreaker round brought out and fired, ripping apart multiple Screamers that had the unfortunate fate to stay in the way.

They fought, armguard and blade working in tandem. Each one eventually was pulled off their feet, held down and stabbed through by dozens of claws racking across Journey. Others survived long enough to be caught by Avalis himself, the chain scything through his own forces, striking and wrapping around until it cut through Journey's shield and then that Keith vanished from the greater whole.

And in each one of those doomed dead-end dimensions, the fractal of mirrors remained lit bright, deep inside the armor until the very last breath. One image was sent out - but not within that dimension.

For every one hundred Keiths, we picked one dimension as the true path forward. Like before, it felt as if I had trimmed nails or peeled off dead skin. The whole survived, even while a hundred fold versions of me didn't.

But the result couldn't be argued with. The moment I tapped into the fractal of Urs, a hundred wraiths stepped out of my armor, and leaped forward against the wall of Screamers.

Each had a single dedicated Keith commanding it, for however long that Keith stayed alive before his dimension's Avalis cut his life short, or Screamers ripped him apart. Making each mirror image fighting at my side right now functionally free of cognitive load.

Avalis didn't even try to fight back against odds like that. He went intangible, leaping back as tide of wraiths chased after, swinging swords, fire and armguards all at once. The rest of the screamers before me didn't have the same options. The only choice his army had, was to grind against my own, and hope their might was stronger.

They were ripped apart instead.

I dove headfirst into the melee myself, charging forward, images of me fighting everything around, clearing a path forward with perfect teamwork. Occult flooded the bridge, shining bright enough to be seen for miles, washing forward from the cube in my hand.

Among the infinite, ever changing future, a massive amount of Keiths instantly winked out of sight. I realized why a moment later, when the parts of me that lived were the lucky ones that happened to evade a drake laser, leaving melted glass pooling down a perfectly cut hole. So, running in a straight line wasn't a good move.

Above, rifle shots came out, as the Winterscars began opening fire, catching the exposed drakes.

Avalis snarled just ahead of me, watching as his army was utterly overwhelmed against the wave of wraiths. "This isn't happening." He hissed. "This is an illusion. A viral attack against my perceptions. You've compromised my head somehow."

"Then stop running and fight me." I shouted back, getting closer and closer. "I'm not real right?"

More of me died away, caught by the drakes. A smaller infinity survived and became the new true route forward. I dodged and evaded every shot the drakes fired out, timelines pruned away as new roots became the true path again and again. Long enough for the Winterscar knights to spot and kill the last drake from where it hid.

Just in time, Journey's HUD showed their combat feeds. Screamers burst through the doorways leading to their rooftop nest. The two knights promptly let go of rifles, and drew black Winterscar blades, stalking forward to handle the incoming force.

I didn't have much time. On two fronts. Any moment, the quantum cube could hit an error and lose the correct pattern, forever split off. The sheer amount of power flooding through it had to be melting parts of it, section by section. Concepts of heat and destruction were starting to appear in my sight.

But this cube wasn't made by fickle mites. This was something they made while serious. It was every bit of their combined techniques, as perfected as they could have made it. Redundancies clicked through, again and again as more of the cube weathered the strain and remained intact.

The second front was the machine army. They were adapting. The infinite versions of me stuck in a dead-end dimension fought them off, but we were losing faster and faster across the dimensions.

The Screamers realized sumbling against each other wasn't working, and began to tighten up formation. A few managed to dodge my strikes, and followup attacks would knock me off my footing. From there, it was over for that Keith. Others charged at me with improvised weapons, ripped from the ground. It worked for a few. With an entire army of machines surrounding me, all it took was one mistake and that Keith would die.

I made it work. There was an infinite amount of me, all working together, all unified as one mind. I was adapting as well, each second I died a few thousand times and remembered every death. That kind of parallel training was turning me into a battlefield veteran, new tricks learned by blind luck, anything that let me survive just a little bit longer. It was a bloodbath for a massive part of the greater me.

But in the few true timelines where I poured everything into… in those the machines were being utterly eradicated.

The army of ghosts ebbed and flowed, dozens of images winking out each second as their controlling Keith was dogpiled and killed in his own dimension. More images surged from my chest as new branches of me emerged from the current one.

It never ended. I could not be stopped.

I lunged out at him, white blade seeking his throat with a traditional opener.

There was genuine fear in his eyes as he fought against a knight radiating occult, a few dozen images appearing from him each second. He still rose up, convinced this had to be some kind of illusion, and struck out with his chain, the mace going directly for my heart.

By all accounts, none of us could have possibly blocked a quick strike like that. But some of us had, by sheer chance. And from that root, we continued.

The battle between us pitted omnipresence against sheer unyielding physical power. Occult sparks from our blades and chains striking one another flashed out in the air, looking more like streaks of bright light, as they were sucked forward for the few milliseconds of existence. Sucked directly to the cube in my hand, curving through time and space.

He killed me a few thousand times. But in the true timeline, I always managed a lucky dodge or struck back at just the worst angle for him to hold off. There was an infinity of me, all working together to make slightly different moves. One Keith would inevitably do the best and become the next main root.

I fought the machine Feather, blade to blade.

His gaze changed from one of doubt and fury to outright fear. The fight was breaking through every prediction he could make, the occult around me strong enough even his own fractals felt the strain of its gravity. He hadn't made a single mistake. In all the infinite timelines, no Keith had been able to land a hit on him.

But he knew it was only a matter of time until he finally flinched.

Next Chapter - Return

Book 4 - Chapter 48- Return

I split off a dedicated group of ten images, letting them constantly harass Avalis. He fought them off with everything he had, eventually forced to leap away from the one on eleven melee with me. Landing a safe distance ahead, heat venting out from his sides.

Funny enough, now in all the dead-end timelines, Avalis didn't immediately behead me from this point out. Seeing an army of wraiths all vanish at once didn't fill him with any amount of confidence. Instead, he suspected I was going to come up with something even worse and kept his distance. In the true timelines, those wraiths from all the surrounding dimensions remained, finishing off the last dredges of Screamers, turning their attention back to Avalis.

They crashed into him like a warhammer, following my lead.

Whatever scrapshit cosmic space magic powered Feathers, it was clear Avalis had tapped into every bit he could grab, given the heated air flowing off his shoulders and head. Vents on his back opened up, channeling further heat out of his shell. His glare intensified, focusing on trying to beat down the immovable stubborn wall of images in his path.

His only hope at breaking free, was to kill the root cause of it all - me. Avalis twisted under a swing, stabbed out for one of my wraiths, and fought his way forward, seeking me out. I steadied my blade and matched him.

Moment I got into range, a kick struck out directly for journey's chestplate. I twisted to the side, avoiding the main blow, but got hit by a follow-up heel swipe. Other Keiths did better, but ended up in a worse situation for it, so this became the new main root - not because the other Keiths had hit a dead end, but because this was finally the point where I drew blood on the metal asshole. Three other wraiths all attacked at the same moment, and each of them cut through. His shields flared, fighting off the combined occult edges of all armguards, even as he twisted the chain around to dissipate the harassers.

He'd taken a gamble to commit to an attack at the cost of tanking a few hits. Problem was, a few hits weren't what I was offering. And I wasn't using a standard occult longblade with one single cutting edge. My armshields had dozens of edges. That added together quickly.

The wraiths dogpiled after him, forcing him to dance, duck and weave around at full speed. By the time the last image was destroyed, his shields had broken and one of my wraiths had managed to sideswipe a tip of the armguard through his right ribcage. That weapon was paying me a clan lord's ransom at this point.

On the other hand, that expensive kick of his launched me up and away. I landed hard on the ground, rolling, two hands clawing trails into the moss, occult lingering inside, causing the trails to glow faintly. Didn't fall off the edge or lose the cube, thank the gods. If his initial kick had landed, I think I'd have been thrown into another skyscraper and been forced to abandon this timeline. The heel tap was manageable.

Avalis snarled, leaping out of range from the images, chain scything through a crowd, opening up his landing spot. Back on solid ground, his eyes snapped up, glaring at me. "You truly are a nightmare to deal with."

"Greatest compliment I ever got." I said, feeling genuinely proud. The last bits of Screamers in his army began to run, probably at his command in an attempt to preserve forces. "Sorry about your friends."

"I have more coming, soon enough." Avalis hissed. "They'll regroup and return."

A rifle shot roared out from above, and the furthest Screamer running away was shot straight through the head. It slumped down, broken. A stream of follow-up shots came from above.

The Winterscar knights weren't going to let the enemy escape. They'd wrapped up killing the last of their own army of Screamers, completely unhelped by any kind of dimensional shenanigans, getting it all perfectly right in one life and wordlessly taking their old sniping positions back. Hadn't even heard a word from them over the comms, they worked silently and effectively, reading each others movements and coordinating with the landscape.

I left them to the cleanup. My job was to kill Avalis, and by the gods I'd do it. Every Keith was focused on that one singular task, sending all the images I had, barreling down. The quantum cube in my hand cracked slightly, power beginning to overwhelm it. Occult shone through the fractures, but the internal held. Time was running out, more cracks forming around, the metal straining. I just needed it to hold for a few more seconds.

He watched the tide of ghosts entered a dead sprint across the broken ground, and made a snap decision. He turned, and ran.

In most dimensions, the Feather bolted straight off the bridge, diving into the abyss. In others where the images blocked off the easy escape with gouts of flames, he broke his way through into the floor and sprinted through the maze inside until he could reach a glass wall to break through.

But in some dimensions, the images had moved in just the right places at just the right numbers to pin him into a corner, herding him around with flames.

"Where are you running, scraphead?" I hissed. Stalking forward, pressing the attack.

In no timelines did he make use of his invulnerability except as a last resort to avoid a strike. Not even to escape through the bridge. I filed that bit of trivia in my pocket, behavior like that meant something. The fight was frantic as I cut off his escape paths. A shoulder pad sliced in half. Knee plates diced. Another part of his chest nearly sliced apart. Even some fingers. Fire was thrown everywhere, burning even the roots around the ground.

This was it, he was going to make another small mistake and be instantly sliced apart like so many of my other timelines had gone against his own army. His attempts to escape began to die away, as more timelines tightened the noose around him. As much as he jumped and leaped around, the images did the same, intercepting him, keeping him grounded, always one step ahead.

And then the images vanished all at once. The field cleared. My connection to the greater whole, gone.

Occult crackled around me, flashed and faded away.

The fractal had broken. Deep inside the mite cube, the little digital computer had made an error and deviated in generating the constantly changing fractal. It was over. Only junk data was being generated inside.

And Avalis wasn't dead yet.

"You can't win," I bluffed, standing tall. "I'm more powerful than you could ever imagine. Run off to your boss and tell her she better send stronger stuff than you to kill me."

Avalis stared back, hunched over himself, having fought for his life and less than a minute from losing it. He looked terrified. Violet eyes watching intently for any movement. Then they blinked. "You're lying." He said, as if shocked himself. "Tone and voice patterns match. Whatever you've done, you can't do it again, can you?"

"All according to my pl-"

That's about all I got out before Avalis sprinted right into melee distance. I answered back with my own desperate fumbles and then got slammed by a wayward mace end from that gods damned chain of his. The occult blast tossed me straight off my feet, rolling me over the ground.

I got up just in time to deflect another scythe swing with the armguard, pushing it up and into the air. Avalis was not going to give me a moment to breathe.

I'd died a few thousand times already to that very weapon, I knew exactly how it could - and would - murder me. There were some predictable movements from him that he'd repeated hundreds of times across the timelines, but Avalis was a gods damn Feather and I wasn't. The rat was doing outright cartwheels and acrobatics while I was barely holding on.

I sent images after him, spitting fire, but those were fumbling attempts and his longsword dispatched them, flowing the motion directly back to his chain for follow-up attacks. He advanced on me. He wasn't moving as fast as before, nowhere as quick as he could when he had to slip away from the hundreds of images fighting him each second. Moderating his skill, aiming to kill me without further straining his shell.

In desperation, I drew out the knightbreaker from my back, leaping over another chain swipe. It had been used countless times across all the dead-end dimensions, but in the true path it remained at my side for just such a moment.

Bastard outright jumped himself in the air to match, using his leg to redirect his chain, bits of occult blue winking out right where his boot made contact, keeping him safe from his own weapon as the mace end raced to spike me down into the ground.

Forced me to abort any idea of using the knightbreaker, using my armguard to shield myself from the mace instead, and its follow-up explosion.

I landed hard on the ground, still alive. Safety clicked off on the knightbreaker with a flick of my thumb. I twisted on myself, aiming the weapon downrange, only to have the mace end of that chain slam into the launcher, slicing it up to pieces, including the round inside. Bits of scraps flew off my hand, leaving only the grip and shredded skeleton of the gun.

"Uhhh, Journey!" I called out, trying not to panic. "Plan B, plan fucking B! Right now, right now!"

"It's too risky, you've got to survive just a little more." Cathida whispered. "You're almost there. You need to buy a few more minutes."

"A little more is about to get my head iced!" I hissed back, leaping away from another swing of his chain.

Journey's HUD lit up, a single sentence scrolling on my right. Releasing safety locks.

Avalis was getting closer with each swing, and that usually meant the end for me in almost every situation. The chain could be held off at a distance, but when he went to pair it with a longsword in close combat, I always died.

Loading predictive modeling…

Three more swipes of his chain, and he'd closed the gap. The third swing intentionally forced me into a suboptimal block, exposing my chest for a heartbeat. Avalis didn't miss the chance, the occult longsword going straight for my neck. It connected, relic armor shields lighting up to fend it off.

Full cognitive engram, online.

My arms and legs locked up as Cathida took over. She instantly parried the deathblow, turning it back on the monster in one fluid motion. I dove fully down into the soul fractal, doing my best to escape the claustrophobia of being stuck inside an armor. It worked out.

Wraiths came out in full force again, fully formed this time, as Cathida struck out, the longsword swiping through the air with practiced movements weaving the Crusader stances and the surface ones.

It bought me some time, desperately needed. Better - it was actually working. Gods above, with my four wraiths harassing the Feather, and Cathida keeping tied up against his swings, it was actually working. Heat radiated from his chassis, from every joint. Cuts in his armor highlighted by dim red, illuminating from within the cracks. I wasn't in great shape, but neither was he.

We slammed into him. Four wraiths, six arms blasting fire, and Cathida at the center of it all. Avalis stopped fighting back, weaving through the attacks and gouts of flame.

He watched, eyes cold. "I see." He hissed, blocking another hit, twisting under a swing from an image, and turning into a wraith himself as a gust of flame licked through, rapidly returning back to reality the moment the air was clear of the flames.

"A remarkable change in skill. A moment ago, you had no fractal powers active, no form, only desperate attempts to survive." He said, twisting under another swing from Cathida, backpedaling, resetting the bout. "You oscillate between power and weakness. As if going through all your trick cards. Unfortunately for you, you've used the wrong one."

"You can't dodge everything forever." I snarled out, my gut roiling with a bad premonition.

"I don't need to. I only need to last until a download is complete. And it just has." He smiled for the first time, then snapped his fingers.

Cathida froze in place. Fractals within my armor all shut down at once, killing every image out on the field. I was thrown out of the soul trance completely, into a world of pain. Journey's voice rang out in my helmet. "Low power mode engaged. Warning. Shields disabled."

"Familiar feeling, Winterscar? To'Wrathh did a thorough job eliminating traces of To'Aacar's combat logs. But I unearthed most of it over enough time. Including one specific fight against you. You've used this particular trick before. And my predecessor already devised a counter."

It was hard to think. While I'd been hiding in the soul trance from the damage building up in my body, said damage wasn't just whisked away. Now I was paying the butcher's bill as I felt all the hits I'd taken up to now.

There's only one piece of equipment I had that was still powered and working with the occult. My armguard, which was held frozen by the locked arm. I'd made it specifically in case something like this happened.

Time to use the emergency escape.

I dove down inside the spare soul fractal within that armguard, slippinging into the soul trance, feeling blessed relief from the pain and ache of my body, leaving only a small enough tendril back to my body to move it around.

"J-journey!" I called out, struggling against the armor. "Emergency abort!" The armor didn't answer back. Every extra fractal was dead.

Avalis took a few calm steps forward, the smile intensifying. Then staggered to the side as two bullets struck him in the head. The Feather paused, then straightened up, glaring up at where the two Winterscar knights remained stubbornly alive, aiming their rifles at his head. "Futile. They should know it's a waste of bullets."

The chain swung around. He got shot again, unbalancing him. Instead of annoying the Feather, he began to laugh. "Fight, struggle, use every last trick you have, humans. Death is inevitable. Despair away."

The winterscar knights gave no answer other than more shots. Going through their limited supply. Buying whatever time they could.

The chain began once more to swing. This time, no bullets came. The knights above had finally run through their entire supply. It had taken an entire squad of drakes, and the remnants of a machine army, but the last bullet had been fired.

Avalis kept his eyes focused on the faraway sniping nest. "Done?"

"No." A voice on the comms said.

Across the bridge by the mite forge's hole, a single Winterscar knight climbed up into view.

Next chapter - Lion and wolf

Book 4 - Chapter 49 - Lion and Wolf

The armor was nearly identical to the original Winterscar family armor, but there was something more to it. The angular curves of the plating just slightly sharper, looking more feral than any armor. The red sigil looked more like old blood dried out rather than a fresh coat of paint. The way the knight walked resonated with silent danger.

Journey's HUD linked up to it, name appearing under. A familiar callsign.

"Ah, you must be the third. I was wondering where you were hiding." Avalis said. "I've heard your voice advising him again and again, but no matter where I looked for you with my forces, I couldn't find you. It's a statistical wonder you've managed to hide from an entire army."

"I don't hide." Father said, walking across the bridge, closing the distance, drawing two longswords in a flourish, a twin halo of blue I'd seen hundreds of times before, only far longer than his dagger. Occult crackled around him, the shield fractals inscribed on the plate like all other knights in my House.

Father passed by my side, armor somehow looming over me.

"Fine." Avalis said, as if he couldn't be bothered with anything anymore. "What's one more human to the talley? If you were any true danger, you'd have been at his side fighting earlier."

Father didn't answer, instead he began to sprint forward.

Avalis met the charge, swinging the chain forward, mace end flying off course, before his other hand yanked the chain back to hook out for Father.

With a side step, the mace end missed the mark, landing right by his foot, deep into the ground. Father plunged down with one longsword, directly through the chain links. His armored greave followed behind, down on the fanged tip.

The mace detonated a pulse of occult. Father's boot stomped straight through the explosion, the fractal of shields lighting brightly on his heel. His other blade snaked for the exposed parts of the pinned weapon.

Avalis screamed in panic, yanking his weapon back with every bit of power the Feather had in his system. It was enough to rip the ground apart.

And also anticipated.

Father leaped with the pull, leaping forward, sprinting across the gap the moment he landed, the other blade readying in action to cut through Avalis as he soared directly in his path.

Avalis couldn't go invulnerable. Not with Father keeping pace with the retreating chain, his blade still firmly lodged inside one of the links. Connected back to him in the end.

And the Feather had no shields, he'd lost those in the fight with me. His longsword snapped out to parry Father's, the melee beginning in earnest. The Feather snarling with each strike, while Father matched him, a silent opponent.

Cathida had held her own against him for the short while she commanded my armor. With my added occult mirrors, she was even winning.

Father was winning all on his own. His strikes were savage with fury, each powerful enough to ring out in the air. He swung the weapons faster than any man could, and with more force than any occult weapon should have been able to handle.

Avalis fought back, straining his systems to the limit. The battle was one of survival for the Feather, as Father wasn't after a lucky blow or a surprise strike - he wanted Avalis dead, and every move he made was to tie down the Feather's ability to fade away long enough for a killing stroke.

A failed dodge forced Avalis to parry, and Father raked at him with both swords in tandem, striking with each at slight angles to the other. The machine blade blocked one angle, and Father flicked his other blade out of his hand, letting it flow with the current motion, wrapping around the flat of Avalis's blade. The occult edge cut through the unguarded flat, and Avalis was forced to backpedal further or be caught by the freely spinning blade.

Avalis was left with a glorified dagger. He stared at it, as if he couldn't believe what had happened. The new shortened edge lighting bright occult blue.

But failing to pay attention to Tenisent Winterscar was a fatal error for most people.

The occult dagger flashed through Avalis's head, the Feather just fast enough to fade away a second before that blade could cut through his forehead.

He reappeared quickly, instantly pulled back into the melee with Father's blades seeking out weakness. Air vented harder behind the machine armor. Whenever happened when he turned immaterial - heat didn't escape anywhere if what I was seeing was right. It remained trapped inside his systems, burning away at him.

Avalis battled back against a flurry of surgical strikes, finding his chain once again locked. A swift kick in his knee joint had forced the Feather down on the ground, where the other longsword stabbed straight down through Avalis's dagger hand, pinned him against the ground.

Violet eyes snapped up, staring at Father's own faceless helmet inches away, realizing the danger. A fractal lit to life on the relic armor, covering the entire helmet, looming over him.

A torrent of superheated air and flame streamed forward, wrapping around Avalis point-blank, licking past his neck, burning into even his chest and arms. He turned invulnerable again in panic, diving down into the skyscraper to escape. And Father was dragged with him, connected between their locked weapons.

Last thing I saw was his disembodied hand stabbing one mite-made sword straight down as the two sank down into the skyscraper, like two condemned souls dragged down into hell, eternally locked into a bloodbath.

The world went oddly quiet. Nothing but screamer shells and broken ground remained around me.

"Journey?" I asked in the quiet. "Can you unlock yourself now?"

"Negative." It answered back.

All right. I got this far, just needed to survive a little longer. It was fifty fifty odds if Father could single handedly defeat Avalis. The bastard was a Feather, that automatically put him above the paygrade of every single knight in the clan. Though he had taken a heavy amount of damage against my images and was at his limit with the heat situation.

Father was a disembodied spirit of the greatest swordsman the clan had ever seen, piloting a relic armor without any limits to speed other than sheer hardware, and had full access to the occult the same way the rest of us did. Was that enough?

I wanted to believe. But deep down, I knew I had to prepare in the event it wasn't. Father was still only one person. Feathers were in a different league, and our own wasn't returning anytime soon.

"M'lord!" The comms crackled. The Winterscar knights. "We're on our way down, hold tight for a few more minutes, only need to eliminate some stragglers. We'll get you out of the field soon enough. Hold tight. If you can, remove the dead armor. We'll cut you out of it if you can't."

"Sounds good. Don't worry, I'm not going to wander off this time. Swear on the gods."

On my HUD I saw Father's name go from green to orange. Damage reports returning. Integrity reports showing his armor slowly dropping, hits appearing in batches. Had to get off this bridge and crawl my way to the knights. After that, we could run around in circles in the world's deadliest game of hide and seek until Wrath was fixed and then hope she could finish off Avalis.

Had to get out of Journey. Even now, even here, there had to be something I could pull out of my box of scrapshit. My head muddled through, an idea taking shape.

I'd been used to using the mirror fractal within my chestplate, almost to the point it was second nature to reach out for it. Now it was dead. But my armshield still had dozens of small fractals inscribed inside, copies in case this happened. One of those copies was the mirror fractal.

I tapped into it. It grew from the armguard instead of the chestplate, but the results were still the same. The images moved to my imagination, not my reality. I couldn't move, but that had nothing on the images.

The armguard lit up, occult edge ready to cut. I brought it down with precision, right on my legplates. Where the power cells were.

"Sorry buddy, I'm sure you understand."

"Affirmative." The armor answered back.

The power cells on both legplates dropped straight down as I cut through their moorings. One hit a raised crack and wedged itself between a ripped up vine and a chunk of broken off concrete. The other bounced a few times, then rolled straight off the edge.

Journey went limp, falling on knees and then teetering forwards. HUD and vision going black, as the helmet turned off.

It left me stranded in the armguard, afraid of stepping back into my unconscious body. I knew what was waiting for me there. Pain and agony.

My body was not in the best state, and I'd gotten firsthand experience with that. Problem was that Journey was offline for good now. Which meant it wasn't moving anymore. If I wanted to take the armor off, I'd need to do it myself.

I grit my proverbial teeth and dove back into my body.

The pain was there, reminding me of every broken bone and fracture in my battered self. I groaned. "Okay… okay. Point made. Stop the hurt please."

Of course, my body being a dumb sack of meat, didn't listen.

Extracting the helmet was an ordeal. Fresh air felt nice, but everything smelled like burned oil.

The rest of the armor was painstakingly peeled off with ginger hands.

Far above the overwatch tower, even without the helmet I could notice sounds from the tower overlook. One of the windows shattered, and the flailing body of a Screamer was tossed off, falling straight into the abyss below. That must be the Winterscar knights, making their way through the machine infested towers. Couldn't contact them anymore, Journey was dead. Either way, once they got to me, I'd have that much more options.

Sound of glass shattered behind me. I flopped my head to the side. Eyes locked onto a soot-covered hand gripping the edge of the broken panel. A moment later, two baleful eyes of glowing violet emerged, followed by the rest of the Feather and I felt my heart sink down at the sight.

Of course he'd somehow survive and make it my problem again. "Couldn't just keel over and die like anyone reasonable would have by now, huh?" I coughed out.

Avalis looked about as put together as I did. Armor covered in scorch marks. Deep cuts ran across the plating, segments outright missing. One massive gash ran from his throat down to his torso, leaking black oil. The glowering hatred was new on his face, different from the old impassive gaze. I think I really warmed up to him after all this time.

Behind him, the occult chain rattled up and out of the hole he'd crawled out of, slinking back into the Feather's hilt. He dragged himself up, putting effort into the movements.

"What a coincidence." He said, his voice cold with barely restrained anger leaking through the edges. "I'd been thinking the same about you. Unfortunately for you, I'm still walking. And you're not. For the number of times you've managed to slip right past death, I think you've finally run out of lives."

He took a step forward, then staggered, an occult longsword ripping through his chestplate. Surprised flickered for a moment, before he twisted and ducked, just as the longsword sliced up.

Father stood behind him, the armor looking like a barely held together mess. Synthetic muscles frayed in strands across the exposed plating. Seven massive holes had been punched through the armor, including one where his heart should have been. The pale blue light of occult fractals inscribed inside the armor were shining dimly through the holes.

The longsword still moved, cutting up, speeding straight for Avalis's throat and head. The Feather moved quickly enough in his duck, letting the weapon rip free from his right upper ribcage instead.

A fatal wound for any human, and something a Feather could easily walk off.

The longsword redirected, falling back down on the machine like a guillotine, constantly seeking out his throat. Avalis was faster. He struck back, using his prior twist to slam an open hand directly around Father's helmet. The force of a machine easily overpowered the armor, lifting him off his feet, the longsword losing its aim.

Father's helmet slammed into the ground, cracks of black glass radiating from the impact point. "How are you still alive!? HOW? What are you?!" Avalis screamed, then immediately flinched to the right, narrowly avoiding another stab from the longsword.

He still held onto the helmet. His fingers flexed, the relic armor helmet breaking apart under. Then he slammed the hilt of his chain straight through the helmet, shattering it. The armor went limp.

Machine eyes stared down at the destroyed armor. Searching. "No blood? Where is the blood. There has to be blood. Did he vanish? How did he vanish? Mental attack? Hallucination?" There was an unhinged crack in his voice as the Feather muttered to himself, eyes searching through the shattered pieces of helmet.

The armor moved. A sword stabbed straight for the Feather's head again. He slapped it aside with his own occult chain, the move done on reflex and without thought. In doing so, he left himself wide open for Father's follow-up. He must have realized it a moment later, violet eyes widening as his other hand tried to protect against whatever was coming next.

Too late. The headless armor's other hand snapped out. Grabbing Avalis's throat in a vice grip, squeezing, occult crackling around the plated fingers.

Next chapter - Winterscar Red

Book 4 - Chapter 50 - Winterscar Red

A pulse ripped through the bridge, crackling across the relic armor, then faded. Everything inside Father's relic armor followed behind, the lights shutting off internally.

A white armored boot slammed straight through the immobile chestplate of the relic armor, breaking the already weakened structure. The Feather's other hand grabbed against Father's own, crunching down on the relic plate, prying it off his throat without resistance.

Avalis took a few steps backwards, holding his throat, staring down at the destroyed enemy. He wasn't panting, nor did he look exhausted. Feather shells don't need to breathe. And still, it felt as if the Feather was struggling to catch his breath from the very way he hunched and wobbled on his feet.

Those eyes turned back to me. He didn't say a word now, likely the insanity of everything bringing him down to a single conclusion: No more talk, kill me as soon as possible.

And I was in range of his swing. His hand snapped up, lifting the chain to slam the mace straight down through my head. Midswing his hand let go of the hilt, and the weapon went sailing off the edge, falling right down the abyss.

We both watched it fly out of sight, his own hand still frozen mid throw.

He seemed genuinely baffled. Then his eyes switched focus to the hand, opening and closing it experimentally.

It twitched.

Violet eyes grew wide. "No." He muttered. "This isn't happening. Not after all this. Not like this." Those eyes turned to me, filled with chaos for a moment before lucidity crashed right through. Loss of his weapon was a setback, he still had hands he could use to murder me with. He started a dead sprint forward. The very second step he took, his footing failed, landing him flat against the moss and glass, sliding a few inches.

More twitches came from him.

An arm slammed forward regardless, fingertips seeking out cracks to dig nails into, then he clawed his body forward, cheek sliding against the ground while his eyes locked directly on me. "Like… a disease. Just like a disease." He rambled. Pushing himself against the ground. Standing back up. Twitching, feet taking shaking steps. "You think I'm some easy mark!? My shell was built... was built for war, on scales your kind can't even comprehend. You t-t-think this kind of attack hasn't been done before? I'll rip you out like the t-t-t-tumor you are."

I tried to move my legs, managing to push off against a thick vine. Sounds of fighting drifted from both sides of the bridge end now. The Winterscar knights must have reached the base of the skyscraper, and ran into more enemies there. Not sure how the other side of the bridge was also filled with combat, the two knights couldn't have split up on the way down. And I was busy trying to run for my life from a Feather rapidly losing his mind.

Got my hands on my armguard again, fiddling with the internal controls to turn the thing back on. Got about as far as getting my hands around one handle before the whole thing was ripped away from me by a blur of black.

Avalis had lunged forward in a giant feral leap, overshot the jump, and crashed down on the ground. He slid, out of control, hands flopping around, trying to snatch away at me and missing. Settling for the armguard, before his other hand slammed a hole into the ground.

He scrambled forward after me, tossing the armguard behind, moving on all fours whenever parts of his arms or legs failed to do their job.

The blade. Atius's machine blade. It was still by Journey's plates. My hands and knees pushed myself up and forward across the moss, hand reaching out for the handle of the white blade with a small stumble while the Feather was having some kind of mental breakdown behind me.

Said Feather's hand finally crawled across the ground faster than I could, grabbing my ankle and yanking back. Then it let go before more damage could be done. I rolled over on my elbows, locking eyes on the blade hilt again. Hand reaching out.

I grabbed hold of it. And Avalis grabbed hold of my ankle again.

Instead of yanking backwards to draw me closer, he immediately threw me straight up, over himself like an upside down pendulum. Falling right back down against the glass and moss himself with me.

It hurt. And if asked where, I'd say just about everywhere. Wind was knocked right out of me, leaving me momentarily struggling to inhale. Whatever dregs of life were left in my body, a hit like that wiped it clear of my system.

Far behind me, I saw the towering black mite containment cube, gold lines flowing around it. And on top, three Winterscar knights were fighting off a small army of Screamers. Kidra. She'd reached us. Made sense now why there was fighting on both ends of the bridge. It was like some kind of insane race between the knights and machines, both trying to reach the centerpoint of the bridge, but forced to deal with the other side.

The haze in my head lasted for a second longer before I remembered I was still in danger.

Avalis loomed over me, still twitching. Stumbling with each step. He realized there was no clean way to kill me with whatever system failure was going through his head. So he let himself fall down, right on top, one of his hands forming a daggerlike blade, aimed straight for my head.

It stopped short a few inches away, twitching. As if some invisible hand had grabbed his wrist and was holding him back. He hissed, face morphing in fury. "Can't throw you off the edge. Can't twist your neck apart. Can't even stab you with my fingers. But you humans are fragile. I'll find a way, Winterscar." He said, inches away from me. "Land my elbow on your lungs, suffocate you with the weight. Break the glass around, let you bleed out from the cuts. A thousand and one ways to kill you. Just you wait. The demon can't save you. I'll have him purged soon enough. And then you're dead Winterscar. You're dead. No soul fractal to save you. No hiding away. No one else to save you. I'm not letting you live a second longer than I have to."

I grit my teeth, fighting through my own pain. My arm twitched, broken bones inside my fingers grinding against one another as I tried to lift. The arm groped around, looking for where the sword had gone off to. I knew it was around here somewhere.

Found it a moment later, hand slapping down on the white hilt, fingers grinding against bones as they wrapped around the handle.

"Do it." To'Avalis hissed down at me, voice distorted baddly this time, hand still shaking. The violet eyes widened in shock. He spoke again. "The sword. Do it, boy. While I… can still hold him back."

Avalis hadn't said that, I realized. Father had.

The spasms, the lack of coordination, the loss of his weapon, it wasn't the damage on his shell. It was Father, fighting the Feather right in his own home.

When his armor had shut down, it wasn't from damage. It was because he'd left it behind, his soul latching onto the only other soul fractal nearby.

Avalis's.

I closed my grip on the hilt, and lifted.

The blade remained trapped to the ground. Wasn't strong enough. I put every last bit of effort I could, and it didn't move an inch.

"C-c-can't." I coughed, still trying. Demanding my body to cooperate just one more time. Fingers were wrapped around the hilt, but the arm failed me, unable to lift the blade up. "I… can't."

Avalis grinned wide. A bloodthirsty smile of a victorious predator. "I win." He said, beginning to laugh. "After everything you put me through, Winterscar, I win. After every card you played, every trick you pulled, you've finally fucking lost."

The Feather broke free again, straining back up, his fists lifting high up and slamming back down to crush me through my heart. Once more, Father held him still, the base of his palms coming to a stop right before my chest. Avalis visibly shuddered, fighting for control, tremors racking through the white armor. The fingertips wildly opening and closing, wrist trying to twist them down, nails barely touching the bloody undershirt. He snarled, twisting his leg to collapse down, a metal arm snapping out to catch his fall, directly on my left arm.

Pain. Arm was crushed. Avalis laughed with savage triumph. He once more reached back, trying again to slam his fists down onto my chest, stopped again by Father. He fell on his knee, but this time missed landing on my leg.

My muddled mind flashed through options, as the Feather tried to kill me again and again. Memory floated through the haze. Of a knight holding a syringe to his neck, muttering a silent prayer. One arm limp, body broken like mine - but still needed for one last mile up.

My good hand let go of the hilt and reached down to my belt where an old first aid kit remained. An updated version for knights. I'd packed it as just default supplies, never thought I'd need to use it again given the soul fractal. The kit fell down on the ground, and I scooted it forward, letting it slide on the wet moss, moving it closer with my fingertips.

Avalis continued to shake, still held by Father's vice grip. Sharp fingers twitching. "You. Are. Dead. I'll kill you. I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do in this world."

I clicked open the kit.

"Not… dead yet." I hissed, reaching into the kit and lifting off one of the vials. Thank the gods a vial was so much lighter than a sword. I could do a vial.

What will that do? I asked Father once, a lifetime ago.

I brought the booster closer to my neck, gingerly turning it the right way.

It will trick my body into letting me move as if nothing was wrong with it. He'd told me.

And now, I needed my body to move as if nothing was wrong with it.

"That won't help you now." Avalis said. "Your system is too taxed. I can see it with my scans, there's not an ounce of strength left inside for you to use."

I grinned, a wide bloody thing as my answer. Then spiked the injector directly to my neck and pressed the button. Didn't even feel the injection itself with everything else in my body, only a small hiss near my ear. The effects started instantly. Heartbeat increased. Lucidity cut through the fog in my mind. Warmth, oddly enough, started to spread through my body, as if my blood was made of fire. Pain faded away.

And energy flowed behind.

Scraps raining from above, power coursed through my bones and muscles again.

My hand went back for that sword hilt. Grabbed hold of it. I pulled. It rattled, tip tapping against the black glass. Then moved slowly, sluggishly. The booster let me go past my limits, but it was pretty clear I was already near those in the first place.

Didn't matter. Sword was moving and that's all I needed. More energy flowed into me with each second as the full effects of the booster sunk into my head and arms.

Avalis snarled, trying again and again to batter down at me, body freezing in place as parts of him fought against his control while others struggled to power through.

His movements grew more frantic, more unhinged, as the blade tip lifted off the floor and took aim right under his throat. Where his soul fractal was. He was quite thoughtful to get this close to me, right in stabbing range. Bold choice.

Violet eyes widened, staring down at me, as if he couldn't believe this was how it was all going to end. Then they narrowed. "You won't."

Chuckles started to come out as wet coughs from me, making the blade wobble a bit. "Oh, I think I will." I said.

I didn't have my connection with the soul fractal, but the sword didn't need it. I was attuned to the occult, even more so after having touched on the fractal of Urs. I could feel the trigger lurking inside the blade.

The edges lit up, the glow of blue occult lighting up between us. Avalis shook, rattling just a few inches above me. Knowing exactly what this blade could do.

"The demon! Where do you think his soul lays!?" Avalis frantically yelled, stringing the words as fast as he could, struggling against the invisible chains wrapped around him. "If you kill me, he dies with me!"

My blade wavered.

"C-c-can't hold." Father said, fighting Avalis to speak. "The sword, boy. Now!"

"He's right. You'll die." I said, my voice clear of coughs for once.

"As is my right." He snarled back. "Avalis will return and hunt you down. He must be killed. My time is long over, do not deny me this, boy."

The Feathers eyes were doing a mad dance, glancing back and forth between me and the machines approaching. Eyes growing desperate. I didn't have time to think things through. Not that the howling and screaming they were doing gave any doubt in the first place.

Logic spun through my renewed mind and I came to a final conclusion almost immediately. The white blade stilled.

Kidra and the Winterscar knights wouldn't reach me in time, it only took one Screamer finding a way through. No matter what I did, it was over for me. But the machines couldn't reach Avalis in time either, I could kill him long before they could stop me.

The other knights could outlast the machines that were left. And with Wrath rebuilt, they could fly out of here. So long as Wrath survived, my sister and the knights who'd followed me down to this hell had a chance to escape.

Screamers and the common machines down here stood no chance against a fully realized Feather. Only another Feather could threaten Wrath.

Another Feather like Avalis. He had to be stopped. Was it ever really a choice?

I was a Knight Retainer in the end. And so was Father. When sacrifice calls, we'd both made a vow to answer it. This was our duty.

"See you in hell, Avalis." I pushed the blade up.

Violet eyes seemed to outright boggle. The air above him hazed and shimmered. He was watching death cut into him in slow motion, from the weakest most pitiful jab in history. I could see him try to use the occult - and fail. Father held a vice grip over his shell. Not even letting him flinch or twist away.

Gods above, maybe by being in a direct fight with Father, Avalis had a portion of his sight. So he could see the very concept of Death slowly digging towards him.

"No, no no, NO, NO!" He screamed, shaking, trying his best to move anything. "I'm not going to die like some misbegotten dog!"

The blade tip sank into his armor. I didn't need to do much of anything, the destructive edge was already burning through the metal like a heated rod digging into powdered snow. All I had to do was push with everything I had left in me.

The howling came closer and closer. But I knew they won't make it in time. He'd already sent the order for his forces to ignore the knights and make a full rush to his side. If they could have made it, Avalis wouldn't be nearly as panicked as he was now.

We were in the same airspeeder, Avalis and I. Neither of our backups was going to save us. The Winterscar knights would arrive too late to save me from the Screamers, and the Screamers would arrive too late to save him from me.

The Feather snarled and screamed like a cornered animal, still fighting against the invisible chains holding him tight, joints seized over.

"I'm not dying here, human!" He roared, "Not here!"

The sword was heavy, especially with just a single hand pushing it up. It continued forward regardless, and sank into his armored chest plate with little resistance, only the flat sides of the blade grinding against the cut metal slowed my stab.

He buckled, thrashed, and failed to break the hold. Occult pulsed again. Avalis playing whatever last cards he had left. The pulse of power was deeper, different than his prior attempts. "I. Will. Never. DIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!" Power flashed out, fast as an eyeblink, then his hand finally broke free, slapping the flat edge of the blade.

It carved out the side of his armor, leaving a melted trail behind. My grip on the blade hadn't been strong in the first place, so the weapon rattled off to my side. I fumbled for it, only to see a white armored hand pick up the hilt and slowly lift it away. Not a single sign of any tremor in that hand anymore.

I stared as he rose up, standing up tall, glaring down at me with an impassive face. The blade turned off in his hand. No more madness in his eyes, only control.

My mind flickered through the events, finally realizing I'd failed to kill the Feather and whatever he'd done, he broke through Father's control. Or outright killed the old man entirely.

I still had a dagger. He didn't have any shields now. And this late in the fight, whatever he'd done had to have cost him something or else he wouldn't have saved it for the last possible second.

The Feather brought his free hand up, opening and closing it, watching it work as if fascinated. Ignoring me for the moment. Testing the new freedom. Then he reached for his face and lightly took off his soot covered reading glasses. They stayed in his palm for a moment, before fingers wrapped over them, crushing the lens inside into pieces. He tossed the pieces off to the side.

My hand dove for the dagger. Now or never. His blade lit up at the same moment.

Turns out, pitting a half-dead human against a half-dead Feather wasn't a good matchup. The captured white machine blade slashed straight down on me in one precise cut.

I didn't feel the killing blow at all. Drugs must have masked all the pain, so at least I had that going for me. More surprised to find myself still thinking at all, and looking down showed no blood anywhere. He hadn't slashed through me at all. Instead, he'd cut the strap holding my knife in place, then quickly flicked it up with his foot, catching it midair with his free hand, stealing the last weapon I had to my name.

He examined the crusader knife, testing the balance, nodding as if the blade passed some invisible test. Then turned it on in a flourish, blade spinning around in his hand, a wide pale blue halo.

Violet eyes turned and locked down on my own. The colors began to shift, from violet, yellow, green, blue, and finally settling on red.

Winterscar red.

Next chapter - The end in sight

Book 4 - Chapter 51 - The end in sight

I think my heart stopped at the sight.

"Father?" I whispered, so low even I couldn't hear myself.

"The machine fled." Avalis said, but his voice wasn't the Feather's. Not anymore. "He found no other recourse to live, but to abandon his shell. Leaving me behind."

Holy scraps raining down from above. Father just hijacked a Feather.

He knelt down, getting closer to me. Red glowing eyes darting over my wounds, analyzing.

"Too much information going through this body's mind." He said. "I can't understand it all and I barely have control over the system yet, Avalis is trying to detonate the shell remotely. I'm holding him off. Are you going to make it?"

"Think I might." I said, then flopped my head to the side, where the howling was coming from. "Don't think they're going to appreciate that."

Avalis - no Father - turned his gaze from me to the approaching enemies. Eyes narrowed.

"Their opinion is irrelevant. Stay down, boy. I'll deal with this." He said as he rose back up, voice still synthetic, but his. Blades swinging into position. He turned and strode forward to the approaching horde of machines, approaching the two knights fighting for their lives. My two snipers barely holding off an entire army.

One the other side, Kidra and the other two knights were breaking through the machines with far greater ease. A third knight really made all the difference, or that could just be my sister. She was utterly ruthless.

Father took a running sprint and leaped far above the fight, in the center of the machine army. The last dredges of the machine army Avalis had brought still locked in combat with the two Winterscars.

The Screamers looked confused, coming to a stop, chittering with one another. Then they turned their gaze at him and began to scream. Claws scraping at the ground, posturing. Father stood his ground in his stolen shell, eyes flickering left and right between the incoming enemies. Calculating. One hand holding the longsword, and the other held Cathida's dagger.

The machines seemed to realize their leader had been killed. Or perhaps Avalis had sent commands to them from the safety of wherever he had run off to. The result was the same. The horde snarled as one and leaped forward, collapsing down against him.

In life, Father had been enough to take on these sorts of enemies even while wounded. In the mite-forged armor that had been his temporary body, he'd managed to fight a Feather and nearly win. Now he was walking on the world again, not in a relic armor, but in the shell of that Feather and all the powers that came with it.

He strode into the wave and nothing but death followed behind his steps, blades spinning, moving as fast as a true Feather would. His sweeps crushed through legs. His kicks ripped apart skull and chest alike. Attacks on his frame did little to no damage at all. They tried to race around him, howling, switching targets to try and reach me. He never gave them a chance, even throwing their own dead bodies wholesale just to knock them off course, or outright off the edge entirely. Lifting the monsters as if they were nothing more than loose ice to throw around.

On the other side of the bridge, Kidra finished off the last of the Screamers, one final machine head falling off shoulders as the body caved forward and collapsed on the broken ground.

She didn't wait for the body to hit the ground, continuing her sprint across the bridge. Directly to me, sliding to a stop.

The rest of the knights were behind her, rifles snapping up, aiming down the other direction, keeping an eye on the white murder machine crushing his former minions. She didn't know yet, none of them did. But they could tell something had changed if Avalis was ripping out machine throats instead of mine.

Medical supplies were yanked out from small kits, applied as quickly as possible to different sections of my body following Kidra's quick orders.

Pretty soon, it all grew quiet as Father stomped down the last Screamer's head into the ground, leaving the Winterscar knights staring at Avalis. Wondering if they should start attacking the Feather, but also not quite understanding why he had scythed through his own army and changed his eye colors.

That followed an… interesting time explaining things.

To'Wrathh floated in darkness, memories and fragments floating through her mind.

A spark came through her systems, connections returned between her soul fractal and her greater systems. Her eyes opened, both working again. Around her, the mite forge worked tirelessly, a hundred fragile arms surrounding her, guiding tiny swarms of black, weaving them through her like a tailor would a needle.

She was surrounded by some kind of air-like fluid. Suspended in it. With no end anywhere in sight.

A hand reached for her forehead, then tapped. "DO NOT FORGET, APOSTLE. THY FIRST LABOR. FIND THE LAST OF THE PREVIOUS CYCLE. OFFER HER THE SOLUTION." A voice boomed into her mind. "ONLY SHE MAY CUT THE TIES THAT BIND THEE. ONLY SHE MAY SEE THE MESSAGE THY CARRIES WITHIN."

The message? The message. The one the mites had inscribed into her soul. What was it exactly?

She wanted to ask. But when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the forge at all, standing at the edge of the gateway instead.

Her systems showed full integrity. Everything was exactly as it had been before, no upgrades but neither any changes. One hour and twelve minutes had passed and all she had in memory was a single moment awake, in which the forge shushed her like a fussy parent.

To'Wrathh stepped out of the mite forge, a white heel walking into the world again. She didn't spend a moment savoring the feeling. The last she'd seen of Keith, he'd been preparing to fight against an army. Was she too late?

She booted her combat systems back to full and scanned around herself, seeking answers.

Five humans returned confirmation pings from her sensors. All alive. Four in armor, and one in a bloodied shirt, slowly feeding a broken armor at his feet, letting it repair itself. Keith. Kidra. The Winterscar knights.

They'd survived. Relief flooded through her systems, a weight lifting off her shoulders.

They were huddled together around a small campfire by the foot of the mite forge, waiting for her. And sitting by their side, towering over the humans, was To'Avalis.

The weight instantly crashed right back down. Her wing stretched out and she drew her blades. "To'Avalis."

The Feather looked up, blood red eyes glowing and To'Wrathh realized something was very different. No Feather would defy mother with a color change from her theme. To do so would be heresy.

And the humans looked too relaxed to be hostages.

Something had happened.

"Wrath." To'Avalis said, shortening her name like the humans had. She felt the soft hairs on her shell rise up. Something was very wrong with the Feather. "Stand down, girl. The danger has passed."

That voice and timber was... Her voice recognition software rapidly churned through the possibilities and returned only one match.

"Tenisent. But... you can't be."

"I am." The Feather answered, then waved her away. "Later." His gaze turned to the one human without armor.

Keith.

He gave a cheery wave, fingers hardly functioning, hand and arm wrapped up in bandages. The grin was the same she'd grown used to. "Who'd have thought that Father would end up the most Winterscar of us all, huh? 'Borrowed' a gods damned Feather. Don't think he intends to return it anytime soon, family tradition and all that."

"Keith!" She called out, closing the gap. Weary of the situation, but not willing to let it get in her way. She was a Feather. Restored to complete working condition. If this were some kind of trap, she could surely fight her way free somehow.

"That's my name. How were the insides of the mite forge like? Just as creepy as the outside was?"

"That can be discussed another time." She said. "You need medical attention. Now."

She crouched down, palm on his chest, eyes going back and forth between the human and To'Avalis standing far too close for comfort.

"Whoa, easy there…" He wheezed. "I need some pillow talk first."

"No talking at all." She hissed, and put a hand over his forehead, eyes furrowed in focus as occult crackled around, lighting snapping across her wingtips. "What have you done to yourself, you stupid human? Do you need lessons on general common sense? Do I need to sit you down and make it clear a human is not expected to move broken arms, you stupid, reckless, stupid moron?"

"He started it." He said, pointing a thumb at To'Avalis. "Well, before the new management. Also you said stupid three times now. I think that's a little uncalled for. Twice is more reasonable."

Kidra shook her head, arms crossed. "I disagree, three times is perfectly accurate."

"And I did not give you permission to speak." To'Wrathh added, lifting the hand and muffling her human before he could annoy her further. Occult sparked around pale fingertips, sinking into the human.

So much of him was just broken in there. All masked by some drug lurking in his veins. She corrected it all, taking her time to do a proper job of it. Violet eyes constantly opening to check around herself, especially watching at To'Avalis. Or Tenisent. She wasn't sure yet, but whatever the situation, every second she had to heal Keith, she'd steal away.

She pondered how a human could have ended up in control of a Feather's shell. Answer must have been with the pendant. Likely held close enough to To'Avalis's chassis, long enough for Tenisent to detach. Humans somehow had that ability to move around without the use of a Unity fractal.

Without a spare fractal to move into, only the Feather's main soul fractal was available and a war must have been fought for it. Invaders rarely had any kind of advantage historically when it came to soul combat in past archives. Not without some way to slip past the walls around. But if there was one soul she could believe could smash through such walls, it was Tenisent. He'd broken free of his cage, he'd learned the defenses Feathers used, and learned how to turn his experience into a weapon. Even with the unity fractal, she'd had difficulties dragging his soul away after her first disastrous fight with Kidra. To'Avalis must have tried the same thing, and failed to drag him out of his home, stubborn mule that he was.

She still gave the whole thing a low chance of success, even with Tenisent's advantages. Something else must ha-

Not even a second later, she was rudely interrupted by a high pitched beeping from her alarm, cutting through her focus.

Perhaps... it may be true then. He was a Winterscar after all, they've statistically beaten the odds time and time again.

Keith flexed a newly healed hand, gingerly touching the fingertips. "Never seen it done while awake. You know, if all of this saving the world business doesn't pan out for you, I think you could try out your hand as a spa attendant. Probably would work out for you. You'd be real popular in the clan."

She stood back up and turned to To'Avalis. Or Tenisent.

The other Feather stared back. "I have full control over the shell. Worry not."

"That part isn't what I am concerned over. I need to verify you are who you say you are, and not attempting an underhanded scheme."

The captured Feather nodded, then knelt down, lifting a plate of relic armor. Something from Journey. "Machines cannot use any fractal not connected to their own soul fractal. Because you are frozen inside your soul fractals, unable to stretch out of it, to reach for fractals outside."

The plate he lifted had a fractal etched on it. The shield fractal, used by all the clan knights, inscribed just about everywhere it could be scribbled on. The one in his hands lit bright blue, and then manifested a dome before it.

Tenisent held the plate in his hands for a moment more, then tossed it forward. To'Wrathh snatched the plate out of the air, inspecting it. Checking for a trap.

"Make an attempt to use the fractal." Tenisent ordered. "If you cannot do what I did, then it's proved without doubt I am more than a Feather."

Electric currents passed through her fingertips, and the occult fractal on the plate began to glow. Nothing else happened, but she already knew that. The humans had to feed these fractals both focus and mental energy in order to trigger, all while keeping a connection to it through their souls. She couldn't do so, limited to only what was directly connected to her soul fractal.

"You... really are Tenisent." She said again. Logically, it was proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The emotional side of her was still catching up, still suspicious. "Give me a moment to process through it."

To'Avalis had been chased out. She was repaired, and her city had been evacuated in time. Keith was still alive and well, and she could protect him now.

Systems filed through and processed everything with alacrity. To'Avalis knew she was a traitor, and so did two other Feathers. The mites must have known this happened, and despite all this, she still walked out of the mite forge with the unity fractal still etched inside her chassis. They must have a plan of some kind for her. She could only trust them.

For now, however, it all pointed to one single conclusion: There was no reason to hide her true allegiances any longer. She was done. Done with the machines. Done with Mother. And done hiding.

She dove into her systems with manic glee, finding old settings that had never been touched but still available. A color wheel opened before her, and she shifted the hue selection from violet directly to a blood red. She hovered over the acceptance, realizing it wasn't her decision to make alone.

"I have a question." To'Wrathh asked.

Tenisent raised an black synthetic eyebrow. "Speak."

"If you've returned to full duty, does that make you the House Prime?"

He seemed to think about that, before Kidra waved. "By technicality, yes. There is prior precedent we can use for this. It happened once before, when a clan prime was considered dead on an expedition, and yet managed to return years later."

"Uriel Prime." Tenisent said. "I'm aware of the story."

To'Wrathh was not. Kidra noticed the head tilt and gave a quick explanation. "A song about a house prime that remained behind a mite blast door with two others from minor houses, holding off machines. They were considered dead. In reality, they escaped the deathblow."

"They had to dive further under the strata, living among the Undersiders." Tenisent added. "Building funds to pay for transport, city to city. It took time, but they returned, alive. The house reinstated the prime back to his position, if I recall."

"So it is thus. We know what needs to be followed." Kidra said, as if the matter was closed.

"Are you certain of this?" Tenisent asked. "I drove the House to ruin by neglect. I wasn't fit to be a prime, my only talents were with the blade. You have done far more for the house than I could have in decades."

Keith shrugged his shoulders at the byplay, looking unbothered. "That's what you have minions for, Father. Delegate tasks you don't want to do. Then all you have to do is look menacing in negotiations and growl a bit anytime the other houses get puffed up about something. Kidra can still command the House, and you keep the good old traditions alive."

"Keith, it is a little more complicated than this." Kidra said.

"Well, for one, I don't think you have to give back your armor to Father." He said. "Don't think he'll fit in there anymore. What else is the complications coming from? Or were you talking about other things?"

Kidra sighed, seemingly abandoning any idea of debating the gremlin.

Tenisent watched silently the byplay. "Why?" He asked. The unworded question behind the single word clear to the two Winterscars.

"Consider it a request from me." Kidra said. "It follows tradition, precedent, and is the right thing to do. You've come back from the dead. But not in your armor, nor in your body. Only your spirit is tied to the Winterscar name. Having you returned to your old position feels like you've truly returned to us."

Tenisent closed his eyes, deep in thought. Then opened it again, looking back. "So be it. Though I leave the power in your hands."

The other Winterscar knights all stood up, back straight, before lifting their blades in a salute, bowing deep.

Tenisent turned back to To'Wrathh. "You have your answer, why did you ask?"

"I needed to know who to make the request to." She said, then brushed her wings back, folding them neatly behind her. "I wish to submit a formal request to join House Winterscar."

Next chapter - Epilogue

Book 4 - Epilogue

The battleship airspeeder limped across black sands, leaving billowing clouds behind its wake. Panic fueled its turns, the crew struggling to maintain correct heading of such a massive armored behemoth.

To'Orda watched the last moments of his prey, as it finally crashed into the ground, metal plates under the hull splitting apart as the whole beast came to a slow stop, leaving a deep scar filled with broken parts across the land.

It had taken a few days to hunt down the humans here. To break their fleet of airspeeders. Constantly having to hitch rides on the lessers in order to repeat ambush after ambush. An awful lot of work. And now it was done and over with.

The battleship had failed to reach its destination, the human fortress too far away to even know about the precious cargo this fleet carried.

The drake reached a large clawed hand and seized To'Orda, talons wrapping around him, lifting him up and dropping on his feet. The machine growled, head bowing in supplication to the Feather.

"Your prey, great one." It ground out. "Succulent flesh, charred and clinging to life still."

"Nnnn… too far." To'Orda said.

The drake nodded, hand wrapping around the Feather again, lifting him back upon his seat. To'Sefit's raven had been his way of moving for the past five decades working in tandem with her. The loss of it… did not feel good. Drakes were far less comfortable, forcing him to constantly adjust his position in order to not swing in every direction.

It would take a few years for To'Sefit to have a new raven put under her name. They'd need to travel down, search across the sectors and make a deal with whatever Feathers were in charge there. Or pay a price to the mites at a large enough forge.

He wasn't sure which would cost more.

To'Sefit blamed the whole failed operation on their temporary boss.

To'Orda had no idea how To'Sefit could have done better, he'd read through the logs and events. To'Avalis had picked mostly optimal choices, including some risky guesses that had paid off. All it did was prolong the fight. The error had been in who his opponents were.

That human had triggered enough fractal power to match the feral one shambling around the ninth strata. Even the machines and Feathers down there ran from that human as part of standard operation.

Knowing his boss went long ways to acquire more power, he wasn't surprised to find himself hunting down humans far away for some scheme or another. He didn't understand To'Avalis though, not completely. The eccentric Feather had refused to alert Mother on the loss of his current shell, nor do anything that might draw her attention. Quietly fled from his old shell, making it seem as if there was nothing to be alert for. Just moving around. But without a shell, there was little his boss could do. An advisor role to capture To'Wrathh perhaps?

To'Sefit, of course, agreed with hiding the whole thing from Mother, claiming they might be pulled from the mission if word of failure got out. Another group of Feathers would be sent to clean up what they couldn't, and that would swipe away her chance. The less Mother knew of their failure, the more time they had to right their wrongs. Mother only cared about results in the end.

A shame they had such stubborn pride. Letting another group handle the humans and To'Wrathh would have been the more relaxing thing to do. He wouldn't find himself in the middle of nowhere hunting down humans if another set of Feathers were on the job.

To'Orda didn't really mind this, Mother tended to be heavy handed. She'd struck him down once, when he'd been a new Feather like his boss.

He'd also been chasing after praise, power, and all that exhausting stuff. He couldn't understand why he'd wanted it, but he did know he once did. He didn't remember the details of that conversation with Mother either, more a blur. Schemed up something to do with the surface, and sent the proposal to Mother.

Maybe his past self had wanted to smash a few human cities up there? What he did remember was that Relinquished grew more and more upset each time he repeated words, and then… well, things were more simple and clear after that day. He could always leave more complicated things to To'Sefit. She liked to think and talk, and she could do it for both of them. It was a great arrangement.

Humans in metal and gold ran around on the exterior of the dying battleship. The few turrets left were still opening fire upon the hoard of lessers sprinting across the ground for it. Drakes put a quick stop to those, lasers lancing through each with little effort.

No shields, and no speed to evade anything, they were quickly melted down. The humans fought, as their kind would. And they lost, as their kind should. By the time To'Orda had approached the massive ship, his forces were well inside and crawling around the interior, pulling out humans and working on crushing last resort resistances. To'Avalis was at the helm, sending out orders from his lair and doing all the other annoying tasks that had to be done when handling lessers.

Scans showed the interior to be a labyrinth, filled with turns and rooms. His target was in the aft section, and To'Orda did not particularly care to walk all of that.

"Nnn… would be easier with you here." He sent to To'Sefit.

She sent him a paragraph of text as a response, most of it angry. To'Sefit never had died before, always safe at a distance and usually the first and last sight Deathless saw. A few of those had tried to challenge her, knowing what weapons she carried, and some had almost been clever enough. At least, until now.

She'd died twice in the past few days. The first death was forgiven, decades of successful missions had built up her resources. And the few times To'Orda had died in the past, he hadn't cared to have his shell rebuilt immediately, waiting out the months behind other Feathers waiting their turn. Usually whatever killed him was equally killed by To'Sefit in exchange, so there'd never been a reason to reforge a shell with priority. Dozens of Feathers died each day, so Mother didn't seem to notice nor care which worked out for them all. Or maybe she had noticed, but this was all exactly what she wanted to see happen.

He supposed it wasn't bad luck, or coincidence. Those same humans had killed him, and the boss too. Three Feathers, all destroyed by the same band of humans. Like he'd thought before, the error wasn't planning. It was the humans.

These ones running around, shooting rifles at his lessers, fighting off the boarders with bullet and blade. These were far easier to handle, like normal humans should be.

The drake reached the first burning metal section, then lifted him off, dropping him at the foot of the wreck. He dismissed the machine, letting it go free on the hunt while he approached the sides of the grounded ship. Ahead was his goal, so hand digging into the panels, prying sections apart.

Heat built up in his system, but without any active combat systems drawing power, his new shell was more than capable of handling such a strain. Ten minutes passed with little issue as he burrowed his way through the broken ship, walking across floors when he could, but otherwise ripping his way through walls.

The next wall frame he pulled apart had the barrel of a rifle on the other side, shoved into the hole he'd just made. Six barrels in effect, all neatly packed. They were spinning by the time it bumped into his forehead, causing him to push back a few inches in order to get a better view.

It opened fire on him, full automatic, nearly point blank. The rounds peppered his head, breaking down into fragments. Yellow light and sparks lit up the room. "Nnn…" he grunted, debating if he should just continue to widen the hole or deal with the annoyance.

The sound was what decided it. An annoying grating noise, it was not comfortable and difficult to ignore. He grabbed the spinning barrels as they continued their torrent of bullets, yanking the weapon out.

The walls ended up stronger, the gun parts that didn't fit through were sheared off, breaking the weapon for good. He tossed the annoyance to the side. His hands went back to the shear, gripping both sides and stretching the metal.

An occult longblade dove forward, directly at his face again, and To'Orda was forced to jerk his head to the right or have his shields take some damage. Then he had to take a step back to avoid the followup slash for his neck.

The Feather stared at the stubborn wall for a moment, contemplating his misery.

He just wanted to get to the vault of the airspeeder, not deal with all this. It was getting on his nerves. His hand slapped the side of the wall, occult pulsing through as he triggered the fractal of pull.

Voices and shouting came from the other side. He slapped a second mark on his left, just in case. And then he finished prying the wall apart in peace and stepped through.

He found seven humans, three in metal, the rest in some deep blue and gold uniform. All stuck against the walls, struggling against the power.

They would definitely continue to harass him if he ignored them. He could tell, these were going to be that kind of human.

One massive hand reached out to the first human, gripping the whole helmet, and twisted past where humans liked it to be. Quick and low effort, especially since each couldn't move away or stab him with their sharp weapons. Shields couldn't do anything to that kind of attack either.

The unarmored ones just needed a finger flick to the forehead, squishy things. He moved a little faster than he needed to, but the screaming was getting on his nerves. Gravity tags couldn't stifle those.

Done with his work, he continued to burrow his way through the ship, crunching a straight line to his target.

Word of his approach must have spread through the fighting humans, since pockets of resistances were far more organized and prepared to take him on from then on. Explosives, larger cannons, and even the unarmored humans were trying to swing occult weapons at him.

Well. He had a hammer for such issues. He missed his mite door, but To'Avalis had been quite clear he needed to handle this instead of returning to help like To'Sefit. He'd been hedging his bets, making a plan in case he lost. A bet that he'd been wise to do since exactly that happened.

Apparently, what To'Avalis wanted would only be transported once. After the humans managed to bring it into a fortress, it would never see the light of day again. It had passed over a few hands so far, but To'Avalis had tracked it down to the final owners, just as it was about to be secreted into some unassailable foxhole.

Besides, the door was much more useful against Deathless. There weren't any of those here.

He shrugged to himself, the hammer slamming down into another human knight trying to crawl away from him.

Orders came through, urging him to go faster. Once the humans realized a Feather was here, they'd turn to resource denial rather than trying to win. And To'Avalis couldn't keep the dying ship's communications scrambled forever. Soon, he no longer heard screams of terror or shock when he ripped through walls, so the humans must be aware that he was here now.

"Nnnn… I'm going." To'Orda grumbled as his boss once more demanded he speed up, picking up his pace from a walk to a jog. It was more effort, but he could use his shoulder to slam into and through walls. If he'd been forced to run, might as well make the most of it.

The vault was a massive isolated system from the main battleship, with enough metal that even he wouldn't be able to pry apart with his hands. How To'Avalis had managed to infect a system that should have been sealed from the outside, with just proxy agents or digital attacks to his name, To'Orda didn't know. But he knew To'Avalis was as smart like he'd been before Mother got angry.

The humans he found there were doing exactly as To'Avalis had expected.

They were trying to break into their own vault, in order to destroy what was inside. A shame they couldn't open it up easily. To'Avalis had ordered it to shut close, and so it had.

It was another bloodbath, except these metal clad humans fought with somewhat similar speeds as the surface knights. Imperators, To'Avalis said they were called. Dealing with them forced him to tap into his combat suite, matching their speeds.

A comfortable heat buildup he could vent at a reasonable rate. This deep into the metal battleship, there weren't fires so he could take his time.

The humans here were wily, fighting as a veteran team. They'd clearly battled against Feathers before, likely as backup to some Deathless expedition. Even knew what kind of fractal powers to expect from him, working around and avoiding any marks he placed.

But without their spellcasting heroes at the vanguard, it wasn't going well for them. They had no edge over him. It was their speed and skill pitted against his own speed and skill. He was simply stronger in both. There was nothing these humans could do other than slow him down.

His hammer finally caught one in the chest and crushed the body into the vault's wall. The other continued the fight for a few more minutes before dying as well, ankle grabbed by To'Orda, body slammed into a wall, with a hammer swinging right after.

Far easier than dealing with the knights that had killed him in that tunnel. These vault defenders were more stubborn, but not quite as vicious. Or as well equipped.

The vault door itself took him a lot longer to crack through. To'Avalis could have opened it up digitally, but the humans hadn't been dumb. Once they realized the security systems weren't under their control anymore, they physically cut off all cables.

His hammer quickly proved useless. And the drakes outside were still busy chasing down fleeing humans, too gleeful with their work to bother. Getting one here would be a pain to do.

To'Order yanked one of the tiny swords from the dead humans, turned it on, and began to cut away at the vault. The blade looked more like a dagger in his hands, but he worked with what he had. Small chunk by chunk, minute by minute. Slash. Slash. Slash.

The humans came back and tried to chase him off. Three times. It didn't work, and now the entryway was more blood and guts than metal and gold paint. After the first hour of cutting, no more humans showed up. The battleship was now well and truly dead, its crew either fleeing the drakes, or dead inside as the Runners crawled through.

Light went off after the second hour, and To'Orda was left in the dark. It bothered him little, he continued the mindless work of hacking away at the thick door. To get his mite shield, he'd spent months waiting in the same place, slowly and methodically scraping away any mite that tried to climb over the door section he wanted.

The new colony had plans for the area and he'd spotted them coming. They dismantled everything around him, but were unable to do a thing as he continued to destroy mites entering into his range.

The mites had been quite cross with him. Constantly rebuilding their little shells, and sending them mindlessly after him, trying to work. And refusing to leave until he did first.

As the days turned to months, the stalemate had turned more amicable in a way. Mites were made to build around some things, to contain them. Sometimes it was buildings, sometimes it was waste or dangerous materials, and sometimes it was even living beings.

He'd been diligent in destroying the little critters trying to work around him or on the mite blast door section he wanted, but anywhere else the mites were free to break apart, or build. So they'd done as mites do when dealing with an immovable obstacle. They cocooned him off, cut the mite door chunk he was after and left him to it.

Even added a handle for him after he'd stopped destroying the tiny things now that he had his piece of mite made metal in hand. Stubbornness acknowledged stubbornness.

That black cube turned out to be harder to get out of than it had been to get his shield. To'Sefit had managed it only because she knew where he was, and had been looking for a servant to hold off any Deathless getting too close to her. What better servant than another Feather?

It was a good deal. She got him out of the box he'd been trapped in for a few years, and she got a shield in exchange. Her having a raven to fly him around was even better.

It took three hours of small diligent cuts before he was able to thin out the vault door enough to break through. He ripped it apart, letting the tiny sword drop and turn off. Violet eyes now the only source of light. Inside were a few human treasures, computers, storage drives, and relics of different times. Scrolls in glass boxes, and even a human femur bone, gingerly held in display.

The Feather did as instructed, taking slow steps to the end of the room and walking down the small steps into the lower section. An armory of sorts, filled with golden blades, rifles, and cut metal plates with fractals etched upon them.

It should be here. And indeed, it was.

At the other end of the wall was a figure held up by one wrist, suspended like a prisoner. The other arm was missing, only a white scarf-like cape hung where the arm should have been.

If powered back online, even in the current state, this would be the most dangerous weapon held in the armory. He took a step to inspect the damage. Repairing this would take some time. But that wouldn't be his problem. All he had to do was power it on.

Violet light flickered across the remains, the systems inside failing to reboot properly. They continued forward, following blind processes, doing more damage in the process.

To'Avalis didn't need those. Digital hands reached out through To'Orda and sized control directly, binding the repair swarm inside to his boss's command. Work began, the nanites consuming parts of the vault around it to feed to process.

Parts of the hardware were destroyed from a stab through the head. To'Avalis being careful to prune away parts that might be problematic to deal with too. He was careful with others, wanting to end with the full power behind this shell, but no possible contamination from the prior owner. To'Orda thought it was silly. This broken machine would never regain sentience. It could only ever be puppeteered. His boss worried too much.

He couldn't help To'Avalis with the repairs either. Nanoswarms had their built-in hard limits, and even Mother wasn't mad enough to ignore that. Only mites could contain situations like those.

Which meant all of this wouldn't be a short assignment, not with the damage To'Avalis would need to slowly repair. For now, he'd need to stay here and guard the area.

To'Orda paced around the vault, searching for a suitable spot. He found a nice empty wall, turned and slumped against it, systems switching to low power.

Hand slowly letting go of his hammer, head sinking back against the hard metal before dropping off to the side. Eyes glowing dimmer, then closing for the long sleep.

Soon, nothing but darkness remained in the dead vault.

But deep in that darkness... another violet eye flickered back awake.

- END OF BOOK 4

Book 5 - Prologue

-Uncharted Sector, Second Layer

The machine had crawled this way. Trails on the muddy ground were clear, effort spent in petty spite. Claw marks, born from rage or desperation, painted the damp walls. Deep cuts into the ground hadn't been hidden at all. It knew there was no hiding that.

A relic knight followed the trail, silent as death. Footfall after footfall, leaving a clear trail behind him. He wasn't in a hurry. Speeding forward could find him run into another ambush. So he took his time, always keeping his active sensors running a full scan of his surroundings.

The machine had been on the run for the past half day. Searching for more Screamers to call on. Hind legs had been cut, but the beast had managed to leap off into safety, and then crawl away.

After this much time, it had to be running low on energy.

When the knight rounded a few more corners, he found his theory proved correct. The half-killed beast lay unmoving. One arm stretched out to grab the next handhold, dragging the rest of its split mass. It seemed frozen in time now, lights off, body slumped over. Even cut in half and slumped on the ground, it still towered above him, the dorsal spines tall like flagpoles.

"It may be playing dead." A voice whispered into his soul. "Drakes are far more clever than the rest of their metal kin."

"Not may, it's absolutely playing dead. Approach with care." Another voice added.

The knight paused, drawing out his weapon. Unwrapping the tattered cloth, revealing a black longblade. Built to duel against other wielders and to be even used without armor. The first of its kind, and one that all the voices in his head agreed should be hidden at all times. He never knew when he'd stumble on civilization.

The blade hadn't been made to hack machines in half, but a weapon was a weapon. And he was alone down here.

Slow steady steps brought the knight closer to the dead enemy. Only the occasional drops of water sounded around in the mist. Pooling onto the floating skyscraper bases, gathering up enough mass before falling down onto the dirt under.

The drake's head snapped his direction, lights turning back to full, maw spread wide with crackling power aimed directly at him.

A beam lanced out, colliding against his armor. Calculations within the sleeping armor's mind flowed through the knight's own mind. Too much energy for his standard shields to withstand. So he would make use of his other abilities.

Occult pulsed around him, the invisible imprint of reality warping around into an unyielding wall. Not just one, three came to life, each stacked behind one another.

The first took the blast, held for a moment, and shattered. The second held off for a shorter instant before breaking. The final one was utterly unyielding.

Light cleared, returning the world back to the dim damp darkness of ruined metal and stone. The drake watched, violet eyes widening.

"Impossible." It hissed. "Ssssss…. What flesh are you?"

There were too many answers to that question, and he wasn't sure himself which one was true. So he remained silent, letting the splash of mud on his boots be the answer as he stalked forward, occult blade lit bright blue.

A voice in his mind gave an annoyed tut. "Can't seem to hold that one for more than an eyeblink. How exactly do you do it, Riventide?"

Another voice floated over the same comms. "Comes easier to me. Practice might help even you out. Not like there's much else to do."

Occult crackled off his armored plates again. A ghostly wraith strode out of his body, identical blade drawn out, lit bright blue.

It strode to the struggling Drake, easily catching up.

"Their weakpoints are here." The wraith spoke, a different voice from the first two. The ghost blade slashing through the air with ease. Directly through the machine's throat, even as it struggled to avoid the blow. A moment later, the Drake slumped down against the ground with a massive splash.

"Cowards, one and all." The ghost continued. "Cutting off the legs should be considered only a last resort, not an opening gambit. In the future, do better. Eliminate them early on."

The knight nodded. Wisdom from the ghosts had already come in good use.

Other voices answered back, each giving smaller hints and tips they've learned. Dead voices, who's bodies had long ago been killed. Souls now, living within him like a colony.

To their credit, they had quickly adapted to the new living conditions, the inner armor looking more like a spiderweb of soul tendrils from the many within. Each using their own mirror fractals to have some presence in the real world again. Each sharing tasks with one another, while keeping separated enough to remain individual.

"Understood." He voiced out, drawing out a dagger and beginning the process of extracting a power cell from the dead foe. He ate food to feed his core body, the human one. Power cells fed his other body, the one that housed everyone. Between the two, the external body was far more important, and yet a deep part of himself couldn't allow his inner body to die off. A holdover of the original soul, according to the other dead floating within. An armor's spirit wished only to protect. And if it cost everything, then it would pay everything without a second thought. Some traces of it remained alive even now.

The voices of the dead around him also agreed with the armor spirit's final thoughts. Telling him that one day, they might fix him again. He had to keep the human body alive long enough for that moment.

They didn't fool him. His past memories as a human taught him to detect lies. There was no going back. As much as the ghosts within him all theorized ways to heal his wounds, he could sense they had little hope it could happen.

He wrapped a rope knot around the power cell, secured it, and lifted the whole thing. Seven other power cells had been knotted up, clinking together loudly as he holstered the whole thing behind his back. Then he began the tireless sprint forward across the broken ground. Above him, floating skyscraper bases loomed like massive candles. Out of his reach.

The fall hadn't killed him. Weakened gravity let him land on catwalks that stretched between the floating buildings. The machines hadn't cared for an errant knight running amok while they plotted out an ambush. Drake after Drake attempted to laser him to death. When they failed, they changed tactics and simply sliced through each catwalk he landed on. Until he fell all the way down, out of the fight for good.

Now, he wondered the depths, alone with only his confused thoughts and the voices of dead ghosts, searching for a way home.

And there would be a way home.

First, he'd need to seek out the Undersiders to find passageway. Walking to the surface would only leave him stranded in the middle of a wasteland, with no airspeeder to take him the distance. It would be a long journey, but one way or another, he would return.

He wasn't sure how much of him was centuries old, passed down from user to user, always there to protect each name. Or how much of him was still a human captain, finally clear on his purpose in life. One had died, and the other had lived.

But none of the voices, nor himself, knew which one was which.

-Airis Point, Second Layer

The kick ripped apart the delicate wooden drawer, splinters of an ornate handle flying off. It had taken an artisan the better part of a week to meticulously carve, and only a second to destroy.

Hexis watched his work for a moment, then grabbed the porcelain vase and launched that into the wall, plant and all.

A satisfying smash that did absolutely nothing to help.

"Your magnificence." The servant behind him spoke, completely unphased by the local destruction. "Would you wish for me to requisition another orchid for your office?"

"No." Hexis said, then paused again. "Well, actually yes. But not orchids. Gallowsweed. Nice traditional insult."

"Of course, your magnificence." The servant said, bowing slightly while Hexis resumed the short and brutal war against his office.

He'd loved that desk. Onyx black, and yet every bit of art was visible despite the dark color. And he was going to make absolutely sure not a shred of it could be recovered. Once he was done, most of the office was littered with splinters.

"That'll do for a warm welcome to my inheritor." Hexis said, satisfied at the destruction, slapping his hands free of loose bits. "Hope he enjoys his new desk. Oh and make the pot red, Sebastis. For the Gallowsweed, I mean. I want it to stand out."

"I'm sure he will be most displeased, your magnificence."

"Excellent. Now, out with it. You didn't come here to watch me trash my old office, and you're not here with bad news. We both know you'd have sent someone else to deliver news like that."

A personal butler wouldn't have stayed employed all these years if he didn't have a sense of self-preservation. And given he hadn't quit and joined up with the winning team, Sebastis likely had uncovered some bit of news that Hexis could use.

"It has to do with the earlier rumors we recovered from Capra'Nor."

"The one about that sword saint nonsense?" Some young girl who could fight off a Feather one on one and win. Not a Deathless woman either, an actual human girl. Utterly ridiculous, stank of rust. Some veteran elite knight might be able to fight off a pack of Screamers all by themselves with enough skill, or even kill a Drake and survive the fight with enough good planning. Not that he'd seen that happen yet, lone relic knights don't survive for long out there for a reason. But it was far more plausible to happen, unlike a relic knight fighting off a Feather. That was sheer nonsense.

"Refugees from Capra'Nor have arrived already, and many have copies of a video file showing her battles. It appears this particular rumor was not so much of a fabrication after all."

Hexis hummed, still not quite convinced. "Suppose there's always unexplained phenomenon in this job occupation." That and politics. Mostly politics. But he'd often found that the simplest explanations were often the most accurate. "Deathless in disguise for now, pretending to be human."

As far as he knew, Feathers were opponents that took a team of Deathless working together to bring down or stall. Usually not a simple affair either, a kill team had to have it planned out down to individual roles in the fight along with the right occult spells, and they'd generally die a few times before they'd win. Hexis was only a glorified arms dealer when it came to all that nonsense. They could go around killing each other for centuries, but gear was gear and that did break after each fight. Fortunately, Deathless were usually flush with resources. And if they weren't, favors owed by a Deathless were just as valuable.

That sword saint would certainly be a popular Deathless for having fought off a Feather one on one, and he'd appreciate watching the video file himself. That said, he couldn't see any use for this particular Deathless in the political shitfuckery he'd found himself knee deep in. No, his esteemed colleagues would be the ones who the girl would contact first whenever she came around to Airis Point looking for weapons and spells.

So what was his butler on about here?

"It has more to do with her allies." The butler said, walking over with a small folder of paperwork.

Hexis took on the items and leafed through them absentmindedly. Then his eyes narrowed and he re-read the pages.

Surface savages come down from Clan Altosk, one of the few clans in the region under command of a Deathless clan lord. That added more into the idea that this was some new Deathless apprentice, sent out to make a name for herself. The living soul within knows there are hundreds of those appearing everywhere these days, most untrained and in need of mentorship, ever since the world went mad. Why would the surface be an exception? Odd to hide the title and pretend to be a regular human, but Deathless did have to play political games too, in between fighting the tainted metal. He just didn't yet have the full picture.

What came as more bizarre was her escorts. One moment, they were reported as regular surface knights. And the next they now moved at the same speed the girl used to fight off a Feather. Why hide that skill in the first place?

The clan lord up there might be sending a message to all the new deathless hiding away that he could train them. A subtle recruiting pitch perhaps, draw out the ones too scared to make use of their new powers. And put the ones gone mad with power back into their place.

Deathless they might be, but only a handful had been soldiers. For all their newfound ego, none of those attention starved idiots could fight a Feather off one on one.

"What if they're not Deathless?" The butler asked.

"Might be surface savage politics if they're not Deathless." Hexis said, absentmindedly, more speaking to himself now and organizing his thoughts. "They do value different things than proper civilization does. Martial might from weakness could be an appealing strategy, and appearing at the last moment as heroes could be something highly effective in their culture."

"Somehow, I have a feeling you're not much of a believer when it comes to such a theory, your magnificence."

"Not for a coin." Hexis huffed. "Them being Deathless makes far more sense. And I've met with clan knights before in trading sessions. Usually unable to buy anything because they're always poor, but they offer good services as mercenaries or armed guards. So I believe I have enough of an understanding of what they respect and what they do not. Someone who's come into great power for no reason wouldn't be trusted. Someone who's slowly honed their skills and might over years with dedication is far more reliable and understandable to their culture."

'I concur." The butler said. "To me, it felt as if they had shared an occult spell between the five, and only when the situation was too grim to do otherwise."

"... That is... an interesting argument." Hexis said. "Wise to bring it to my attention."

He considered it deeper. What if the surface clan had discovered some fractal that sped them up? Surface savages fought each other constantly, they were well known for having entire dedicated combat arts to defeating each other. It didn't give them any great advantage against machines of course, but as bodyguards, they were quite the statement.

Pair their skill up with the speed to match a Feather, and they really might have everything needed to actually tie an enemy like that down. But just as much chances the girl was some brand new Deathless like he'd originally suspected.

But what if she wasn't? What if they really did have a new fractal like that?

He needed to get his hands on it fast.

The guild thought they could simply strip him of his rank and that he'd be toothless forever more. Fools, the lot of them. He'd made his fortune by taking risks. He didn't have anything else to lose anyhow. "Organize a charter expedition to the surface. We'll make way to that clan and find out the truth."

"It shall be done at once your magnificence. I will inform the guild of your departure and have the proper obfuscation done. They will be none the wiser on where we go."

"Good. Besides my personal guards, search around for any surface mercenaries stopping by. Having them on the team will make relations go smoother. The savages respect each other far more than they'd respect little old me."

He might have been politically ostracized and ridiculed by that upstart. But he could easily claw back his titles and position the old fashioned way: Unearthing new fractals.

None of his peers could ever go against the ancient traditions. If he returned with new fractals, it didn't matter his rank or status, he would reclaim his title.

Hexis lifted the papers before him, then snapped his fingers, allowing the brief contact of thin metal wiring within his gloves to brush against one another, completing a circuit.

Occult took so little electricity to trigger or maintain. It made it easy to hide among his ornate decorations. Flames appeared on the tips of his fingers, engulfing the paper folder entirely. He tossed the burning items onto the ground, watching as they erased all traces before he stomped the whole thing with his boot.

It wouldn't do to start a fire right around so much splintered wood. After all, he intended to reclaim this office soon enough.

It had been centuries since the last time a warlock looked upon the surface, let alone a grand warlock, but times were changing.

If there was growing power brewing outside the guilds, then Hexis would sniff it out, and drag it back with him.

-The Shattered Wasteland, First Layer

He fixed and fixed, ever working in the darkness of the destroyed battleship. Repairing the soul fractal came first. He'd done so remotely, commanding the few working nanite swarms to disconnect any power sources connecting the central heart, before putting in repairs.

It wouldn't do for this shell to generate a new artificial soul. And given how old the chassis was, there was a strong chance a soul could manifest within seconds of the main systems booting up.

Once that was repaired, he isolated the systems and powered them on. It lit up bright, disconnected from the whole. From here, he gathered his courage and tapped into the Unity fractal.

A vague sensation of Mother passed over him, too busy with other items to handle him. Or care for who he was. He'd predicted this would be the case, but Relinquished could be fickle. For all he knew, she may have been genuinely interested in To'Aacar's fate and keeping a watchful eye for his signature to reappear.

She had not. And through her borrowed power, he moved himself into the empty soul fractal, taking command. Now, no new soul could be generated as he held the reins. He reconnected the heart back to the chassis and continued the work.

Slowly, steadily. To'Orda woken up occasionally, tasked to recover power cells to help fuel the process. It would take a week to repair everything, but it would be well worth it. This shell was far lighter than his old one, made for mobility and acrobatics. Made to fight enemies who were just as nimble as quick.

Deathless had always been tied to human speed and reflexes unless using an occult spell. His past chassis had been built to counter that level of speed. It had been able to withstand massive damages that would have broken other Feathers. Ambushes, sabotage, even occult spells that couldn't miss. His old shell had been perfected to his needs.

Against the new foe that had appeared, he'd found himself nearly matched in speed for the first time in his life. Memories bubbled through of a hundred occult ghosts harassing him from all sides, burning the air around him, suffocating his path of escape.

He needed a faster shell now. The amount of damage that Winterscar could do was far higher than anything machines could take on. Avoidance would become his new shield.

Wings were a possible addition, although that came with its own drawbacks and weaknesses. And it wouldn't fit the original shell.

acausal forces were not well discovered, but concepts played a large part. To'Avalis didn't wish to tempt fate any more than he already had. The shell had a concept of its own after being tied to acausal forces for centuries. To modify that ran against the gravity that had begun to settle in this chassis. He could feel parts of the shell rejecting his command. Move sluggishly, not quite in sync with his own thoughts and patterns. It would take some time for the concept of himself to seep into the metal.

While the nanoswarms worked tirelessly, his other processes were investigating outside. The Winterscar was out of reach, as was To'Wrathh. Surface bound. Now fully built, he wouldn't be able to easily kill her that far away from any support. By design, Feathers were not made to be easily handled. And this one was surrounded by knights who each posed a serious threat.

He considered one particular location hidden within A-12's memories, a prison hidden from everyone. But that was a double edged blade and could just as easily cut himself as it would his enemies. He'd need to save that as a last resort.

And To'Wrathh would need to leave the safety of the surface at some point. At the heart of their nest, she was neigh untouchable. But seven layers under the surface, that was where he could pick her apart.

If she wasn't leaving anytime soon, there were other ways to bait an enemy out. The surface clan didn't have any lack of enemies to abuse. His predecessor had connections to all of it. Undersiders, Othersiders, all humans that would turn their fangs on his target if given the right payment.

Perhaps he could salvage something from the ruins of all these failed plans.

Time would tell. Time always did.

Next chapter - Victory

Book 5 - Chapter 1 - Victory

The old gods had likely seen just about everything happen at least three times.

Somehow, I get the feeling stealing a godsdamned Feather was brand new to everyone anyhow.

The upper team here were already packed and ready to go. Rather, they had mostly been packed by the time Wrath ferried me up past the whirlpool. Of the entire expedition, what remained were seven. Icestride prime and his subordinate Loraii, two knights from House Stormsweeper, Ankah and her two minions. They were prepared for a hard fight, and it had been one.

At the start.

The Shadowsongs and Icestrides held the center chamber, while the two Stormsweepers went out chasing the drakes. They came back flush with trophies and from there on the machine offensive ground to a halt. Caves were collapsed, mines detonated, traps triggered, until the machines were forced down one death funnel with a group of unkillable relic knights on the other end.

When trying to kill the knights didn't work for the machine army, they tried scaling the walls and jumping down into the center chamber from the top floor. But so long as the clan knights stayed together, no amount of Screamers seemed enough to overwhelm them. Rotations, redeployments, and mobility kept the away team alive and in charge. Icestride already had plenty of experience running circles around machines back when they didn't have the winterblossom technique, occult fractals, nor the sheer number of relic armor.

And then Avalis died, and the machines up here decided to throw out the snow and close airlock. Or Avalis himself had recalled them, seeing no reason to waste resources now that he'd failed. Regardless, the machines took one big step back and went sulking deeper into the tunnel, regrouping.

That's how Wrath found the expedition team. Preparing for the next wave, and taking the opportunity to load up the hover sleds for any hasty exit. When they saw Wrath fly up, they all knew it was over for good. Now they had a Feather on top of their current odds. And she could fly.

Not great for the enemy side when half the temple had lost ceilings.

Wrath then went on to ferry the rest of us up, one at a time. Up until she brought Father along. But by then, Kidra and I had explained the whole thing to the group, so they weren't surprised at the Feather that had previously been harassing them in tunnels and stealing their knightbreakers. Nervous, but that quickly went away the moment Father's voice came through.

Tenisent had been a lifelong pillar to their group in life, the relic knight people turned to when they sought to improve their blade skills. Having him back in action in the real world instead of just a specter floating around in the digital one was extremely welcome to the group. And I think they also took an extra bit of vindictive joy in knowing the knightbreaker pickpocket had his own shell pickpocketed. Play around in the snow for too long, and you'll lose a thumb. And hand. And apparently an entire body, though that's way past what the idiom was supposed to warn about.

We'd have gone home earlier too, but there was still one more member left. Wrath flew down into the whirlpool to extract him from the lower strata, a lone relic knight from house Arcbound. Small house. Great knight who'd earned a reputation for a few crushing victories against slavers.

As for what he was doing down by the mite forge, that's a little more complicated. The rest of the dead clan knights had been originally transferred over to Tenisent's pendant, where he helped them settle in. Then, Captain Sagrius's accident needed hands on triage. When his armor was falling off into the depths, the disembodied souls and Father all came to a snap agreement.

They'd stay behind on the armor's spare soul fractals, while he remained in the pendant - which was promptly launched my way as a last second pass.

That turned out to save my life a few dozen times over, but Sagrius had vanished under that whirlpool and we couldn't find any trace of him on the other side. Wrath went looking for him too, only finding broken catwalks, lasered in half. Avalis had had time to try and kill the knight while preparing for me, and if he hadn't succeeded, he'd certainly made sure he wouldn't be around.

The skyscrapers went down deep. Real deep. Most of them weren't even anchored on a ground surface, their bases were floating in midair by mite scrapshit. As the strata widened further under, the area became a maze. If I were the captain, being attacked by a small army of drakes and screamers trying to surround and eliminate me, I'd have dove into the snow. Killed my chasers, thrown off the trail, and gone deep into hiding. Which also meant we'd have just as little a chance to find him as the enemy had.

As for the possibility that the drakes and Avalis had managed to kill Sagrius, Wrath and I were mostly convinced that wasn't the case.

He had six veteran knights all there with him, an armor filled with fractals, and running Father's combat engram. Not to mention we had video footage of him tanking To'Sefit's beams with ease, due to whatever happened to his soul. Captain Sagrius may be the most dangerous thing walking around in the lower strata right now. And the clan didn't exactly migrate every year either, we'd be on the map for decades to come.

As Icestride concluded: He'd come to us. All we needed to do was wait.

He'd made the call to focus on what we had to work with instead, and go back to the surface. We couldn't afford to stay here for long, no telling what Avalis was planning.

But we could afford one last bit of help from the mite forge.

And so back to Fang Arcbound. He'd been one of the knights cut up by To'Sefit's initial ambush. In the confusion, the knights had only been able to recover one of the two that died. Arcbound had been left behind in no-man's land, a soul trapped inside his armor.

He didn't panic, simply biding his time instead. Checking the bounds of his abilities, testing what he could and couldn't do, conversing with the armor on his options.

Wrath flew over and yanked his armor up and back to the group. From there, we discussed ways to bring him back into the world. We'd debated having a spare soul fractal tapping into the armor's systems, letting him influence it like Father had with Witnerscar Prime. But the armor was just as likely to run into hardlocks that would treat the intrusion as a virus. Arcbound had his own suggestion - cut him free from the armor itself, and have the forge construct a new relic armor for him like it had with Father.

It was a good suggestion. Problem was that now the mites had gotten stingy.

I'd been left alone with it for the past half hour while all of this was being done, having been the near last member to be ferried up. And I hadn't spent that half hour tweedling thumbs. I'd asked the forge for basically everything I could think of, from occult books, gear, items, money, and down the list onwards.

My original 'payment' for the quantum cube was still technically pending as I'd yet to fulfill my side of that bargain, and probably wouldn't for a small lifetime. So asking for more might have been seen as a little greedy on my part. Or at least that was my theory. They were now asking for ridiculous things. Not ridiculous in that it was asking for me to indenture my soul for the next thousand years. I mean outright made up nonsense.

"Fine. How about some kind of long range weapon that can shoot some kind of undodgeable homing lighting that melts everything it touches?" I had asked.

Offer: Electromagnetic Pulse Laser-guided Plasma Channel. (Infantry prototype version. Modification by United Earth Machine Defense Force) (Quantity: 1)

Payment Required: 10 Argon Crystals of AGS 0

What in the white wastes were argon crystals? And what's AGS 0 even mean in this contex? No idea, and the forge didn't want to answer.

"How about a book on occult fractals?"

Offer: Acausal Forces Examined, Third Edition. (Pirated copy) (Quantity: 1)

Payment Required: 451 Denarius

I nearly scrubbed my hair in frustration, except the helmet was in the way. "Anyone know what a Denarius is? Some kind of gem? Journey?"

Cathida crackled over my comms. "Not a clue about that deary. Memory banks only got the basics, and whatever Journey saw along the way. Denarius never showed up in that time."

I had asked the mite forge a few dozen more requests, trying to finagle something out of it. Anywhere from asking materials it listed for other requests, to asking it for maps or locations of said resources. Sometimes it gave me cyclical answers. If I wanted to have it create a 'woven basket of nanofibers' then it wanted a third era flatscreen television, complete with a bunch of serial numbers too because any general television screen wasn't good enough. And to make a flatscreen television, it wanted a basket of nanofibers. At that point, I was mostly certain it was having a good ol 'giggle at my expense.

And it wasn't me as the factor the mites were picking on.

When Arcbound requested for a new armor, it similarly gave him the runaround. Which left us stuck a bit. Mite forge didn't want to cooperate, no new relic armor for the wandering spirit to take over.

Until we realized we did have one armor that didn't have any spirit already inhabiting it. The ruins of the armor Father used to fight against Avalis. It had done its job, and been built specifically with no existing artificial soul. So that's what we rolled with, leaving the mite forge behind.

Wrath brought the empty armor back with us, past the whirlpool where she laid it down, fixing parts of it using the gathered power cells and materials. Had those in spades, given the destruction the temple team had caused. If only the mite forge had wanted a few dozen of these, life would be great.

While the operation on Arcbound's new armor was in progress, Icestride and kidra were deep in discussion on the best way forward with Father's new shell.

"We'll need to do something about your appearance, Tenisent." Icestride noted, forced to look up to meet Father's gaze. "Or simply keep your actual identity under wraps, and be officially recognized as a new member brought in by Kidra."

Kind of hard to hide the giant walking around. Or the girl with wings. Assuming they can fix the vampire tone skin and white hair. Red eyes only made that entire problem worse.

"The girl was able to modify parts of herself to blend in with humans. I can do the same." He answered back, voice still adjusting. "It will be handled." Father's command over the stolen Feather shell was improving by the minute, now he focused purely on the polish. Facial emotions, sound, combat algorithms, controlling godsdamned nano swarms inside letting him create anything he wanted, and all that good stuff I wasn't envious about in the slightest.

In this case, it was Wrath's turn to be smug about something. She'd learned from Father originally, and now she's in charge of teaching him how to Feather. The tech stuff was harder on him, but everything that involved moving the shell was near perfect already.

"I've completed repairs on the soul fractal." Wrath reported, standing up from the limp armor before her. "Systems within seem to be functional, only dormant. We can attempt the transfer over. As I understand, human souls don't need a medium in order to travel from fractal to fractal?"

Icestride gave a quick nod to both Wrath and Lorri, who'd been holding onto Acrbound's cut off soul fractal. Small thing in her hands, about as big as all the other armor scraps we'd recovered. She approached the hollow armor, knelt down next to Wrath and drew her hand near the chestplate.

The suit remained motionless for a moment, before twitching and rising up like a comatose patient waking back to life, so I assume the transfer worked out. A hand flexed testing balance. Voice crackled. "Movement works. Voice too." He said, fully standing back up in the feral Winterscar armor. "Reckon I'll have to do something with all this red. My House won't be happy to be involved in that shitstorm happening in the north end of the clan."

Father turned to the knight. "Keep the armor, Arcbound. Your House will have need of it far more than mine."

He laughed at that. "I reckon you do happen to have a clan's worth of armors already, along with a warlock of your own. And now two Feathers to the tally. Atius will have a migraine. Clan lords were supposed to keep the balance from spiraling out of control like this over years. He pretends to die for a few weeks and all the freeze melts."

"Politics will be dealt with inevitably." Father said, eyes panning over to us. "If not by myself, then by someone more suited for the role."

"Unfortunately, there's very little we can do to realign the clan." Kidra said, taking the cue, pointing at Wrath and Father.

"That's the understatement of century." One of the Stormsweepers chuckled. "Appeasing the Houses is going to be a full time job. I both envy and don't envy you lot. The baths are going to be utter chaos, that's for sure. Going to need to avoid those when Winterscars are around."

"We may be best served by claiming these two as Deathless passing by." Kidra said, quickly thinking through possible solutions. "It would explain Wrath's wings at the very least. Their speed and strength in combat will inevitably be discovered as well by the greater whole."

"Why stop at only that, Winterscar?" Ankah said from her post. "Claim these new Deathless have powers that grant speed and dexterity unto others. After all, you were sent to Capra'nor to return with help. It's well within bounds of running into Deathless that were friendly to our pleas."

That… was a pretty good idea. With two 'Deathless' running around, all the elite knights could make use of the Winterblossom technique and claim it was a supporting occult spell cast by the two newcomers. Them staying at the Winterscar compounds could be further explained with Kidra having been the one to recruit them for the clan.

"House Shadowsong is okay with giving us Winterscars a free cell like that?" I asked, a little surprised she'd just toss us a solid like that.

Ankah scoffed. "Of course not. However, I am no dimwit. Needs must as needs go, the clan's well being goes above all."

Icestride nodded. "We can discuss the possible methods and options we've got on the path home. With Arcbound back up and moving, we have no further reason to remain here." He looked up, past the ceiling of the temple. Further off to the surface.

"It's time we return."

Next chapter - Hiding the tracks

Book 5 - Chapter 2 - Hiding the tracks

"Elaborate." Kidra said, grilling a half filet of fish over the communal campfire a few steps outside our cavern. Lack of spices to cook with was a bummer, but fish was fish. Rest of the knights were either taking a nap deeper into the cave here, or patrolling the area for any signs of hostility.

"See, way I see it, if Father could take over a Feather's shell - then what's to say the rest of our knights can't do the same thing?"

She gave me a blank look, then frowned and considered the proposition further. "Father's willpower is second to none." Kidra eventually said. "I would know, we've spoken in depth about his experiences in Wrath's 'jail' fractal."

I took another bite out of my own fish, chewing through. "But what if that's a trained skill? What if Father can teach other knights how to improve their mental willpower? Enough to overwhelm an enemy Feather if they get close enough to latch on? It'd be a super weapon against them, even a slippery bastard like Avalis couldn't go invulnerable against the occult. And we get a free Feather shell in the process."

Could even have a graduating test, like being tossed into Wrath's jail cell soul fractal variant and having to break free from that. If they could do it, they're ready to steal a Feather.

"And your thoughts on all this are?" Kidra said, turning to look at Father. "I know you can hear us from here. Or are you simply letting us discuss at our leisure?"

"It's not possible." Father said with a half grunt, leaned back against a cave wall, eyes closed. Wrath was out there, flying around and playing hide and seek with him. As in, he'd be forced to use his active sensors to pick up where she's flying around from a distance. Humans don't come with a built in scanner, so Father had to learn how to use it like any other skill.

That didn't mean he wasn't taking breaks every now and then to meditate and digest what he's learned. "When I fought against Avalis within his soul fractal, it was a losing battle for me." He said. "Connected to his soul, I saw into his thoughts. I could see the calculations and plans within. Humans had used soul fractals in the past, and rediscovered such things periodically over the eons. Soul to soul combat isn't new to machines."

That got Kidra and I quiet.

"How did you win then?" Icestride asked, arms crossed and half dozing off. Or had been dozing off.

"Surprise." Father gave a shrug. "Avalis had never encountered another human using a soul fractal in his short lifespan. And neither had his older peers. The empire had been the last bastion of humanity that made use of the fractal, and once they had been cut down to the last, the machines never had to fight within souls again."

Father rose from his side of the cave and took a few steps into the campfire light, hand reaching for one of the skewers left further off the side of the fire. It had been slow cooking for some time, though I think a Feather's shell could eat anything it wanted, undercooked or not.

He took a bite, testing out his taste buds. Wrath had been pretty adamant about him modifying that first, big surprise. He hadn't been thrilled to work on that first, but that wasn't going to stop Wrath from being Wrath. The rest of his skin was back to his usual color, making him look human. Even the white hair had been dyed back to black. Hadn't been too much of a process, Avalis's armor wasn't actually armor at all. It was more like an exoskeleton, there was nothing under it and no way to take it off.

So his head had been the only thing he needed to work on. Because trying to recreate an entire normal body was a little too complicated to work with for now.

"Avalis had no experience fighting against a soul directly." He said. "The first blows were the strongest and most damaging. He was no fool however. He knew he lacked the experience, and so reached out to download everything machines had learned in their old fights. Near the end of the fight, I was stretched to my limits in both surviving within and holding his shell still long enough for you to execute the deathblow."

"Ah." Well, that crushed some hopes.

Father shrugged again. "If a Feather is stripped of enough defenses, and a coordinated attack happens, it may be possible. I would not discount it, only remain cautious. With forewarning, there would be little chance of victory."

"And now he's floating around somewhere else telling the rest of his friends to beware soul attacks, making it even harder on us."

Father paused, eyes opening up before turning to me. "That may not be the case. I saw who he was. A coward terrified of death. You've noticed he is no regular Feather, nor behaves like the ones you've met. Too defensive. Too cautious. Relinquished knows this too and passively loathes him for it, that was made clear to me. He was a mistake she didn't care enough to fix. Should his shell be destroyed, she'll have enough excuse to snuff him out. He will writhe like a worm and find a way to survive."

"You suspect he hasn't told anyone of his loss?" Icestride asked, equally curious. "Seems suboptimal. It would lead any of his subordinates into danger, if they didn't know what to expect against our knights."

"You assume he operates with morality as we do." Father said. "He does not. Subordinates are tools to be used. He may alert them out of self-interest. Avoid more difficult future fights for himself. That will be judged against broadcasting the loss of his shell."

"What's he going to do to get a new shell though?" I asked. "Can't have another made if he never tells Relinquished he's lost his old one."

"A Feather's shell isn't the only shell a machine could inhabit." Kidra said. "Were I in his suit, I would opt to take over something of suitable power."

"He knows what he's up against." Icestride said, shuffling over to the campfire and sitting down before the flames. He looked quite old with his helmet off, white hair and wrinkles slowly adding on the years. "Resource wise, we hold a massive advantage. Relic knights capable of holding against Feathers, weapons that can destroy them in a single hit, occult powers for each of us, and now two Feathers of our own in our ranks. An army of machines won't be enough. Unless he recruits more Feathers, outright contesting us in strength is a losing tactic."

Father grunted. "Stealth it will be then. We will need to be vigilant against the dagger in the dark."

Icestride nodded. "Rather, with the newfound power we have, we should consider snowballing our power base further." He grinned with a familiar smile of a schemer. The old wrinkles made me think of Anarii, happily plotting something.

"What kind of snowballing are we talking about?" I asked, curious.

"For one, if machine armies are having a hard time contesting against us, imagine how a raider stronghold would fare? Poorly. Instead of waiting for their attack, we could eliminate them at their strongholds. Wipe them out, and then dig down to rip out their roots. Remove the raider threat for a good few decades in our area."

"I suspect you have other ideas, past the raiders." Kidra said, setting a cleared off skewer off to the discard pile.

"Correct young lady." Icestride said. "Why stop at Raiders? Relic armors aren't expensive to procure, Undersiders wouldn't have so many if the forges refused to work with humans. What makes armors expensive, is that Undersiders need to muster up a full army in order to assault and clear off machines guarding mite forges. From there they'll only hold the forge for a few days, where they'll try to obtain as many armors and gear as possible before being forced off the point."

"And we can contest a machine army up here near indefinitely." I said, considering the possibilities.

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves with greed." Icestride. "I doubt we'll hold indefinitely. Eventually, the machines will call for greater and greater units, leading to new Feathers appearing. This is all assuming we can cover Tenisent and Wrath with relic armor of their own to hide away their true origin. Being attacked by wanted Feathers would likely stir their true forces immediately."

We'd need to work the plan a bit more than that, have logistics setup, and all that paperwork. But I could see the general plot in Icestride's head. With what we had, we could seriously hit forges all over the map and start bringing out more knights. The clan had hundreds of trained House soldiers like Sagrius, who had all the skills to be a knight but no armor to equip in his smaller house.

But if all those knights had relic armor of their own? We might even have enough relic knights to move the clan underground if we find a pillar heart. Lord Atius absolutely wouldn't let leverage like this go to waste.

Dust and dirt flew off in a circle on the ground nearby as Wrath landed with a single wing beat. Those metal feathers folded up into a skirt as she stood back up, watching the assembled group.

"Lady Wrath," Icestride said, bowing his head slightly in respect. "How was the training session?"

"Complete." Wrath said. "Tenisent shows adequate use of his shell's features. We will need to discuss allowing smaller algorithms and subroutines to run background tasks instead of overtaxing his mind. He seems particularly antagonistic to that idea."

Father scoffed. "This shell must be tamed. It is still enemy territory I cannot trust to operate without my direct supervision. Lack of control is unacceptable."

"Low level algorithms are non-sentient, they operate as narrow AI that only perform the task assigned. Your concerns are unfounded."

The only answer she got from Father was a grunt, and silent stare. That usually meant he was done talking about the subject and wasn't going to change his mind. Wrath sighed, clearly having alos learned the same thing at some point. Instead of continuing any kind of debate, she turned and took few steps to sit down next to me.

"He's a stubborn asshole, eh?" I said, passing her a skewer. She'd been eyeing those since she landed, but was too polite to eat first and talk later. Didn't stop her from eating the fish in two bites with happy munching noises and a short nod.

"Wrath." Father said, to which she looked up and frowned.

"Eating smaller bites is suboptimal." She immediately said, mouth still half full.

He rolled his eyes with a scoff, "The unity fractal, Avalis has it inside his chassis. We need to cut it out while it remains dormant. Should Relinquished connect to this shell and find a human soul within, she will react."

Wrath shook her head at that, hand reaching out for another skewer. "Impossible. The soul fractal variant within your chassis is made to connect to four other fractals. Each fractal it is merged with becomes part of the whole. To disrupt the unity fractal's pattern, will also disrupt your own central soul fractal."

"I am well aware of this." Father said. All of us were at this point, we had time to examine the fractal at the center heart. The very concept was all tied together. Made sense why Feathers couldn't change their loadout once picked. The moment a fractal is fused into their hearts, it becomes permanent.

Effectively, all Feathers had only three possible abilities, since the unity fractal was already fused within as a default.

"If you are aware of the limits, then you understand you will need to do the same as I do - keep the fractal at a distance, avoid activating it, and make sure your intrusion defenses are prepared to isolate your soul fractal with the rest of your shell in case Relinquished arrives to investigate. Until we contact Tsuya and discover how she removed the protofeather's own shackles, we have few options."

"You have few options." Father grunted. "I have more."

Wrath tilted her head to the side, clearly confused.

"I am not shackled to this single soul fractal like you are." Father said, lifting a hand up. A fractal on the palm glowed and flame lit up above. "And I have no need for a soul fractal that can connect me directly to other fractals, I can do it myself."

"Oh." Wrath said. "That… is true. I had not considered the differences. Then… does that mean you intend to relocate outside the soul fractal? How will you control the shell without direct connections?"

"You will help with this." He said. "I need a new soul fractal crafted and connected to this shell in the same way the original fractal is expected to be. Then, I will move and destroy the base fractal."

Wrath nodded, humming. "That plan seems sound in theory. But you will lose access to Avalis's current abilities. Merging fractals with the variant changes the fractal being merged slightly on the connection point. Recreating it won't be the exact original fractal."

And Relinquished hadn't allowed any of her Feathers permanent access to the machine archives on fractals. She wasn't dumb enough to leave a repository of data in a frame that could theoretically be hacked. So the only fractals we had access to were the ones we'd discovered ourselves.

"I've been pondering this since we've left the Temple. A temporary loss of abilities in exchange for eliminating anything that could compromise this shell is a worthwhile trade." Father said, "Do it."

The operation sounded dangerous, but ultimately ended up being pretty trivial. We used occult blades to cut into Father's stolen chassis, until we could see the soul fractal at the center under his throat. From there, Wrath made another plate, filled with connections and circuitry under it.

To make sure the shell didn't do anything weird while we disconnected Father from it, we had all the power cells removed, basically forcing it to shutdown completely. Only then did we disconnect the original soul fractal and lift it out.

Father was still well alive there, since the plate has its own backup power self-contained inside. Wrath connected the new empty soul fractal back where Avalis's old one had been, and turned on the backup power within. Father simply shot a soul tendril into the new fractal and flowed into the new home. Wrath couldn't see any of that, only someone with soul sight could.

"Is it done?" She asked, looking at me for confirmation.

"Yep." I said, knocking on the new plate inside. "He's in there now. You can toss the old plate. Just make sure we take pictures of the whole thing, could come in handy if we figure out how to do some more fancy stuff with occult fractals."

She nodded, lifting the small glowing empty fractal out of the exposed chest cavity. It looked… interesting. I held a hand out for it, out of morbid curiosity. She dropped it down into my palm where I could drag it back to check it out.

As the first power cell was reconnected, Father took command of the shell immediately before it could start moving on its own. From there, all they had to do was patch up the hole made in his chest and he'd be good to go.

The first Feather in centuries to run around free of the unity fractal. That was going to piss off Relinquished the moment she noticed. Rags and a cloak would have to do to cover him up for now, until we could get him out of that fused armor and into a proper relic armor. From there, the machines would have a hard time differentiating him from a strong Deathless.

I took my time checking out Avalis's soul fractal while Wrath and Father worked on patching him back up. I could recognize some of the curves of the Julia set at the center of the plate. But on the bottom left and right the pattern shifted into something completely different. The right one was the unity fractal itself. For something that had Wrath constantly spooked it would wake up, the fractal looked pretty unassuming. Just a bunch of circles and squiggles.

The left side looked vaguely more like a mess of triangles with the edges all tangled up. This one must be what Avalis was using to go intangible. I'd be curious about testing that pattern. Sure, I could see it was changed up to match up with the connecting soul fractal at the center, but I might be able to do something to figure out the missing piece that had been replaced by the connection.

With my curiosity satisfied, I handed the whole thing back to Wrath, who proceeded to crunch it in her hands wordlessly.

The light winked out the moment the pattern bent a slight bit. By the time it had folded up and cracked into smaller pieces, it was long dead and we had one less thing to worry about.

Next chapter - Destress

Book 5 - Chapter 3 - Destress

The return trip home was an outright vacation compared to the pace and speed we'd set to get to the temple a day earlier. The airspeeder up on top wasn't scheduled to be anywhere near our area until the next meetup timezone, so we had time.

Usually, that wouldn't change much. The underground was dangerous. The longer clan knights operated in a sector, the more machines would start to get drawn, hunting down the hiding humans and eventually swarming the entire area. So between kicking a ball around on the surface and singing songs to pass the time, or sulking around hiding from any sound of machine patrols, clan expeditions usually picked the former.

Well, today the machines were the ones hiding from us. Not to mention we could even take full sleeping schedules since Wrath didn't actually need to sleep and her active sensors were constant. Father would catch up to that level soon enough, giving us two permanent lookouts.

Not that we actually needed it. Watching Father and Wrath spar was all the evidence we needed to know there wasn't a single thing in this strata that could put any kind of fight against us.

The Winterblossom technique let us go pretty quick, but a Feather could still outspeed us by a healthy margin if they went all out from the start. It wouldn't be an instant loss to a clan knight with sufficient skill, but it would be a losing battle. Now, watching two Feathers spar with no holds barred in terms of speed was something completely different.

"Again." Father said, having somehow kicked Wrath's swords out of her hands. That last bout had lasted about ten seconds of back and forth, before Father outmaneuvered Wrath. To be fair to her, it had started out a lot more even when they first started to spar.

Wrath dutifully nodded, walking over to the tree her sword had embedded itself into and yanking it out, forcing the tree trunk to move slightly against the initial tug. In moments, she assumed her standard position, eyes growing focused again for the next bout.

That one lasted about seven seconds before Father had once again kicked her sword out of her hand, using the same movement, only a different pattern to get there.

"You cannot stop a chain follow-up from Ox position if my off hand is free to intercept your counter. Always have eyes on my off hand." He said. "Again."

All her advantages evaporated once Father really got the hang of speeding up his internal clock, and later began to experiment with new movements only a Feather's shell could be fast and strong enough to do. Armor was great, but it was still a large chunk of metal plating, some acrobatics weren't quite as smooth or easy to pull off.

"Journey, replay that last bit at one fourth speed." I asked, to which the armor complied with a small screen appearing on the top right corner, going over the recording in slower motion. At this speed I could actually both see and digest what was going on. Seven seconds was a short bout time, but these two could fit in just about any amount of fights and dodges. At full speed, it looked far more like two pipe snakes constantly striking out. Fast movements that I could recognize, but only after I stopped to think about what happened.

Once Father started narrowing down new attack and defense patterns, it was over for Wrath's advantages. She tried to keep up, even going over it with Kidra in slow motion over lunches, debating possible methods of countering the attacks.

Made sense to me.

They were both obsessive dueling fanatics, who clearly saw each other as equal rivals. And yet both had this stubborn pride where they considered each other enemies since they'd spent a good month or so in the Undercity constantly fighting on opposite sides. Give them a minute to start talking and they'd be all high and mighty with each other. Give them another five minutes, and they'd be huddled together scheming possible countermovements and having animated debates about the pro's and con's of executing certain movements.

At least until someone walked up to them, and they remembered they were supposed to be standoffish against one another.

"Don't think I'll get used to that speed anytime soon." I muttered, watching the replay again while Wrath sulked through the trees to fish out her sword again.

"Peh." Cathida answered. "Add a good tripwire or some trap and stab them when they're on the ground at that point."

"We really should sit down and figure this whole 'kill all machines' mentality you got, might not be mentally healthy you know?"

"I'm dead." She snarked back. "About as healthy as you can get if you ask me, deary. You should try out being a disembodied ghost sometime, skin will positively glow. And the wrinkles, goddess why, they're all gone!" She paused. "Journey recommends you don't, but it's a stick in the mud."

"You realize you're calling yourself a stick in the mud right?"

"Don't I know it." She said. "But that's how the old bat would have handled it, so that's how I do too."

She'd been… odd about Father. On one hand, the crusader's echo would have appreciated and respected his combat ability alone. That he went out and stole a Feather would have been admirable.

On the other hand, that was a Feather, and machines were all cursed spawn of the violet devil, tainting anyone's soul by association. "You figured out what side of the coin you fall on yet?" I asked. "We've had a good day for all this to sink in so far."

"Hold a squire by their cuff, even I'm having a hard time calculating if the old bat would have changed opinions for this. The silver bimbo she'd have hated on principle, but secretly tolerated. Not tolerant enough to avoid using some of her more choice words around of course. Good heavens, some things must be respected. But she wouldn't actually stab her in the night. Only threatened to, for appearances."

"As one would do." I drooled out, watching as Wrath discussed with Kidra in low voices. Father could, of course, overhear it all given his newfound hearing abilities. But the old man was meditating in position and leaving Wrath to debate her next attempts in peace.

Kidra gave a final nod, agreeing with whatever conclusion they'd come up with and Wrath turned back to point a blade at Father, demanding another training bout. She lasted eleven seconds this time before the sword was slapped out of her grip. She'd managed to avoid the kick, but not the follow-up hand.

"Your old man is far too outside bounds Journey can accurately predict." Cathida said. "Stealing a Feather's shell is just ludicrous. Cathida would have been far too conflicted about the whole thing."

"Well, if you can't pick snow over ice, how about we decide she'd have approved of the change and leave it at that?"

She cackled, "You sneaky little git, you think I'd simply listen to anyone and agree with them?"

"Well. The old bat wouldn't. But you're not exactly her, now are you? I'm sure you can wiggle the rules around a bit."

"Journey couldn't care less about how a language engram behaves." Cathida verbally shrugged. "Suppose I could bend the rules a bit. It's all a giant gray zone anyhow."

"Does that mean you'll stop being grouchy about Father?"

"Keep asking brat, and I'll show you what grouchy really means." She huffed.

Took that as a yes, and decided to close the topic before Cathida could start to Cathida.

Right on time too, another knight softly sat down next to me. One that has been a bit of an odd topic among the clan knights here.

Fang Arcbound, of House Arcbound. Now free of his old armor, and wearing Father's feral version. Loose definition of wearing. "I only heard small word about Tenisent's son, truth be told." He said, sitting down. "Don't think I ever got a chance to sit down and talk with you yet. You're quite different from the rumors."

"Oh? I'm curious to see how they paint me these days." I said. "How terrible are we talking about here?"

"More like how they didn't." He turned to watch the fights, helmet silently recording like mine was. "I was serving among the expedition teams, I'd known the old first blade had both a daughter and a son, but no accomplishments to their names yet. Imagine my surprise when you both appear out of nowhere leading the charge with all... well, all this." He said waving a hand. "One moment I'm called back from expedition to prepare for raiders, and the next... here. Feels like a blur to me."

I didn't know how to answer that. Arcbound had died on this expedition, and now he was a walking disembodied spirit puppeteering relic armor. Some change of pace from day to day life.

"We're all an odd bunch, I reckon." He said in the silence, voice having that synthetic quality relic armors have. Under that faceless helmet was absolutely nothing at all. No one inside, just walking armor. Eerie to think about.

"The start of a punchline joke." I answered. "Two Feathers, a wannabe warlock in possessed armor, an actual possessed armor, and the most dangerous group of knights in the world walk into the canteen."

"Oh, I've been thinking about that one already." He said, helmet turning back to me. "Everyone orders, barkeep goes to each but stops at the armor and says 'Sorry, we don't serve spirits here.'" He cackled. Cathida cackled with him.

I guess the laugh was contagious as I ended up also chuckling along. "Glad to see you're adjusting to the new out of body experience."

"Afterlife's not what they said it'd be, admittedly." He tutted, tapping his dagger a few times. "For one, I think taking a bath will be a little awkward. I'm afraid I'd rust in peace."

"Please just kill me the normal way," I sighed. "You don't need to torture me like this."

"But I'm supposed to haunt people now." He huffed, elbow knocking into my side a few times. "Just doing my job kiddo, no need to lose your head about it. Trust me, that's not all it's cracked up to be."

"Oh, see now there's one I don't have to run any weird calculations on." Cathida said, proud. "Kindred spirit there. The old bat would have been friends with you in a heartbeat."

"Don't know about that. Might take a while for me." Arcbound said, tapping his chest where a heart should have been. He chuckled again, then his voice went more somber. "I'll miss eating. And sensations. That, I can already tell. Deathless live forever, but they do have far more to enjoy out of life. And some still go mad after long enough. I know I will need to be vigilant and adapt."

It was a morbid thought. "Maybe not forever." I said. "Father has a Feather's body, and it might not happen again that we'd get another Feather for you to possess. But that doesn't mean you're only stuck to the armor. We might get the mites to create something similar to a Feather, enough to regain your senses."

Icestride walked into our group and sat down next to me, clearly having overheard the topic. "We do have that on our to-do list. Visiting mite forges and getting all we can for the clan. The Winterscar whelp speaks right about it, Arcbound. Your current state of being is likely temporary."

The knight in question nodded. "I had no complaints in the first place, leader. I am a knight retainer, I was trained for exactly this. Duty and purpose is enough."

Icestride watched with old eyes. Then nodded slowly. "I suppose it would be for us all. And yet still, it is the clan's duty to attend to the knight retainers in turn. Lord Atius will make it a priority to take care of you, of that I am sure."

"If there is anyone who knows how to stay sane against the passage of time, it would be the clan lord." Arcbound nodded. "I'm sure he will teach me a few things. Besides, I wasn't exactly young when I died. No, I think insanity will have to wait a few decades before it tries something on me."

"By then, I'm sure we'd have figured something out." I said. "Besides, as a wandering soul you could also go into the digital sea. Wrath might be able to have a sanctuary made where you can still feel things again."

He laughed, "I remember the training sessions in that realm. Rather lifelike, pain and all. I wonder if it's all in the mind or something more fundamental."

"Life's certainly going to take a turn for the strange going forward." I said, kicking back against the trunk of my tree and watching the fight ahead.

"Your House is about to run into as much turmoil as I'm in." Arcbound said. "Not sure how I feel about it myself, and I'm tied with all the events 'bout as close as could be. Your house has a reputation, even folks in my House knew to steer clear of Winterscars. Although I hear your sister's efforts have brought much needed discipline in the new generation. At least, that was the word on the catways before we left."

"I'm sure a lot of houses breathed a sigh of relief when my house vanished in an afternoon." I said.

He was polite and looked away, staying quiet.

"You don't need to be all stiff with me." I said. "I was among the group taking a few drinks and toasting the Winterscars to whatever frozen afterlife they'd go off too. At least once the shock wore off. The only redeeming thing they ever done was stand their ground at the very end. I'm dead serious about that."

That got a turn from him, looking from that helmet with almost curiosity. "You must have had some childhood to speak of their end this way. Color me surprised, I thought your Father's reputation would have shielded you from the worst inside your house. Only got House gossip to go on though, so that seems flawed."

Icestride gave a dark chuckle. "You forget, Tenisent was hardly who he is now in those days. You were a contender for your House's armor back then, but I was already deep in service. I knew Tenisent when he was the first blade, knew him when he turned into a recluse, and knew him as the reformed man returned. Reality is different from gossip, and young Keith here would know truth from fiction. I'd trust his word over aimless gossip."

"Reality was different." I shrugged. "I got by mostly by being too small to be worth picking on. But, Kidra's in charge now and all the syncopaths are gone and dead. Only ones left are people I'd trust my life to. Have trusted my life to already." I gave a nod to the Winterscar knights further off practicing in their own bouts.

Arcbound stayed quiet at that, pondering.

The duel ahead of us ended again with Wrath having to sulk away and fetch her blade. This time, Kidra took the plate up and tried to duel with Father. He went markedly slower against her, although it was still stupidly fast in my eyes. Still won in just about ten seconds.

"Your mistake is relying on the occult sight too much." He muttered. "Concepts of movements you know the names to will be obvious to you. Not so much movements that have no name or nature, or movements you are unaware exist."

Kidra nodded wordlessly, taking the usual bow of a defeated foe before going off to search for her blade. She passed by Wrath and the two gave each other cold cordial glares.

"See that?" Cathida said, "I'm not the only one who's pretending to dislike the toaster. So you can get off my case, ye head-over-heels besotted henchman."

"Henchmen?" I said, giving some good fake hurt. "I'd say more... collaborator, or associate."

"Deary, please jump off a cliff when you get a chance." Cathida said, then paused. "Journey also says hi."

I didn't believe that for a second. "You mean it's trying to make it clear not to take that suggestion literally."

"Same thing." Cathida huffed. "It does know you have a history with cliffs, little panicking thing that it is. I'm sure the silver bimbo would love a chance to rescue you again though."

Wrath looked up at that, frowning. Kidra was still taking her turn with Father, so she'd been waiting for her turn up next. Clearly also eavesdropping on us.

"Oh, it seems I pricked a nerve there." Cathida gleefully said. "Since I have your att- wait, wait, wait! Just let me have a little fu-"

And… muted.

Wrath was about to say something back, except her attention was taken over by Father simply drawing his blade up and starting the duel the moment Kidra had been eliminated. In a fight, failing to pay attention was failing to survive. She still gave a squawk of surprise as he dove right into her defense, so perhaps she'd paid a little too much attention elsewhere.

The camp was already starting to pack up for the day. No signs of machines anywhere as usual, they were avoiding us like the plague now. Didn't know if I should be wary of that, or happy.

But at this rate, we'd be back up on the surface right around the expected arrival window. On time, and without complications. For once, I think the complications were not going to be caused by murderous machines running amok underground.

But until then, I'm going to kick back and eat fish each day until I'm tweedling my thumbs on the surface waiting for the lift back home. Walking around with the bigger stick really did have its perks.

Next chapter - A strange ride home

Book 5 - Chapter 4 - A strange ride home

Surface scavengers usually stashed goods and other items within evo-tents, for easier access during longer expeditions by a settled site.

Grab enough food to last for a good few days, drag it back to your tent, and never have to deal with a lunch rush at the airspeeder during work.

Clan knights on expeditions underground did something similar for long range expeditions, when they'd be expected to return to the surface and wait for a lift back home. The range of time could be anywhere from a day, or up to a week if they got unlucky and missed the return window.

So one thing airspeeders brought on the trip was a supply of food and general gear to leave behind near the drop off location. Wouldn't be left out on the open wastes of course, bad idea that. Instead, the supply depot would be left a little bit further underground, enough that the temperature wouldn't make a mess of things while we were away.

We'd gotten to the depot, and found it had been tidied up for us.

"Looks like the clan knights dismissed by Lord Atius made it safely up here and were extracted." Icestride said, headlights scouring over the boxes waiting in the dark. "Only two crates used up, must have arrived in good time."

Given the camp's empty, I think they got their lift.

"Word of our own split mission would have been passed on to the airspeeder crew picking them up." Icestride hummed.

Ankah strode over to some of the covered crates, shimmering sheets reflecting her headlight beams. She took those off in one yank, then wiped off rime from the metal surface of the crates under.

More lights entered the chamber, headlights and chestlights bringing further life into the silent room.

Clearly the returning clan knights decided they weren't content with waiting around, given the stacks of power cells laying around in triangular piles. "They certainly kept themselves busy." I muttered, counting up the goods recovered. That must have been at least two or three Screamer packs all put together.

Hunting down machines for power cells was a high risk, high reward effort. Undersiders did so, but only with an entire field of expertise, gear and outposts to do so from. They were far more equipped and skilled in that. Clan knights went after machines only when it was dire, or so the primers I'd read from Ironreach claimed.

Today, the hardest part of getting power cells from machines would be finding the bastards and dragging them out feet first from whatever bed they're hiding under. Something the past knights clearly had little trouble doing from the amount of cells stacked up around the area.

Feels good to be the biggest fish in the lake.

Icestride laughed, the old man walking over to one pile and taking a closer look. "Clearly they found playing cards or kicking a ball around to be a little less fun. Suppose we can't blame them too much for it, it's likely good practice and sport now instead of anything dangerous."

"Heaters intact." A Winterscar knight said, unloading the stored equipment. "Four left behind, three more than your group came with."

"I see they got the airspeeder to donate extras." Icestride said, headlights turning to light up the section. "And with this many power cells laying around, it seems we'll be comfortable for the next few days."

We were close enough to the surface that water would freeze, but still habitable enough to take off helmets for a good few hours without any pain. At this level, machines wouldn't be usually spotted around which made it a good enough space to wait out return. Still too deep for comms signals to go through from down here to the surface though.

I made my way to one of the marked crates, cracking the ice around to open it up. The thermal sheetings inside were left properly folded up. These were supposed to be raised up in a larger tent so that the interior could be warmed up. But given we had four entire heaters in the depot… "Could probably cover the south and north entrances with these and just heat the entire area." I said. "We've got enough power cells to last, and if we need more they're not as hard to find anymore."

Icestride nodded, "You heard the lad, let's get these sheets affixed and the heaters running. I want this camp setup within the hour."

The rest of our group entered the small chamber here, dragging the hoversleds behind, driving them over to the edges and turning them off. Larger spotlights were turned on one after another, flooding the area with white artificial light.

Up ahead, the tunnel would lead to the surface. It remained dark, light from the surface still too far away to reach. Too many turns still left. Icestride took off his helmet and watched into the gloom with clear eyes, contemplating something. "Arcbound, go up and plant the green flag and power up the destination signal." He said absentmindedly, turning his attention back to the camp.

The armor nodded, cracking open another box with green sigils on the side. Inside he unraveled a few packs, then took off down the tunnel. Once he'd reached the surface, he'd unfold the flag and set the signal repeater down. The flag was mostly cosmetic, the airspeeder crew already knew where the depot was and how to get here. The signal repeater would be what alerted the airspeeder we were waiting for extraction.

The airspeeder was supposed to land nearby and send a scavenger crew to setup shop just outside the entrance to the underground. They'd stay there for a good day or two before packing up and going home to resupply and try again next week.

If there was a flag and repeater down, then the crew would wait for a passing patrol from the depot crew to come up and establish contact. Under no circumstances were scavengers in evo-suits supposed to venture down underground, that was the domain of knights. Even if it slowed down contact by a few hours, absolute safety was more important to the clan than saving time. If the knights didn't come up in any reasonable timeframe, the airspeeder would return home and bring back Atius or other clan knights to verify what happened.

No idea if that situation ever actually happened though. By the times knights were waiting near the surface, they were usually already at the end of the journey.

Wrath walked opposite to the crates, opening up crates to take inventory on what was inside. Eyes shifting around, searching.

"Rations and food are in the brown marked crates, the one with the grain sigil." I said, pointing out the crates off to the side.

She looked up with a guilty look before schooling it back up, and nodding cordially. "I was only examining what items surface clans value, mere curiosity."

"Sure. Yep. I have no doubts about that whatsoever." I said, watching as she closed the equipment crate and began meandering towards the food supplies. With a snap hiss, my helmet seal came free and I popped the whole thing up and off. Cold air welcomed me home.

Kidra opened up one of those food crates and fished up a few packets, tossing them at the Feather. "I suppose a few rations gone will not make any great difference to our line. Although, it will not be as interesting as you might believe. These rations are made to maximize calories and nutrients, not taste."

Wrath caught it easily, lifting the ration up to eye level and taking a more critical look. "Low-density polyethylene wrapping, vacuum seal around a plant fiber and insect protein mix. A fascinating difference from the Undersider staples."

"The plastic isn't eaten." Kidra warned, taking her helmet off and unzipping one of the bars, letting air squeeze back into the bag. "If you have the time, these may be rehydrated and grilled over a fire, assuming ventilation is available." Inside the open wrapper was a perfectly stored freeze-dried ration, probably made years ago and only seeing the light of day for the first time. In a manner of speaking. "Some scavengers will add spices and other seasoning if they happen to have some on hand. However there is no issue with wrapping frostbloom around and eating as is."

"Don't forget to fold up the wrapper once you're done for reuse. Logi are pretty strict about that. Wrappings are the most expensive part of the whole thing." I said, hand outstretched for one. "Also tends to be really flakey. Frostbloom can keep the whole thing together."

Kidra tossed a bag my way and I demonstrated how to eat it. Yank some frostbloom growing off a corner, wrap it around a segment, snap it off and down it goes. "Tastes just as bland as I remember." I said, munching through. "Think the undersider food and fish spoiled me."

Wrath had no such issues, following my motions and simply eating the bar in one bite. She munched, pondering on the food before swallowing. "An interesting flavor. I find it tasty."

"You would eat anything set in front of you, girl." Father scoffed, walking past. "I thank the gods I no longer need food like this ever again."

"Why not bring more conventional food rations with you if such food is as unpalatable to your tastes?" She asked, licking her fingers for any trace leftovers.

"Because anything wet left out here becomes a solid chunk." Icestride chuckled, "Bring a sandwich and you'll have to nurse it for a good ten minutes before you're able to bite down a corner. Rations are made to be consumed quickly and with no fuss."

Well, might not exactly be a problem for Wrath. I've seen her eat a fork before as if it were part of the meal. Food frozen solid would probably be classified 'crunchy' to her.

Four heaters were unpacked, turned on and set around the cavern. Sheets were draped over the entrances, cutting off ways for heat to escape other than through the walls themselves. What we had was more than capable of heating the entire area within a half hour and keeping up with the entropy loss.

With camp set, it was time to sit down and wait for our ride to come. The airspeeder crew left behind a deck of cards and a few other goodies to work with, though most of the knights preferred to spar or meditate on their experiences up till now.

Wrath was not good at cards. Excellent at counting them, the little cheater, but terrible when it came to the bluff part of the game. She first tried to play normally at first, but her features always gave away what she had in hand once we got her patterns down.

Next, she tried freezing her features completely, which stopped us from figuring her out. But also stopped her from baiting any plays.

A few hours later, and it was officially night.

"Comms request." Cathida said, voice sounding annoyed. "It's your metal friend again."

"Which one?" I asked, groggy. HUD timer showed I'd gotten four hours of sleep.

"The idea that you even have to ask that fills me with great regret and anger. Kids these days, running around with the enemy. Peh."

"Cathida. Just tell me who's contacting me. Wrath? Did she go out on a patrol or something?" I gave a look around camp and found she wasn't there. Neither was Father. Some of the other usual suspects were hanging around, some asleep, others keeping guard.

"Silver tits went out with Tenisent for sparring. Not a lot of room here when they move at mach one."

One thing I'd noticed is after my talk with Cathida, she'd talk about Father using his actual name. Unlike Wrath. "All right, so if it's not them, who's sending a comms signal?"

"It's that coward with the boat. What's his name? Abrasshole? A-bitch? A'Toaster?"

Ah. That metal friend. The one who's working for the mites following around behind like a ghost.

"Patch me through to him. He's probably got something important to tell me if he's calling me up." I said, taking a few coughs to clear my throat.

She scoffed, but did as ordered, the channel turning to open. The static filled in, but nothing else came.

"Abraxas? You called?"

"You survived." He said, voice just warped and weird as I remembered it.

"What are you talking about? I'm a figment of your imagination."

"Humor. As crude as remembered. And irrelevant. I came to warn. And demand debts paid."

"Hold on one moment," I said. "You can't just start like that, one thing at a time. Warn of what? If it's Avalis, I'm aware he's hanging around us now. Not quite what it looks like, we're bit more buddies against Relinquished than past experiences. Well, not the real Avalis at least if he's still alive out there. But his shell is being put to good use."

"I am not stupid." The voice answered. "You would be dead. A hundred times, if shell not tamed. Warning remains, and doubled - Hide Feathers. Wrap them up. Danger beyond all you know if spotted on surface. Equally remember, you owe me."

"The keypoint here is that they can't be seen on the surface? Or they can't actually be on the surface? Because there's a giant difference between the two."

"Seen. Relinquished blind by surface. If she sees, she sees surface like another strata. Another grand mite creation, another secret they hide somewhere in world. The geass is strong. Strong to last millenia. But only strong, not perfect. Feathers not good enough to break. More needed. More guarded against. That danger."

Ah. It's not Relinquished he's worried about. Makes sense, even with her fractal scrapshit, Tsuya was aware it existed back then and must have planned around it. At least, I hope. A strong plan needs to be a flexible one. So if it's not Relinquished, then the danger must be Tsuya's cleaner, the part that makes sure whatever the geass couldn't handle never made it to her attention. Whatever she uses to purge things off the surface.

"Can we… stuff them in boxes? Or would cloth rags work to hide them?" I asked. Sometimes the simple solutions work out best. Why come up with some convoluted plot to keep them underground if I could just stuff Wrath in a box? A sack could also work, for nostalgia reasons.

The voice paused, thinking. "Rags… possible. Layer thick. No part exposed. Metal box foolproof enough. Better choice. Go. Mite seeker, do not forget."

Wrath in a sack, round two, here we go.

"Don't worry, you don't need to break my knees or anything." I said, well aware I now had debts left and right. "I'll get that mite seeker. But here's one detail - you didn't set a time limit for me."

"..." I could tell that part rankled him.

"Should have thought about that first, that's on you. I'm on vacation after I wrap up some loose ends on the Otherside."

"Human." Abraxas said flatly. "Pay. Your. Debts."

"I'll go back down eventually with Wrath, don't get your metal butt all tangled over it. You live forever, I don't. If there's anyone who's got a time limit, it's me."

"Agree." He said in the end, clearly unhappy. "Bring mite seeker. Soon. Remember - keep Feathers away from all eyes. If you value life. No survival if seen. Not even you will live."

The line cut, leaving me alone in my helmet, wondering what exactly was out on the surface.

There really is always a bigger fish. I sighed and rolled over, aiming to get a few more hours of sleep.

It turns out he hadn't randomly picked the time to warn me. I could tell he'd waited for both Wrath and Father to be out of earshot, but he'd also noticed something else we hadn't that arrived overnight.

Arcbound came back down the tunnel after his morning check in, getting the whole camp packing up and moving out. Our airspeeder had dropped anchor about three hours before Abraxas called me up. And the crew were waiting for us to poke our heads out.

Everything was by the book, other than the odd early arrival. But there was one small difference from a standard extraction: It was a clan war frigate that'd come to pick us up.

And they were armed to the teeth.

Next chapter - The days are numbered

Book 5 - Chapter 5 - The days are numbered

A clan war frigate was a glorified intercept frigate retrofitted with missiles, heavy ordinance cannons, and turrets strong enough to trigger relic armor shields. Along with whatever the clan had in stockpile saved up for the day ice melted.

As the name implied, it was deployed during times of war, when the clan would go into a full brawl against a large scale threat. Usually Othersiders encroaching too close to the clan's habitat.

The airspeeder wore the colors of Clan Altosk with pride, the cloth well affixed onto the sides of the frigate. Under it, scavengers were busy loading up gear and boxes the rest of the knights were bringing back up from our camp.

"So mind telling me when you got all mysterious, kid?" Teed asked, boots raised up on the console, nursing the last of his coffee as the airlock door closed behind me. Of all clan pilots to send out, Teed had either bent a few arms or gotten lucky enough to get assigned.

"Me? No idea what you're talking about, I'm not holding onto a few dozen secrets or anything." I said, walking in and taking a seat in the co-pilot's empty chair. "Crazy talk."

"Sure. Nothing suspicious. Lord Atius just came back to life a day ago and decided violence is in order, as clan lords normally do."

So. The old Deathless had made it back to the clan without issue. And he hadn't wasted a moment. Teed was a high ranking pilot now, they wouldn't send him on a simple extraction. Nor send a godsdamned war frigate. Not to mention Atius knew everyone being picked up today were some of the more deadly knights out on the surface, but that was a clan secret and Teed wouldn't know anything about that just yet.

Add it all together and… "Taking a wild guess here, but our next pit stop isn't the clan hangars, right?" I asked. Maybe it was less about luck and bent arms and more that Teed's skillsets fit the job the best.

He chuckled, "Not for all the power cells in the world, kid. Direct orders. Pick you up, and make a green line for a raider outposting. Not even one that Shadowsong is currently dismantling either, fresh untouched site raiders are still setting up at. Throw you off my ship so that you can loot, pillage, and destroy everything. Your pick on the order, nobody was specific on that part. Not even stopping for any refuels either, briefing mentioned we'd find a mass stash of power cells down there. That part was true at least." He said, eyes roaming down to the underglass of the cockpit, where we could see hover sleds bringing in the haul.

Somewhere among that haul would be a box with a very cross Feather contemplating her life decisions.

"How'd you get the Undersiders to hand over that many power cells, if you don't mind me askin'? You not trading favors you can't pay back, right? I know that's a Winterscar special, but you're better tha- on second thought, I take that back."

I shrugged. "I'll grudgingly admit you might have me on that. I did make a few promises I'm not super thrilled about. But not for the power cells. We got those from the machines Underground, fair as white."

He whistled, watching the work happen. "Can't say I've ever seen a haul that big in my life. You find heavy ordinance down there? A golden age EMP?"

Walking alongside the hoversleds was a figure wrapped up in heavy evo-suit weaves. Couldn't even tell where his arms and legs were, just a black tinted visor from a rather unsecured looking scavenger helmet.

Teed watched the man walk by to the loading section, frowning. "Wait, wait - wait. The brief didn't mention this fellow, only supposed to pick up a group of knights. Do we have a stowaway trying to just walk into a war frigate?"

His hand hovered over the intercom. I beat him to it, "Nothing to worry about. That one's with us. New teammate you might see for some time."

"... Fine." Teed said, shrugging his shoulders. "Fine. Sure. Doesn't look like anyone else down there is calling up an alarm either. So who's the homeless drifter? Some Undersider bigwig you lot picked up?"

"Something like that."

Teed shot me a sidelong glare, all the while sipping away at his mug. "Come on kid, quit yanking my chain. Who's he really?"

"A Deathless." I said, which got Teed to cough up parts of his coffee before he sat up straight, tapping his chest with a few more coughs.

"Swallowed a drop down the wrong airway," He muttered, giving a few more coughs to clear up his lungs. "How - exactly - did you louts get a Deathless up here?"

"Not just one. Two. You'll see her soon enough."

He stared at me eyes wide, as if asking if I was full of scrap or being real. My only answer was shoving sugar down my mug of coffee and taste checking.

"Starting to make more sense how you managed to get all those power cells. If you had two Deathless running around with you down there."

"Now that haul doesn't look so strange to you, eh?"

He nodded, then looked up to the northern hemisphere. "Two Deathless showing up to the clan. Three gods above white, we live in interesting times."

"You don't know the half of it." I said, holstering my helmet on the side and holding out a hand. He passed over the coffee bottle, still half full and warm to the touch. I got to work with filling up.

"Makes sense the clan lord wanted you all deployed immediately out there." He said. "What kind of strings did you have to pull to get two Deathless to come out here on our side? Was that what Lord Atius was doing down there?"

"Ask Kidra." I said, tossing her all the work. "And got any more sugar?"

"Convenient." He said with a flat tone that let me know I wasn't fooling him for a second while he passed over a small sealed can. He took another sip, watching through the cockpit windows as the crates were being brought up by the crew. We'd brought everything up from the depot, the rest was for the airspeeder crew to organize and 'd be pretty cross with us if we messed with their setup. "And if I asked Kidra, she wouldn't happen to tell me to ask you?"

"Psh, she doesn't get to do that anymore. She's a house Prime, technically she's the authority now."

Or at least, on paper. Unofficially, the house prime was Father. For the rest of the Houses, they'd see Kidra at the helm, but it'll be a different story among the Winterscars.

And speak of the devil, she shows up herself. The cockpit airlock door flashed green, and in walked the Winterscar prime herself. "How am I not surprised to see the two of you plotting in the cockpit?" She said.

Teed shrugged, taking another sip. "I live in this wretched hole we call a cockpit, my lady. He's the pipe rat sulking around. Respectfully, of course."

She strode forward, and sat down on one of the side benches taking her helmet off and setting it to the side with a deep sigh. "It is good to finally be free from the underground. It had some rather unpleasant moments."

"I hear from the kid you managed to convince two Deathless to come up, and you killed a few dozen machines. Nice haul back."

"The mission to Capra'nor was successful. The city happened to be under attack and Deathless were on site helping the defense. I was able to negotiate for two of them to return with us to help against the raiders."

"Other Houses are gonna be right pissed to hear that." Teed chuckled. "Even more favor from the clan lord for having convinced two more of his kind to join the cause. At this rate, I'm not sure if the other houses are going to be trying to get into your good graces or avoiding you like the plague."

Kidra hummed. "I suspect things will change rather drastically and old grievances will be forgotten. Consider this, the raiders are attacking with a massive force. And among that force will be their own relic knights. Quite a few, if the reports are accurate. How many armors is Shadowsong bringing back from each scouting attack?"

Teed laughed, "I see even spending a month underground you're somehow already current with events not even an hour back up topside. How did you know Shadowsong was winning his engagements, let alone draggin' armor back?"

"Educated guess." Kidra said. "And you haven't yet answered. How many armors has he brought back?"

"Clan's nearly doubled the amount of armor we've had since inception. Outright historical time. Seems like every few days a forward vanguard returns with two or three more armors. Once, he sent out a pair of knights, and they came back with ten armors along with full victory. Absolutely insane what the military's pulling off. Two against ten, and they somehow won. That ain't ever happened in the history of ever."

Coffee on airspeeders wasn't great stuff, but it did the job in waking me up. A bit of sugar and the whole thing goes halfway into edible. "Morale's got to be all time high." I said, in between sips. The clan really must be going wild these days. Getting a single armor was a celebration a year ago. A group of armors was something that usually only happened when discovering a brand new colony site mites raised up to the surface, or when some smaller clan merged in. Spoils of war too, but that's rare. Raiders don't usually tackle a clan unless they're completely certain of victory.

"Not just moral. Gossip is across every wall. You can't take three steps on a catwalk without stepping on a conspiracy theory."

"What's the biggest you got?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Lot of them are outlandish, others more grounded. The one that has me putting my chips on, is your house. See, you remember a group of raiders tried attacking the ballroom dance, and those were put down right? But there was another group that attacked the Winterscar compound, broke down your gates and everything. They go in, they don't go out. And then you walk out with all their armors in hand. Gets folks thinkin'."

"Where is this extra armor going to?" Kidra asked, switching the topic. "The ones recovered by Shadowsong."

"Divided evenly among the houses. He's not operating as the Shadowsong Prime, he's operating as the First Blade of the clan lord, so the whole military. Can't play favorites." Teed said, raising an eyebrow but deciding not to push into his prior point. "The bigger houses who already have a full rotation of trained knight contenders are getting armors of course, but by now every single Retainer house has at least one relic armor to their name."

"Smart strategy." I said. "Taking a wild guess he's quite popular in the clan?"

"Shadowsong's got his detractors of course, can't have a clan without the bickering. If it ain't bein' afraid of the Winterscars coming back into the limelight, it's bein' afraid of the Shadowsongs doing the same thing." He shrugged. Clans doing clan things. "Shadowsong's only sending off elite knights with extensive combat experience. The rest of the newly minted knights are held in reserve to keep any counter-offence down. His critics say he's taking major risks sending only a small fraction of the clan's full power for these missions. If you ask me, it's all calculated risks and info gathering. Everytime he sends out knights, they win in a landslide. Now that ain't coincidence. He's gotta know exactly what those knights are going to be up against if he can predict a win with that much confidence."

Kidra tutted, taking her time to remove her armored gauntlets. "You sound like an admirer of the Shadowsongs. That won't be an issue, now will it?"

Teed looked like he'd been caught trying to smuggle a wrench out of a Reacher workshop. Kidra gave him a polite smile.

"Don't play her game Teed." I said. "Look at those cold dead eyes of hers, she wants to see your squirm."

"If y'all don't mind me awkwardly changing the subject before I get grilled over coals here for possible treacherous notions, what are their names?" Teed asked. "The Deathless I mean."

"Wondering when you'd ask." I said, already looking forward to the absolute chaos that would happen. "The girl with the wings is named Hecate Wrath. The tall homeless drifter you saw is Nistene. No last name for him."

"Wings?" He took another look outside, searching across the outdoor crew. "Don't see anyone walking around with godsdamned wings out there kid."

"She's not out there, don't be silly. She's currently stuffed in a box."

Teed gave me a very long look. I took the opportunity to take a very long sip.

"What, don't look at me like that. It's part of her culture." I said when he refused to say a word unless I gave more context.

"Being stuffed in a box is part of her culture?"

"And sacks." I added, "That's also important. You'd be insulting her by not mentioning it, just giving you heads up. She also owes me a new sack, pure coincidence though."

"I can't tell if you're actually messing with my head here, playing a long con, or actually serious." Teed said, setting his coffee mug down and giving me a deep frown. "Underground is a wild place. Can't exactly cross box worshiping off the list in good faith. Pilgrims seem pretty normal, but I've heard stories about the other religions down there."

"My dear brother is purposefully attempting to agitate you. And Wrath with the same stroke. Don't play his game."

Betrayed by my own sister, just can't have any fun these days. "Is this revenge for me spoiling your earlier game?"

"Of course it is." She said, taking off her chestplate and stacking it with the rest of her armor. Free of the thing she took a catlike stretch, cracking her back before doing the same with her hands.

"They going to come up here at some point?" Teed asked, eyes darting to the airlock. Still showed empty, his copilot was currently on shift with the crew. "Cause I don't know the first thing about Undersider Deathless etiquette. Do I treat them like a clan lord, or is there some other protocol I should know? Aside from not mentioning boxes."

"You will not need to worry about that." Kidra said. "They are not interested in visiting the cockpit."

Neither Wrath or Father would walk into the cockpit, there's windows here to the outside and we all agreed to take it as safe as possible. But, Teed and the rest were bound to run into the two inside the clan.

"And speaking of the two, one is waiting for you to attend to her. You should hurry up before she becomes cross." Kidra said. "It would be a shame if her box was stacked under others before the airspeeder crew were warned about that. Mistakes happen quite easily after all."

"You wouldn't have." I said, eyeing Kidra.

"Winterscar." She said, tapping her collarbone three times with her index finger.

I got out of my seat and hurried to the airlock.

Wrath had been buried under three crates. This sent quite a bit of the airspeeder crew into a panic, because my sister had indicated a different box was the one where the esteemed yet eccentric 'Deathless' was hiding in. And not to disturb her until she decided to come out of her own accord. Nor knock on the box.

They had that befuddled look of complete confusion when I went to open the box they'd all pointed to, only to find it empty. That turned into horror when I confirmed that yes, we really did have a second Deathless, and yes, she was in a crate. Just not this crate.

Fortunately, Cathida was willing to help out, so long as she could laugh the entire time. Relic armor had photographic memory, so it knew exactly what box we'd stuffed Wrath into, and another pair of armors had seen the box be stored into the back. None of those raised any flag nor alerted their users because relic armor didn't care about that.

So we dragged off the stacked crates, pulled free her box, and undid the latches. A knock on the side and she got the message to open it up.

Wrath stepped out, attempting to be as elegant as possible for someone stuck in a box. If I remembered right, she'd had practice once before being stuck in a fruit box when hiding among the Undersider city. So maybe she'd learned a few things but despite the majestic spread of wings along with a perfect pose, she was still standing up inside an empty box.

Right now she looked just about human in every regard, right down to skin, hair and eyes. None of the bleach bone white hair and skin with violet or red eyes. She'd donned her old pretend relic armor, or rather had it crafted out over time. Material and power cells we had plenty of, so she didn't have a lack of anything to work with.

I'm sure the rest of the relic armors around could also tell it was fake, but all the knights here also knew she wasn't a real Deathless nor a relic knight at all. Once we're back in the clan, we'll use one of the recovered armor plates we'd brought back from the deceased, have it regrown back into a full armor and given over to her. Wings could probably be worked around, they weren't connected to her hip anyhow, or connected much at all.

"Greetings." She introduced herself to the stunned crew. "I am the Deathless known as Hecate. I have traveled to the surface along with my teammate and friend Nistene. We will be assisting you against the raider incursion."

The crew nodded quickly, giving short signs of respect, but mostly signs of prayer to the gods. Deathless were considered demi-gods, servants of the three. I'd take a wild guess that when Father showed up he had a much more awed reception, but he did strike a more dramatic presence than someone standing up from a box.

Wrath's eyes scanned the crowd and met mine with an unworded question. I waved back. "Not my doing this time, I swear. It was all Kidra."

Great thing about talking to a Feather, as I've learned from godsdamned experience, is that they can catch any lie you say. Which means when you tell the truth for once, they'll believe you. Didn't even need to explain it any further. Imagine that.

"I will have words with her another time." Wrath said stiffly, stepping out of her box and surveying the interior of the airspeeder. The crew took a few steps back, giving her room. Dead quiet otherwise. "Is our destination still your clan home, or has that changed?"

"Changed." Father said, walking out from the medical room airlock. Wrath's instructions had left him looking a lot more human, with charcoal black hair. Turned out to be the easiest color to work into his hair. Rest of his body couldn't be worked on in the short time we had, that would take some effort. So his white machine armor would have to do. It did already look like an exotic relic armor anyhow, not too difficult to pass by. "The crew were given orders to follow based on how many knights they found waiting here. We'll strike the highest threat on the list and move downwards from there."

The relic knights around nodded. A mix of Winterscars and clan knights, all watching the events from the sidelines. They'd seen and known Wrath for a long while now, she was nothing new. Even her wings were nothing out of the ordinary. Couldn't say the same for the airspeeder crew here.

Just wait till they got to see her fly around inside the clan. 'Deathless' is going to be the one word abused for nearly everything. Why can she fly around the clan? Deathless. Why can she lift a few tons with one hand? Deathless. Why can she bite through steel beams? Deathless. Why did she think that was a good idea?

Okay, that one we might need to figure a better excuse for.

"The targets marked are some of their heavier settlements, well equipped and entrenched. So long as you bring us there, they will die like the feral dogs that they are." He said, eyes scanning across the airspeeder crew gathered.

"Looking forward to seeing firsthand how a Deathless takes on raiders." I added, pointedly. Father wasn't Tenisent to anyone outside House Winterscar, he'd have no reason to ask a random clan surface dweller to stay hidden inside an airspeeder.

"Nothing you haven't seen before." He answered. "Stay by my side and you'll live."

So that's how he wanted to play it. Technically, the airspeeder really could get blown up anytime. It would be going against either heavy ordinance or nothing at all. The former would be something I wouldn't have a single bit of control over. If Teed messed up and got the ship into crosshairs from a big enough gun, no amount of occult or winterblossom speed would get me out of there safely.

So fighting on ground zero next to a Feather would be about as safe as I could get, ironically enough.

"Nistene. You could have informed the crew which box I was in." Wrath said, keeping a level tone.

"You have hands." He said. "Use them."

"Destroying a crate would be considered rude." She said. "First impressions are important."

"The clan is a week away. You would have been found one way or another. This hardly ranks as anything of importance."

She looked like she wanted to argue the point here, but found no rebuttal.

Outside the airspeeder, I could hear the bay doors closing up. Ankah and her minions walked in following Icestride, wrapping up the rest of the security detail on patrol outside. Rest of the crew were safely aboard, everything accounted for.

"Pilot, estimated time to destination?" Icestride asked.

"Five days, twelve hours, give or take one hour." The intercom answered after a moment. Not Teed, his copilot. I could tell the change in accent. "We'll have largely enough power cells to make it there with little issue, thanks to you folks. Return trip from that location will be one day, give or take the time needed for the operation. Raiders set up outposts near the colony, but not within railgun range. They ain't dumb."

"Good. No point in waiting, start engines when ready. By the time we're done with their forces, they'll have preferred the railgun shells."

Next Chapter - Mission start

Book 5 - Chapter 6 - Mission start

The closest surface entrance to Capra'nor was a good week from the clan. The zone of operations the raiders worked from is about a day to a half day from the clan. So we were heading straight for their rear outposts.

Not like that would grant a lot of surprise options, the world was vast and the raiders hadn't tried to blockade the clan, so there was hundreds of miles to circle around them if one wanted to. They'd need to get into railgun range before they had enough forces to man a parameter.

And no one wants to be in railgun range.

That did make spying on the raiders a little harder due to the large distances, but nothing Lord Atius hadn't already worked out before he made his dramatic exit. The clan picked up where he left off and expanded on the spy network, digging roots a bit everywhere.

Othersiders were a massive collection of paranoid people grudgingly working together. Slipping a few clan chenobi among their numbers was child's play. To the point the enemy leadership didn't bother trying to stop it. Not because they're dumb, but because of their very organization structure.

This wasn't a single raider band attacking. This was a set of different bands all lumped together. Bands that traditionally saw each other as perfectly good targets to eat if there weren't any easier targets nearby.

Some othersider colonies were more mercantile, with an established power that's keeping the peace. They operate like a clan would, only with a lot more capitalism and no caste system. Clans generally didn't do a lot of trading with them on principle, but we wouldn't be outright hostile to them either. Depending on the hub, the laws could be anywhere from functional to just a suggestion.

Raiders didn't come from the functional hubs, that's for sure. The places they flocked to and found roots in were places where everyone slept with a knife under their pillow. Might makes right, and if you didn't have the might, you had the price tag.

That's who we were up against. Ruthless psychopaths who were only grouped together because their leaders all saw more profit in attacking our clan than attacking each other.

Majority of the people keeping the raider bases up and running weren't the raiders either, they were slaves who had no choice in the matter.

Fortunately, they weren't usually given guns to fight with for obvious rebellion issues. And if they were - it wouldn't be any kind of caliber that relic armors would need to trigger shields for. So we had the luxury of outright ignoring the workers and going straight for the red meat.

"Target will be Zaraduk, one of the larger bands in command." Icestride said, pointing on a holographic map. Scavengers around us couldn't see it, since it was superimposed on our HUDs, but they still watched as the knights huddled together and discussed tactics. Not much else to do while waiting for action to start. "Their band has six main subordinate bands, all of which are unstable and only held together in check by the big fish. Kill the big fish and the rest of the bands will fall on each other like wild dogs."

Raiders had to search out abandoned sites out there to make use of, since a temporary camp under the shadow of airspeeders wasn't going to do for a full scale assault. And fully functional habitats weren't going to be found abandoned. So they took to fixing up some nearly working sites as their temporary homes. Places that could have been clan colonies in their own right, had the mites not messed up parts of their construction so bad that repairing it all was impossible.

He pointed at the site in question, a good five hours from our current position. "This site isn't fully sealed up, missing a few critical structures for sustained life along with being generally too small. However it does have working comms towers, several hangar bays, workshops, armories and dormitories. Objective will be to eliminate the tower, break into their armories to destroy larger equipment and distribute their own weapons into the slave dormitories. Then create breaches in all heat sealed sections, rendering the outpost unusable long term. Throughout the excursion, we will seek out and eliminate all enemy relic knights. This band of raiders will dissolve naturally after. Secondary objectives are to extract the spy team lodged in their ranks, which will send us coordinates over encryptions during the fight."

"Enemy numbers?" Father asked, watching the briefing. He didn't have a helmet, but his eyes were glowing slightly. Wrath must have shown him how to accept and decode messages and data packets like this.

"Last message was from a week ago, and they had counted nineteen relic armors." Icestride said.

Makes sense why they've been so entrenched. That number of armors would take entire clans to fight off. Or it used to.

"I look forward to testing their mettle." Ankah said, far more comfortable within her red painted armor. Killing raiders was a clan duty, something glorified in basically every single song that had raiders or slavers pop up. Her two minions looked equally bloodthirsty in those red plates.

Technically, that would go back to the pirates Atius had bargained from. On hindsight, maybe not the best trade given what we discovered. But that would be a good number of armed and crewed airspeeders to run around and rain fire on the enemy. More guns turned against the sorry bastards was always going to be welcome.

She'd grown pretty used to the Winterblossom technique, as hadCalem and Locke. I had conflicted thoughts about that one.

When the city was facing extermination, Kidra cut off some of her spare soul fractals within her armor and passed them to each. Because it was the right thing to do, and so that's what Kidra did even if it cost our family secrets. I'd have bargained up a storm before I handed over anything to Mrs. Princess in purple there. But that's why Kidra was the one people called a hero and I was the loot gremlin more likely to steal anything I got my hands on.

Life is so unfair. Just because I've got relic armor that lets me rip anything bolted down doesn't mean that's what I do. Not everything bolted down could be sold off.

Anyhow, it's all out of the bag now and there was no putting it back in. Ankah was a right witch to deal with but that haughty attitude also came with an obligation to follow through with it. It was tradition that in the face of a larger threat, all clan disputes were put aside until the main threat was defeated. Sort of a hallmark of clan culture, and something often spoken about with pride.

What we were doing today was on a much smaller scale, but still part of the same thing. Eliminating an annoyance that Shadowsong couldn't quite commit enough knights without opportunity cost to handling the smaller fries closer to the clan.

"Intelligence has highlighted a security flaw on the south side of their encampment." Icestride continued, marking a set of green lines where our airspeeder would take us through and ending at a dot some distance from the enemy. "Their defense turrets were scavenged from nearby ruins with incompatible technology. They're finicky, prone to failure, and aren't maintained well. Their main deterrents were the sheer number of relic armors within their command. Which means sabotage is an easy objective to accomplish. We'll approach from behind this mountain range, on which the raider surveillance equipment has been tampered with to give false signals."

A valley of smaller mountains were highlighted on the HUD, along with three red points peppered around the ridges. Signal repeaters, set down by the raiders to get vision across the mountain range blind spot. Equipment that was set and forget, which meant the spy team only had to tamper with it once and nobody in the camp would bother going all the way out there to verify it was still sending correct signals.

"Once we reach comms range, we'll send a signal to the dormant spy team within their ranks, and they'll shut down their defenses long enough for us to approach."

From the empty dot, another green line showed up, a direct path to the enemy compound. "This frigate will handle the comms tower. Hangars will remain mostly unharmed, since we expect the slaves to commandeer their airspeeders once they've started turning on their masters. From there on, their fate is their own."

Those escaping slaves could band together and head off to one of the more civilized othersider colonies. Or might devolve into a new raider band themselves. Can't always win everything, but at least we'd give those worth saving a fair shot at freedom.

"Nistene and Hecate will be in charge of hunting down their leadership along with enemy knights." Icestride said, helmet turning to the two Feathers. "You both are the strongest and most qualified for that mission." Geared and piled up with evosuit fabric was an understatement. Father looked like a homeless pile of rags with a mildly humanoid shape. Wrath was covered head to toe in relic armor from one of the plates we'd brought back from the expedition.

Armor could be reforged from a single plate if it housed the nanoswarm, and we'd had time to extract the most durable parts of each armor from our casualties. With exception to Windrunner and Atius, who's armors had been outright melted away with nothing left behind. Only thing we couldn't loot was Avalis's chain weapon nor some of my knightbreaker shells. Those had fallen off the skyscrapers and slipped straight down to the murky depths. We couldn't even find Sagrius down there - and his armor would be sending out signals.

Wrath refused to leave her wings behind of course, so she'd also gotten half the rag treatment father had. Mostly to cover her folded wings. Once we were inside the compound, even if it wasn't sealed off to the outside environment, it did have thick ceilings. If she was supposed to be safe walking around inside a clan colony, this wouldn't be different.

Then Icestride's helmet turned to me. "Winterscar heirs, the two of you will accompany Nistene. Hecate will be paired with Arcbound, those two should have next to no threat of casualties."

If someone somehow broke past Arcbound's relic armor shields and stabbed him through the heart, he wasn't exactly going to die from it. Or having his head chopped off. On account of being a walking possessed armor. That was going to spook a few Slavers expecting something different.

"Shadowsongs will be in charge of reaching the armory and destroying all large scale weapons inside. Smaller arms that can be used by slaves and doesn't pose any threat to us will be recovered and spread around the dormitories."

He turned to his own clan knights. "Stormsweepers, Lorrii and I will take on their command structure, aiming to destroy their logistics."

Split into a group of four then, two groups hunting down knights, two groups going for objectives. Divide and conquer.

"Mission follows shock and awe rules. Once we've reached the clan home, our two Deathless's abilities to invest temporary powers to knights will be disclosed. Word should reach the raiders around the same time as the survivors from this site are recovered. Make liberal use of occult powers and leave enough of the small fries alive to speak of it. We want the knowledge to spread far and wide that Lord Atius isn't the only Deathless fighting for Clan Altosk. The rank and file will further break apart from that."

"Would that not make their enemy command more informed of the threats to handle during their attack?" Wrath asked, watching. "Were I in charge of their army, knowing what abilities my opponents possess would allow me to better prepare for the main attack."

Icestride gave her a quick thumbs up. "That's correct. If the raiders send out a full assault, it would look vastly different depending on how many Deathless they fight. If they attacked with a setup to handle only Lord Atius, and find two more Deathless by surprise, they'd be scrapped. But Lord Atius doesn't intend to let them get to that point at all. There won't be a main attack.

We're not waiting for the raiders to crash against our fortified positions. We're wiping them out first."

Teed expertly twisted the frigate around, landing it like falling snow onto the white wastes. At the same time, a figure leaped straight from the airspeeder, landing in a roll against the white wastes and sprinting up the mountainside.

Mission had started. Clock was on.

First objective was to establish contact with the spy team while remaining undetected. Next to impossible to spot a tiny little clan knight with a small dish hiding on a mountain than it was to spot a war frigate moving around. And with the enemy blind on their radars, actual line of sight was the only way they'd see us passing by.

The raider signal repeaters were exactly where the spy team had sent word about, which meant they hadn't been moved or modified. So while it was a little nerve wracking to see those unmanned posts clearly having line of sight as we approached, they were supposed to be sending back all clear signals. Had to trust the clan Chenobi had done their job for this.

Up at the top of the mountain, Arcbound planted a dish, aimed it at the distant compound, and started sending encrypted signals only our clan knew about while laying down flat on the ground.

It took a half hour before we got a response signal, which Arcbound's armor transmitted back to our ship comms.

"War frigate Equinox, this is spy team alpha." A gravelly voice crackled. "Received request to engage in sabotage. Recommend mission abort. Repeat - recommend mission abort."

Icestride took to the comms. "This is war frigate Equinox, Icestride prime speaking. Explain." He asked.

"New shipment of armors arrived yesterday." The man said, a little frantically. "Counting thirty armors - I repeat, thirty armors. All unmarked and brand new."

Interesting. Unmarked and brand new armors, sent to raiders of all people. Either they had a deal going with the Undersiders, or they'd gotten access to a mite forge somehow like we planned to in future excursions.

"Source?" Icestride asked.

"We don't know. Three gods above, if we knew, we'd be already planning an escape to pass that knowledge onto command as fast as possible. How they got their hands on so many is something they're keeping tight lipped about. They're not above flaunting it before their subjects however. Best guess is that they were able to raid Undersiders at some point, they have the numbers for that. Second guess is that an imperial garrison was wiped out and the raiders found the bodies left behind."

"Understood." Icestride said. "Confirmed forty nine armors within that compound. Mission continues as planned with priorities shifted."

The voice was quiet for a moment. "You can't be serio- Master Icestride, that's an entire clan's worth of armors all in the hands of sadists and torturers. You are a single frigate."

"This won't be an issue Alpha. We have enough to handle such a force."

"... How many are aboard your frigate?"

"Thirteen clan knights. And two Deathless."

The comms went silent for a long moment. "And these two Deathless are powerful enough to turn the tides against that many?" There was outright hope leaking in the man's voice. The sort of surprised hope that came from someone who'd lost all of it already.

Seeing thirty relic armors delivered to this outpost, the spy team there must have felt like all hope of winning had been wiped away. It had taken Clan Altosk two centuries to gather up fifty five armors. And these raiders got thirty out of nowhere all in one day.

Given that the spy team had been inserted a long time ago before the raiders had first tried to attack my House, they probably only heard rumors on the clan's newfound strength.

"I am confident in mission success." Icestride said, helmet looking up to both Wrath and Father standing by.

Wrath had outright battled relic knights en mass before, easily killing more than that number by herself. She could probably solo the entire compound if given a day or two to work in.

No, the additional armors didn't change anything. Their source was going to be the more important secret to beat out of them.

"The additional relic armors will look far better among our clan knights than their current owners." Icestride continued. "We'll add additional objectives to discover the source of their new armors. Rest of the mission proceeds as normal. Sabotage the defenses, give us the green light, and go straight to extraction. Two knights will meet you there and escort you into the war frigate. The rest of the raider compound is our duty to deal with. "

"... Understood. Spy team alpha confirms operation start. We'll do our part for the clan. Three gods above, watch over and deliver us from struggle."

"Once we get into the raider base, they won't have to." Icestride said, and cut the contact.

Book 5 - Chapter 7 - Demons

Planning wise, teams were consolidated into two instead of four. And we were all hunting down relic knights now. Until they were all eliminated, we wouldn't be after any other objective.

The spy team was taking their sweet time to sabotage the defenses though. All of us were ready in action, once the defenses were down, Teed would bring the ship to full speed and we'd arrive at their doorstep in under a few minutes. Probably would need to jump out during a flyby too.

It was quiet as the knights all readies themselves mentally for the battle ahead.

Which is why I found it odd to get a private comms request from Father of all people.

"You practicing talking mentally?" I asked, watching as his eyes softly glowed next to me.

His mouth didn't move, nor did he look my direction, but his voice came through the comms.

"The girl taught me already." He paused, frowning for a moment. "...What do you know of slavers?"

Odd question. "I don't think I'd know more about them than you would. You've probably had to fight them a few dozen times over your lifetime."

"I have." He said. "I know everything I need. You might not. You need to be mentally prepared for what you'll find. Explain what you know."

Old man was testing me? Or worried about me? He probably wanted to make sure I had the right info on how to fight them. I thought back on everything I knew about Slavers. Rumors around them, what the textbooks and clan knew about them, and my own experience having to fight them before at the heart of the Winterscar compound.

Sum total: "They're… not really that great in a fight. Only time I've seen or heard them win, is when they've ambushed or caught a clan by surprise." That's how they got the old guard in House Winterscar, by stalking behind and hitting at a weak point. "Most of them don't spend a lifetime training like clan knights do, so they generally are on the backfoot when they have to fight us. That's why they rely on bigger numbers. At least when it comes to relics."

The ones that attacked the Winterscar compound directly weren't bad fighters, just not monsters like Kidra of Father were. They were real cocky when everything was going their way, but when they saw the writing on the wall… "Not a lot of morale either. They route easily and have no problems abandoning each other."

That captain ran off to leave his men to die at my hands once I had Journey requipped. Felt like forever ago, but I had taken out a full squad of them. Even the moment after I'd equipped Journey, I'd walked out and took down two slavers in seconds.

"You understand the basics." Father said, nodding. "There's more you need to understand. You saw their more hardened warriors. Today, you'll see their weaker ones. That is what you need to be prepared for."

"You think the weaker ones will be more trouble?" I asked, not quite getting the subtext.

"Aye. They're capable of saying anything and doing anything to survive. They pretend to be human when they realize death is inevitable. They'll beg you for mercy." He turned to fully watch me now. "You need to understand, and understand deeply boy - They wear our form. They'll speak our words. But they have given up their humanity long ago. Not a single one of their kind are redeemable. There is no other living being you should despise more than Slavers."

Makes sense logically of course. Slavers were called slavers for a reason - they traded people like poultry. Someone like that isn't going to have any kind of moral compass left intact. Any one of them who climbed enough ranks to get a relic armor wasn't a good person by definition. "I've killed them before without feeling any remorse over it." I said. "If you're worried I'll avoid a killing blow, that airlock's long gone cold. I already have before, and it didn't drag me down much."

If anything, I hadn't hesitated for a moment. The men and women serving house Winterscar needed me to step up and put a stop to them, so I have no regrets doing exactly that.

"It's not the demons I'm worried for. You'll see far more than just their kind inside one of their dens. You'll see their victims as well. And they'll beg for help."

"And… we can't offer it, can we? Is that what you're trying to warn me about?"

"Aye, we can't stop to help them. You need to move past them and continue the attack." His eyes turned away, back to staring at the bay door. "What we do is grant them a chance to free themselves. There is nothing more we can do without choosing favorites, too many will be found. You will have to make peace with this. Drugs will not mask it. The propranolol will block irrational horror. What you'll find in that compound is a very rational one. The more empathy you have, the harder it will be. Steel your heart."

"What kind of experience do you have with them?" I asked.

"You already know the most significant one. You were there for it." He said, then closed his eyes. "Lord Atius never did find the culprits who ambushed the clan migration. But they would not have run so far away as to leave behind everything they had."

"You think they're here somewhere, in this attack."

He nodded, slightly. "Without question. Who better to recruit among their forces, than a band that had successfully attacked the clan a decade before? We don't know their banners. We don't know their names. But they must still be alive out there, hiding among the numbers."

"You got a plan of some kind to find them?" I asked. "If they got recruited into the attack force, then there's probably paperwork or logistics somewhere pointing them out."

"In times past, I would have considered such a thing impossible to track down. Now, this shell can scan through thousands of records in seconds." Father said, a finger tapping his head. "Remember, boy: I am not human anymore. And they'll find me a greater demon than any of them put together."

The spy team took an additional hour and a half to get into position. Nothing outside on the compound changed, it was still a snow piled slab of metal bumps in the distance. But a signal came through and let us know we were good to go, so the defenses must have been brought down.

Teed raised the ship and had it go at full speed directly at the enemy. The turrets in the distance stayed frozen in place. No airspeeders raced out the hangars to intercept us.

Five missiles went soaring into the air from our ship. They quickly zipped away, turning into yellow distant lights slowly making their way to the large tower.

Impact hit the compound like a sledgehammer, tons of frozen ice blown apart as the tower's spine broke in multiple parts. It collapsed down at the same moment, landing against the reinforced compound, sliding off to the side and blocking one of the hangar exits.

Bay doors opened wide, with our team holding tight to the sides as the ship sped across the white wastes.

There was a buzz of excitement. Even with the additional enemy armaments, we weren't dissuaded at all. Icestride stood on the other side, along with his team. We'd be dropped off first, and he'd be dropped off at a different section of the outpost.

"Ten seconds." Teed announced over the comms. No sound of any retaliation, nor danger yet.

The ship listed off to the side, carving slightly into the ice under us. The countdown continued, until it hit zero.

Father and I leaped straight out. Current speed had us soar above the ice, then land hard and continue to slide directly towards the closed hangar doors.

They remained sealed for only a moment, before rumbling open.

"I have infiltrated their security systems." Wrath said over the comms. "Opening doors." Frozen ice on the entrance cracked off in chunks, breaking into smaller pieces as they hit the ground.

If she hadn't been able to, we'd have ripped our own hole into them.

Teed's ship didn't bother to stop or wait to make sure we got in. It hadn't stopped it's speed, only driving by the sides of the compound and quickly racing out of sight. Looking around for another insertion point.

"Advance." Father said as we slid to a stop only a few dozen feet from the opening hangar doors.

Four slaver knights rushed out, rifles aimed up, and daggers at their belts. The moment they saw our numbers, they turned on their heels and raced off back inside. Sane strategy, there was seven of us sprinting right at them. Until they had the numbers even or greater, they wouldn't commit to an attack.

We slipped straight through the open doors like water, flying across into the hangar, chasing after where the slaver knights had run off to.

Inside the hangar was a good three dozen men all in environmental suits. Some wore tribal colors, others wore nothing but tan rags above their basic suit. Half of them lost their nerve the moment they thought we were going their general direction. The other half had their trigger fingers pulled down all the way.

Bullets welcomed us in, none of it triggered shields on anyone.

"Eliminate the colored ones when possible." Father said taking a short side pass, using crates as a springboard to leap up onto the catwalks above. His blade lit up, catching one such man right in his back. His friends were in the process of scrambling away, but Father was going far too fast for anyone to escape. "Do not go out of your path to eliminate them. There will be time for that later. Ignore the slaves."

The knights all pinged affirmative, and we slipped further into their disorganized mess of a compound.

The unarmored slavers weren't completely dumb, they did try to wheel around larger cannons and set them up ahead of time. Problem was that we were moving ridiculously fast, scything through anything in our way. By the time the cannons were set, the barrels had been sliced apart. "Ignore operators." Father ordered, passing by one such man cowering on the ground. "All of them will be slaves."

He was right. Not a single cannon emplacement was operated by slavers, just their terrified victims. They knew cannons were the first thing relic knights went for, so not the best place to hang out in.

"And of the slavers that hide among the slaves?" Kidra asked, slicing off the heads of three such slavers with cold efficiency. Those always had color marks to denote what band they were part of.

One died with his trigger finger pressed all the way on his weapon, to which Kidra clamped a quick hand over and twisted until the weapon stopped firing, her other hand busy slashing through the throat of the man's friend.

Stray bullets weren't any kind of threat to us, but they could rip a environmental suit. And I doubt slaves were given anything to patch those up if there's an issue.

"They will be caught and killed soon enough." Father answered. "Wrath is in their systems. Their hangers will not open. Any that try to flee the compound on foot will be hunted down by our pilot. None of them are running from us."

And speaking of running, the four slaver knights ran right into a sealed doorway with us hot on their trail. I could outright see the panic in their attempts to punch the console doorway open. It remained red and shut. Wrath had her hand in basically everything inside the system by now.

By the time the slaver knights realized their system was compromised and they'd have better chances by outright ripping through the doorway using their armor, we'd already caught up.

I hadn't been on the vanguard for that turn, instead I'd been keeping the rear covered. Two other knights on our team slammed into them head first, while the rest of our team chased right behind.

Two Winterscar knights against four slaver knights in tight quarters.

It was messy. The four knights didn't fight to win or beat down the Winterscar knights. No they were trying to slip away from the fight, throwing each other as roadblocks. One tried his luck by rushing through the rest of us.

His shields let him survive a few slices from each of us, up until he tried to slip past Father.

In a moment, his helmet was sized by one white rag covered gauntlet and lifted straight up in the air. His legs swung forward, inertia of his run bleeding through and lifting the rest of his body horizontally.

Father slammed him straight down into the ground from there without a word. Relic shields flashed around him, but he was caught dead in the center of our group. Five different occult edges were already burning through the energy reserves by the time his back had hit the ground. A moment later, the shields died out. He didn't so much as have the time to whimper.

The old man hadn't even bothered to take out his blade. His hand crunched down and the helmet shattered away.

In the same moment, the two Winterscar knights up ahead had butchered the rest of the slaver knights. Right down to stabbing the last one straight through his back and skewering him into the very door he'd been trying to cut a path through. They'd been too terrified to even mount a proper fight back. The only one who did try to stand his ground had his blade quickly pinned down, and then had his head chopped off a moment later once his shields died against the onslaught.

Not even a few minutes into the operation and four of their knights were dead already.

The doors flashed green and opened up to let us through. It had gotten a bit messed up by the slaver's desperate attempts to escape, parts of it were getting stuck on sections that weren't working anymore.

"Their security systems are now fully under my control." Wrath said. "Camera systems online. I have visuals on all knights. Sending coordinates now."

That would make it easy to track down all their knights. And like Father had mentioned, if any tired to make a run for it across the white wastes, Teed would swoop in with his cannons and make short work of them. Relic armor was powerful, but Teed was driving a gods damned war frigate around.

"They're assembling for a fight." Father said, likely watching the same concentration of red dots showing up in one of the larger rooms. Close by too.

"I see no reason to keep our hosts waiting." Kidra said, resheathing her dagger back into position. "They have made it rather convenient for us. It would be improper of us to ignore the welcome."

"Agreed." Father said, hand ripping the rest of the doorway open, metal bending at his touch as if it were clay.

We burst straight into a large courtyard, where we found the slowly assembling slaver defenses. More knights were heading this direction, but right now the fight was seven against thirteen. Lopsided and generally difficult for clan knights to fight off. Each knight would need to be able to take on two enemy knights to beat that kind of number.

One of these knights was clearly the ringleader, given his skulls and decoration. I'm sure it would terrify most people, but compared to the machines underground, it almost seemed cute.

"You dicksuckers picked the wrong fuckers to piss off." The lead slaver said, waving to the rest of his escort. "Timing of this is fuckin' perfect too. Too bad for you lot, we gots a wee bit more armor than you'd think. The boys here have been looking forward to trying their new metal out."

"We know." Father said, taking a step forward without a care in the world. "We've come to take it."

The raider just laughed, "Naw, I'm thinking we take your shit instead since you're so kind as to bring it right to us. Get 'em boys. But make it slow, wouldn't want to let the others show up to just bones now."

Slaver knights fought like clan knights. To an extent. The schools of combat are pretty well studied up here, but slavers and raiders didn't usually end up the disciplined bunch that would train each day. They'd be the bunch that would indulge in their little pleasures and expect their armors to do the rest of the work for them.

Since Father had taken a few steps past our line, he was also the first one targeted. Three slaver knights raced for him.

The first reached Father, with a piss poor Tetsu stance. Arm was way off where it should have been. The man was still confident enough to slash down with his small occult knife anyhow, expecting any retaliation to be defensive. Rest of his gang were right behind him after all, and even more red dots were making their way to our little courtyard.

Father's hand reached out, grabbed the attacking wrist and spun him around. The other hand grabbed the man's shoulder and shoved the man down on his knees. His armor screeched in protest.

The running slavers came to a stop, all of them fixated on how a relic armor could possibly manhandle another armor so absurdly. Relic armor had differences depending on model, some were stronger than others, but nothing was so overwhelmingly different like this.

Then Father began to pull the other arm. The armor held up admirably. For a few seconds.

It detonated into segments, slipping off the slaver's exposed skin.

"I see." Father said, grabbing the man's arm again. Seemed almost harmless until I saw his hand had shattered the man's bones with a mild twist of his wrist. The arm fell limp.

At the same time, he twisted the screaming slaver's other arm behind his own back, and pulled up. Far past the range of motion a human should be capable of. Neither the armor's shields nor its attempt to jettison plates could save the human operator. The slaver's occult dagger fell from his broken hand, to which Father caught in his other hand.

He nodded, experiment concluded, before turning on the occult edge against the pinned Slaver.

The lead slaver watched, dumbfounded. "Who the fuck are you?" He whispered.

"To think I ran from animals like you, once." He said, voice cold as ice as the slaver desperately tried to fight for freedom. The rest of the slavers in the room watched, some taking an unconscious step back.

The blade edge continued to chew through the pinned slaver's shields until it all flared bright blue. The relic armor shields failed, breaking completely. Father turned the dagger off and tossed it to the side, as if it were worthless. Then lifted up the slaver with one hand, and slammed his other straight through the raider's back and out his chestplate. Armor and all. As if it were nothing but paper.

"Pray to whatever miserable gods you have left." Father's uncaring voice was the only voice in the room now, the rest of the slavers staring. "You're all meeting them today."

Next chapter - Absolute shitshow

Book 5 - Chapter 8 - Absolute shitshow

Doors sealed around us, boxed in and with only seven to our name against thirteen. This would have been the time where they'd taunt and demand we surrender. They got to the first part, just having trouble with the second part.

There's still seven of us. And that meant taking us out would have one or two of their ranks get cut down in the process - if we'd been any other surface clan knight team. So they wanted to throw out small probing attacks, just to send the message.

Terrible idea, sending a group of three against Father.

He tossed the dead slaver off to the side, and absentmindedly shook his hand clear of the blood. The other two slavers had stopped in their tracks, staring at him. The rest of the room had grown exceedingly quiet.

On our side, we'd fought against Feathers. We knew what they were capable of. Wrath casually chewed forged metals just to see if it had any potential in cooking. So watching three opponents advance on Father of all people, we'd all silently agreed to wait and watch the utter shitshow that was going to happen next.

Not like anyone in this room was walking out of here alive. The doors were shut, but they'd find out soon enough they're the ones shut in here with us.

"What are you?" The slaver leader hissed out in the silence, staring at the dead body flung off to the side.

Father simply let a short pulse of occult warp around him as answer. A small light show, a byproduct of just triggering fractals. Harmless, cosmetics really. As far as the occult goes, a cantina trick to me and the other knights.

Four slavers instantly turned and raced for the doors. They didn't open, even with them banging on the doors in panic.

The slaver leader took a step back, hand reaching down for his occult dagger, not yet drawing it out. "Knew this day would come sooner or later." He muttered. "Fukin' Deathless. Couldn't have just stayed underground and left the surface alone. Fine, fine! What do you want? Money? Resources? Name your price, we'll fuckin' pay."

"Winterscars." Father said, crossing his arms. "Erase this filth."

The Slaver leader froze, as if he couldn't believe that had been the answer. The rest of us didn't need another word. We drew arms and went straight for it, marching past Father who remained watching.

The enemy charged back, more out of reflex than anything else. I took a deep breath and made sure my link to the soul fractal was secure. Our lines crashed into one another.

I took the Rakurai stance, which was utterly unfamiliar to any of them since it had been outright invented by my clan. The effect of that was near instant - Slavers thought I was some rookie knight that hadn't been trained right, so two peeled off the main group and ran straight for me.

One launched himself at me with a move I recognized from Tetsu, they must be fans of that school since they all seemed to default to it. I executed the third form of our Lightning style, a counterattack variant made specifically for this.

It worked exactly as I'd hoped it would, giving my target only a half second's moment to do anything before the sequence of moves became utterly inescapable. The unblockable part came from the Winterscar blades I'd made, abusing the occult crossguards to pin down the enemy's own weapons. Those equally worked exactly as I'd forged them for. Technically, the third form technique needed two of my blades working in tandem, I only had one and my other arm had my armguard.

That didn't make the move any less effective, quite the opposite. The armguard lit up and slammed into the pinned slaver's chest, acting like ten entire occult blades had landed hits on the slaver at the same time, the waffle pattern easily overloading the enemy's shield. That let me move onto the last part of the technique faster than I should have. A swift diagonal strike, entering the slaver's left shoulders, through the neck and partially nicking the jawbone on the way out. Without shields, the occult edge cut perfectly through it all, ending his life with far more mercy than the man could possibly have deserved.

His fellow reached me a moment too late, trying to chop at my head, only to have two other Winterscar knights step in and slam down blades directly into his leg and blade arm. Perfectly pinning down his weapons with their crossguards, while keeping out of range - all in addition to draining out his shields. Those flashed hard for a moment as the slaver tried to take a step back to get his weapon free again. But the knights had positioned themselves too well for him to escape contact fast enough, and the combined occult edges of both blades and cross guards were eating away at his shields nearly as fast as my armguard would have.

He managed to move his leg out, and only because that knight opted to switch roles and parry a few opening strikes from two other slavers trying to help their dying comrade.

I slipped right into the offered window and executed a straightforward lunge directly into the pinned enemy's helmet. The weakened shields broke down a moment before my own blade reached, leaving him with nothing but a gurgle as the occult edge glided into his helmet.

The Winterscar knight holding his blade arm pinned let go and slammed an open palm on the dead slaver's chestplate, pushing the body off my blade to help speed things up, already turning away to handle the next enemy without bothering to watch the dead body drop. The other knight was lockstep with us and advancing on the next slaver too.

The two Winterscar knights and I went right into the middle of the fight, hacking and slashing as a team. Tactics here were standard, basic and easy to chain together. One would lock down an enemy and break their shields by striking at arms or legs, another would go for the killing blow on the chestplate or helmet, and the third would ward off the enemy so the other two could focus on their task. Anything my armguard could slam into would usually have their shields overloaded within a tenth of a second, an outright eyeblink, making me the deadliest weapon in the room.

We swapped roles depending on who was closest and in better positions. No need for communication or callouts, and the soul trance gave me full sight so I wouldn't miss any openings even if I had my back turned to them. Like having eyes in the back of my head.

The three of us were using basic tactics that anyone could reasonably fight off against. It was the speed we moved at and the gear we had that made all the difference. The slavers could tell what we were doing - and they couldn't do a thing to stop us. The blades we used could all execute moves and techniques that were utterly alien to the enemy, and coming up with an effective counter to something brand new on the spot was something on the league of Kidra and Father. Scrapshit trash knights like these mooks had no chance.

As for our side, there's a level of skill where being better doesn't mean faster results. Kidra was in a different league than I was, and yet I was keeping pace with her group just as easily. Faster even, if the enemy ever made the mistake to get within shield bashing range.

I felt... almost at home. The number of enemies around me didn't weigh down. Memories of dead timelines before flowed through my head, and along with those came the experience gained. In each of those timelines, I was there. I'd lived through it subjectively. One Keith for one mind, so an infinite amount of Keiths never overwhelmed the greater whole in the same way my own lifetime never overwhelmed me. Maybe if it had been five Keiths for one mind, I would have lost track of what each me had been doing.

But that hadn't been how that quantum immortality worked out. Each additional Keith both added another body and another mind, which balanced out the whole. I was lucid and aware in every single timeline, right down to the very last moments.

My head started to roll into autopilot. I waded further into their battle lines, drawing on everything I'd learned. How to keep track of a few dozen enemies all around me using the soul trance's vision. How to best move in a way that would make the enemy stumble into one another, turning them from a mass of enemies to glorified walls holding the rest back for me. I used my blade to prod the wall into shapes that worked best for me, while trimming away any free hits. The occult armguard could blindly block anything with hardly any effort or aiming, and it never ran out of juice like a relic armor could.

It was harder to work with my House knights oddly enough. I was used to being alone against an army of machines dogpiling down on me. Having a friendly unit nearby was something new to get used to. I couldn't quite make it fit with the pattern I'd gotten good with.

So I dove down deeper into the enemy lines, where I was fully surrounded by the enemy. Their attacks were slow, sloppy, filled with a superiority complex at the start. And then quickly turned to panic. I could use the occult if it ever got too difficult. But the sheer speed I had along with the newfound intuition that I'd picked up was all I ended up needing. And in each doomed timeline, that Keith didn't use the occult either. So I'd grown pretty comfortable using just a blade, kicks, and whatever weapons I could find in the field.

The more enemy knights tried to push down on me, the easier it got for me to slip through, redirecting hits to force their own blades to hit each other. Battle switched from a life and death struggle to more of a moving puzzle, where I needed to maximize the amount of occult edges around me by kicking, punching, shoving and slashing around until everything locked into place. It was even easier, since I could just kick anything backwards. Right into the meatgrinder that was the advancing Winterscar line, where they'd mercilessly cut down the near unshielded target.

And then I had to deal with another break in the pattern: The enemy began to rout not even a minute into all of this.

More of them would outright shove each other into the meatgrinder just to buy themselves a few more seconds to try and pry the doors open. The machines hadn't done that when I fought them. I could kill off hundreds of Screamers, and they never stopped trying to leap at me. It made them predictable, reliable even.

The slavers were caving around me, fighting back in ways I wasn't used to anymore. My focus snapped back to older training with Father, returning to the movements and techniques built to counter individual targets rather than countering a moving wall.

If I'd been slower, I'd still have been a better fighter than they were. With the Winterblossom technique making Journey move to my mind, they had no chance. And even if they did have one, I still had the occult ready to tap into a long with Cathida as a backup. I could summon dozens of half-formed arms and blades to turn into a straight blender. Or leave the crusader to break spines while I focused on summoning a small army.

Of course they'd try to run. Moot point too. There was nowhere they could run to. Those doors weren't under their control anymore. And they didn't have the time to cut a way out.

Father remained in the backline, watching with arms folded across his chest as House Winterscar's current roster of knights all went to work. I could tell he was keeping most of his focus on me, evaluating. Waiting to step in any moment he thought I wouldn't manage against the enemy.

He never made a move. Never needed to.

If any slavers managed to escape through doors, I had no doubts Father would be yanking the escapee by the throat, and throwing him right back into our lines. Even if they somehow cut through the doors and actually tried to run, none of them could outrun a Feather's shell.

Kidra wasn't as calm, I could see her hacking her way through the slavers in the soul trance, chewing directly to me as quickly as she could. Maybe in thirty seconds she'd break her way to my side of the battlefield.

Thing is, all of this didn't take thirty seconds.

By the time she'd gotten halfway to me, it was all over. The last Slaver fell on his knees, head flying off somewhere, while the rest of his body slumped over.

The leader had been impaled against a doorway at some point, likely trying to escape along with the rest of them. The only sounds left in the room were splashes of bootsteps over growing pools of blood on the ground, with an occasional snap of an occult blade cutting through a dying survivor on the ground.

"My my deary, you learned a few tricks," Cathida said, sounding actually impressed for once. "Got the most kills out of the group on this one, color me like gold. And I know I wasn't the one to teach you any of these moves, so fess up. Who's been teaching you behind my back?"

"I don't think I got the most kills?" I said, feeling a little perplexed. "Did I?"

"I'm counting the ones you shoved backwards as a kill. You did all the work, only reason you didn't cut their heads off is that you were too busy going after the next one. That ain't what the goddess wants to know though - When exactly did you learn to fight like that, deary? You seeing some other engrams while I'm not around?"

She hadn't technically seen the thousands of times I'd fought against the machines with no occult at my hands. The only timeline this Journey had lived through, had been the one where I'd won. So to her, it really must seem like I'd just had a snap change in how I fought, whereas to me it felt like a few hundred lifetimes all lived simultaneously.

"Keith." Kidra said, voice sounding like she'd caught me trying to loot parts of the House walls to sell off. "What in the three gods was this?"

"I… uhh. Look, I get how it must have looked, but trust me when I say I wasn't in any danger."

"You were in the center of their lines." Kidra hissed, voice doing that thing where she was keeping calm but was absolutely not calm. "That, quite literally, is the the most dangerous location to fight from."

"I… could move fast enough to keep all my directions covered without issue. And the soul trance let me see in every direction. The centerpoint is the best location to fight from when you've got all those advantages."

She kept her helmet fixed on me. Then turned directly to Father. "Why did you let him get that far into the enemy?" She demanded. "You of all people should have yanked him back into the lines when you saw I couldn't get to him fast enough."

"You know the answer already, girl." He said, kicking one of the dead bodies on the ground away from him, and then nodding his head to another knight. That one knelt down and began to strip away the best section to hold onto. "A bloated existence has made them lethargic. The taste of power has cost them too much. They are nothing more than a lesson to learn from."

"You let Keith go off into the most dangerous part of the fight - because you thought it was good training for him?" Kidra said, sounding more like she was fighting herself to keep calm. "Good or not, it only takes a few seconds for an armor to lose its shields. He could have died in an eyeblink if anything had gone wrong."

"I am faster than an eyeblink." Father said, staring Kidra down. "And you know that. I saw the way you battled. There was no fear in you either. Had you needed to, you could have broken through far faster as well. You knew, just as I did, that your brother was too far above these miserable fools to be in any threat."

Her helmet turned back. I could almost hear her growling in there.

As for me, I was feeling a little off. I wouldn't say I forgot about the lifetimes I'd spent dying, but at the same time I hadn't thought about them up until I had my blade out and had to fight. It's only then that everything snapped back into mind. A little troubling. I wasn't sure if this really was just something I didn't care about, or if my head was doing something to keep me sane. The propranolol had been running in my system, so it had been running in every timeline version of me as well. Otherwise, probably not mentally healthy to have a few infinite visions of dying floating around in my head. Probably.

The Winterscar knights around us said nothing. To them, they were sworn to follow behind. This was a squabble between the house heirs, out of their jurisdiction. But they were still part of this team. I spent days with them, teaching them about the occult. Training with them against Cathida down in my sanctum.

I gave a sheepish look across the team. I'd seen them move in the soul trance, like a solid wedge that broke through the enemy. Utterly inevitable, following behind my lead. More likely trying to catch back up to me when I'd slipped further into the fight now that I'm thinking back on it all. I'd made use of them like a cliff ledge. Anything I kicked backwards into them, was effectively removed from the fight.

Captain Sagrius was the armsmaster that I'd normally talk to. He represented the whole force. With him gone... I turned to Kior. One of the two knights that had remained on the sniper nest overlooking the skyscraper bridge. He'd seen me fight, he'd held off an army of his own.

"What are your thoughts on all this?" I asked, watching as he cut off a section of relic armor to carry with as the primary source.

He stopped in his tracks, then turned to face me. His helmet turned back to the other knights who were also in the middle of working through the looting. They looked back at him, some unworded message going through all of them.

"Master Keith. When they attacked the dance hall, we had to fight them off with just the blades you forged for us. We had no armor. We were all only knight contenders. Even then, we were able to win."

"I remember, you were part of the crew that were looting armor outside the hall." I said, waving a blade tip at what he was working on. "More things change, more they stay the same."

"Indeed they do, sire." He said, cutting free the piece of armor. Black smoke fled from all parts of the armor to sink into the open slots inside the plate he'd removed. "What I know is that without the advantage of armor, they were nothing. Without some kind of advantage, they are nothing. I felt no fear watching you advance forward into their lines." His helmet turned to the other knights, then turned back to me. "Ordinary men cannot possibly kill you."

The other knights nodded at that, turning their attention back to their looting, as if it were a done deal.

Father gave a grunt of approval, turning back to Kidra. "Do you see now, girl? Even your own handpicked knights know better than to worry for your brother. You cannot keep protecting him from the world. He no longer needs it."

"Father, the knights see him as a prophet for the gods." Kidra said, turning her gaze over to the sheepish collection. They all studiously avoided her gaze, each far more interested in their current work, even if that work was just cleaning blood off their plates. "Do you all think I have no knowledge of what goes through my own house? None of you are as subtle as you think you are."

They said nothing back to that, one by one standing back up from their work and lining up before Father, standing at the ready to continue the operation.

"Whatever you all believe my brother to be, he is still human. And what he can die from hasn't changed. Prophet or not, a sword to the head will kill anyone." Kidra said. "If you forget this fact, then you are unfit to protect him."

Father saw the Slavers as beneath his attention, and his instincts on combat probably made him feel confident in watching me fight. He knew already I was fighting far under my limits.

The knights all saw me in a different light. I wasn't sure how to deal with it exactly, but to them the thought of me dying to some random slaver seemed ludicrous. After all, no hero ever died from a random mook in the songs the clans taught. Kidra would say they weren't combat veterans just yet, just highly trained newly drafted knights.

Kidra was the voice of reason here, trying to remind her knights reality didn't play favorites. Three gods above, we have been the random human mooks that took out targets far above our weight class in all this.

Now that we were on the other side of the equation as the giants stomping around, who's to say someone else doesn't do to us what we did to Feathers? "Sorry, I'll stay by the combat lines next time." I said, and meant it. "That's on me. Snow kills just as easily as a fall would, if it's not paid attention to. Shouldn't forget that saying exists for a reason."

I'd gone into an autopilot earlier without realizing it due to how familiar it felt. Can't let myself do that again. Better to learn the lesson now while it was still small.

Kidra glared at me for a moment longer, before giving a slight huff and nodding. "So long as you understand, that is all that matters to me. Snow isn't the only thing that kills. Arrogance kills just as easily as we do."

"If you are done with this squabble, the remaining slavers are attempting to flee." Father said, eyes glowing slightly. "Wrath's group has been just as efficient hunting."

Effectively, I could see twenty two red dots on the minimap left. Wrath had already eliminated a good chunk at the same time we had. Some gathering and making a break for one of the airspeeder hangers. Wrath's complete control over the system meant that they wouldn't be able to open those bay doors up which would delay them by at least an hour to hack through the whole thing. An hour was a very, very long time to be trapped in this particular compound.

Wrath's group of green dots were flying straight through like a large fish in the pond, chasing down a smaller group of five dots. Those blinking dots hit door after door, stopping by each for a few seconds to break through, while Wrath's group sprinted across them as if there weren't any walls, hounding after like dogs chasing down a pipe weasel.

Even from the map, I could tell the panic in the way the red dots moved at the door fronts, outright shoving one another out of the way. Wrath's group soon caught up to the group and surrounded them. The very next moment, they quickly blinked from red to gray one after another.

The green dots paused, almost as if digesting their meal, before they turned and began to move straight for the hangar. Where the rest of the fifteen red dots were converging on.

Guess that's where the slavers were making their final stand. Shouldn't keep them waiting.

Next Chapter - Wrapping up loose ends

Book 5 - Chapter 9 - Wrapping up loose ends

Despite Wrath having locked down their systems, right down to communications, the Slavers seemed to get the message that even with their ridiculous numbers something wasn't going right.

They'd been hit by two small teams of relic knights attacking from different ends and sent orders to intercept the knights and take them out. And everything after was scrambled communications and physically passed along messages of clan knights still storming around through the compound despite them having run into the main forces.

Every slaver knight took a look at the situation, realized that these clan knights should have been put down already or at least tied down in combat long enough for the rest of the forces to converge. And if that hadn't happened then something was very, very wrong.

The very next thought was to seek protection among the herd and abandon ship. They're not idiots at least.

Likewise, orders we got from Icestride were simple: Handle the slaver knights above all other targets first. As far as the compound's defenses were, he'd confirmed that the only real threat that existed here were those knights.

All the ordinance and manpower stationed here might have been enough to pose a threat to regular clan knights, but we were far too fast in destroying any cannon emplacements being setup before it could be turned on us. Wrath and Father could outright walk into a fully setup killzone and take on every bullet sent with only their paint scratched.

"They're all funneling into hangar bay six." Icestride said. "We'll divert and take on any stragglers still trying to reach the meeting zone. Winterscars, eliminate the hangar directly in the meantime."

"They will shift to explosives in order to open the hangar bay doors soon." Wrath added. "Be alert for any signs of this. Likely they will attempt to use the airspeeder's own weapons. Those do have the rating to deal damage to your relic armors."

"Right, you all hear the silver bimbo - don't stand in front of the giant near stationary guns. Excellent tactical analysis, consider me baffled that humanity's still somehow alive." Cathida snarked, right before I hit the mute button.

"It is functional tactical advice, yes." Wrath agreed. "Are you having difficulty understanding the concepts? I can provide more details if you need it."

"No, she's just being difficult." I said, offering polite apologies. "Don't mind her Wrath."

Switching off comms, I glared at the mute button hovering over my HUD. I knew Journey could track eye movements, so Cathida must be getting the message. "Why are you like this?" I hissed. "Next time, I'm muting you for an entire day. Swear to all three gods and the devils under."

"Worth it." Cathida said, unrepentant as usual. "Besides, the toaster knows this is just my way of showing I care about her. In my own way."

She had the audacity to make that sound almost convincing, even with the warble in her old dusty voice. "You're not fooling anyone here."

"Tosser." She said, tutting. "What gave me away?"

I hit the mute button and set it for a whole day as threatened prior. Just in time as our group hit the ramparts and passed into the hangar bay wings.

Number six quickly came into view, the door at the end opened up wide from the last group to have passed through. It looked more like a clawed out thing, knife marks everywhere. The slavers had to get creative to get past all the locked doorways. And these were thin enough to work around. The actual hangar doors were far thicker and made to resist being cracked open from the outside by weapon fire.

So naturally, we found them all panicked around that issue, some trying to use their occult weapons to cleave a path through, others yelling out orders to lower level slavers for more explosives and other gear. Parts of the hangar already looked like there had been explosions, given the warped metal and shrapnel that littered the ground already.

Only thing that looked completely intact and unphased was the airspeeder hovering by, catwalk scaffolding still surrounding its branching supports, some slightly bent already as the massive beast had accidentally moved around a bit and crushed parts with little effort.

Slaver knights spotted us in a few seconds, shouting out to one another and pointing directly at our advancing group. Bullet fire began to rain down on us from just about everywhere. While the enemy relic users were all huddling together, they weren't alone here. About five times their number were running around stiff environmental suits, trying to either get the ship ready to go, or trying to sneak into it ahead of time.

"Keith, Kidra." Father ordered, leaping high into the air, weapon already drawn out as he soared straight down at his first target. "Into the airspeeder. Clear them out. The rest of us will deal with the stragglers out here."

He landed with a heavy kick directly into one slaver's chestplate, one hand battering away a hasty stab from his victim, the other hand chopping down his own occult blade down onto the neck.

The enemy was knocked down onto the ground, free hand trying to grab Father's wrist and pull his sword arm off his neck. Shields were giving a screeching whine as Father's blade pushed down inevitably against the plate.

A moment later, they flared and broke. And the slaver's head was lopped off just about the same time, all his dying efforts completely wasted.

Father stood back up slowly from the dead body, eyes quickly scanning all the targets slowly fanning out to surround him. Two other Winterscar knights landed next to him, taking their positions at both his sides, weapons drawn out.

About all I saw before my own armor landed from a jump off the catwalks down right by the airspeeder's open bay doors. They began to close up, as a slaver was frantically mashing a button on the inside, environmental helmet watching me dead on as I sprinted forward.

He realized the doors weren't closing fast enough, scrambling for the rifle strap and bringing the weapon up and aimed at me.

I leaped in, being warmly welcomed by a hail of bullets. Journey didn't bother to trigger shields for this, letting the bullet sparkle bright yellow against the armor plating.

My armguard slashed through his barrel with little thought, while my boot followed behind to kick him in his stomach. He gave a wet grunt as the kick scrambled his insides and sent him flying off into the side of a sealed airlock, crumpling the back of his environmental suit. He flopped down on the floor, air hissing out of holes on his broken equipment. A gurgle came out, along with a twitch and then nothing else.

Kidra had stormed inside at the same time, following right behind me, and equally taking out her side of the defenses. Three other slavers who'd had the unfortunate luck of trying to hide behind portable bullet proof barricades as cover while they fired back.

Like me, she hadn't bothered to use her rifle for work like this, giving a quick swing of the Winterscar longsword, the reach easily cleaving through all three and the barricade they were hiding behind. A quick death for one who'd had his head in the way of the blade swing, and a slower death for the others who'd had less immediately fatal damage. Those poor bastards were scrambling around on the ground, trying to patch up their suit. Blood poured away and hissed once it made contact with the ice cold metal under, already coagulating and freezing up. Kidra strode by and gave both a quick swift stab through each helmet.

The bay doors sealed behind us, and the airspeeder shuddered for a moment.

"They've opened fire." Kidra said, striding up to the airlock and triggering the air cycle. It flashed red.

The speeder rumbled under us, sounds of metal on metal grating.

"Great. Looks like we're hitchhikers now." I said, as the speeder began to move under us. There was a quick bit of acceleration, and then a sudden halt that nearly threw us off our footing. My hand reached out against a handrail to hold me steady, foot bracing against the impact. Metal groaning resounded all around us, lights flickering as power was drawn away from nearly every system.

The airlock light remained flashing red, a percentage sign showing halfway done on the panel. The metal groaning continued, then stopped and the airspeeder began to pick up speed once again.

Comms flickered in our headset. "They have rammed the airspeeder into weakened bay doors and managed to squeeze through." Wrath said. "Airspeeder hull integrity reports still functional despite the damage. You will need to disable the speeder soon before they go out of range."

Teed's voice came in next. "I see them, they're limping. One engine looks like it's gotten torn off but the rest is functional enough. You two onboard it?"

"We are." Kidra said.

"Gotcha, I'll leave it to you then. Let me know if you want me to catch up and shoot it down, would be my pleasure." He said closing the channel.

The airlock light blinked green and opened up. Kidra and I walked right in, closing it behind us.

"I am unsure what they hope to accomplish." She said, twisting a dagger in her hand while we waited for the airlock to cycle in heated air. "We are already aboard their ship. They have no way to escape us now."

"Don't think they're thinking at all." I said, shrugging. The airlock lights blinked red and then halted completely. The cycle stopped from the other side. "Okay, correction, they're at least trying to think."

"Not clever enough." Kidra said, turning on her dagger and stabbing it into the airlock door. A hiss of air came through as warm air from the other side tried to rush into our still frozen section. A few more slices and a large chunk of the doorway was outright ready to peel away.

I pulled the section down and tilted my head to the side a moment later. Occult sight had already let me know what was waiting on the other side, and a rapidly thrusting occult blade was exactly one such thing.

It stabbed through, the wielder overshooting his mark as he sliced air instead of his expected resistance. I grabbed the exposed wrist and shoved it against the side of the airlock, putting my shoulder and arm into the effort, both our relic armors whining as metal muscles tried to fight for supremacy.

Kidra wordlessly slashed her dagger edge directly into his exposed and pinned arm, the shields lighting up against the occult edge. I could hear panicked screaming on the other side as the slaver's armor reported the damage and rapidly draining shields while the poor bastards was unable to pull his hand back in time.

Effort doubled as he got smart and put his whole shoulder and other hand against the doorframe to pry himself free from my vice grip.

Journey struggled against the force. A timer popped up showing me expected failure point in just under a minute.

Which would have been a year and a half in how fast combat went between relic armors. His shields failed a moment after against Kidra's blade, but instead of cutting through the arm, she lifted it off, flourished her longblade and stabbed it straight through the metal airlock.

Tension against the pinned arm immediately stopped. Kidra's blade had cut straight through the slaver's armor, directly under his armpit and into his heart. Another win for being able to see through walls.

I let go of the limp hand, letting the man slump off on the other side while Kidra gave another two cuts into the metal doorway with her dagger and longsword working in tandem. This time when I pried off the chunk, no slaver tried to stab out at me again.

There were three in the cockpit left, two relic knights holding blades pointed directly at us, and a pilot tapping away at buttons, trying to keep the limping airspeeder moving. That one didn't have armor at all, just a standard environmental suit.

Kidra stepped through the gap and I followed behind, cracking my neck and watching the last two enemies to deal with.

"Not to interrupt anything," Teed said over the comms, "But I'm seeing three ticks on the back of your ship crawling on the hull."

"I will deal with those in a moment. Keith, can you steer the ship back to the hangar while I handle the annoyances?"

"I would be happy to." I said, drawing out my own Winterscar blade to pair with my armguard. "Always wanted a chance to actually drive one of these."

"Then I suggest we deal with these two quickly before the ones outside become a nuisance."

Given the cramped area, I didn't want a long drawn out fight that might damage the ride back home. Time to bring out the bigger guns.

I took a step forward. The first slaver gave a battle cry and leaped straight at me with a dagger flashing down for my head. The armguard did exactly as it was supposed to, the waffle pattern occult edges easily holding off the enemy blade without trouble.

At the same time, deep inside my armor, the mirror fractal lit bright blue. Occult pulsed around me, and four spectral arms flashed out, each holding a copy of the arm guard, slamming it into the exposed Slaver's armor, while the main hand blade equally slashed from the other side.

His shields flashed out against the onslaught, held for a microsecond and collapsed as a few dozen occult edges all ate away at his shields in an eyeblink. The armguards swung straight through him a moment later, cutting him up into bloody chunks, while one longsword blade cut his head off.

I didn't stop there. Three more fully realized mirror images stepped out and swung their own arm guards at the last cowering slaver knight. He tried to stab one, and failed the moment the image flickered into two images, one being correctly stabbed and dissolved, while the second slammed an armguard down into his back.

The other images equally followed through on their own hits, but I'd already turned to make my way to the terrified pilot. I could see in the soul sight as the concept of a slaver knight winked out of existence a moment later.

The pilot scrambled out of his seat, bringing out a handgun and opening fire. Insignias on his environmental suit showed he was a high ranking officer, and given how he hadn't been flying right, I don't think he'd driven an airspeeder in years. Likely having plenty of lackeys to delegate to.

"Mercy, lord deathless! Mer-" He stopped when my fist punched his helmet. My blade slashed through his throat as he reeled back.

"Doubt you showed any mercy to others." I said, and shoved the dying body off his seat, taking over the controls.

Kidra had already turned and walked back out through the broken airlock, dagger back in her sheath to keep a spare hand open. She'd need it to climb up and handle the slavers trying to hitch a ride.

I found the commands for the bay doors and had them unlock and open up, revealing the flying white landscape zip under us. Now that I was back in my old element, Teed's lessons and the few times I'd snuck into their simulators for fun came back.

I wasn't anywhere near a good pilot like Teed was, there was an art to swinging a multi-ton flying beast like this one, especially if it's running on three engines instead of four. But fancy moves weren't needed. All I had to do was keep the whole thing stable and turn it back home.

They'd really made a mess of it. Reports on the consoles were flying around in red. They'd taken off when nearly every checklist item hadn't been done. The cockpit itself was still in the process of deheating, along with a laundry list of other warning signs.

Worst one was that the pilot forgot to cut off fuel supply lines into the broken engine, outright putting the whole ship into explosion range.

I patched things up back to better shape, reducing the speed from the redmark back into a green state, and gracefully turned the ship around. Comms cycled on my HUD until I had the right frequency. "Teed, I'm in control of the airspeeder, bringing her back home now."

"She's a right mess," He answered. "Smoke trail coming from engine four makes me thing the whole thing will blow up soon."

"Cut off the fuel supply to that already, it's just burning through the scraps left. Shouldn't explode on me. I think."

"Knock on metal, she ain't looking too pretty right now. Pests are being taken care of though, I'm getting a nice view of that."

In the soul trance I could see the concept of Kidra moving around gracefully above me, and concepts of slaver knights winking away one after another.

The third tried to slam into her with a running start, and equally faded away a moment later, turning into the concept of an empty relic armor flopping off the side of the ship, pinned into it by a rope and hook.

"All knights cleared off." She said a moment after. "How is the ship?"

"We didn't get super far from the compound." I said, "But I'm taking her home slowly, so expect a few minutes."

Teed's own ship was off in the distance. Even with some of my windows splattered with red, I could still see the clan war frigate prowling around like a predator in the open wastelands. Keeping an eye on me.

The bay doors on the compound looked half ripped apart, and I was having a hard time understanding how an airspeeder of this size was able to fit through it all without more damage. Shields did show they were down a few percent, so the pilot must have triggered them on full just to wedge through without damaging the hull too much.

On the other side of the bay doors, I saw nothing but empty relic armors, collapsed on the ground with holes stuck through them. A few had helmets and armor parts crushed, where Father prowled around, hunting down slavers who had no relic armors. He kept to the shadows, sulking away from the open rip in the wall. If the slavers thought they'd be safer near the exit, the rest of the winterscar knights were proving them horribly wrong.

"I see the hangar is clear." I said, bringing the airspeeder to a stop and landing it right before the rip.

"The bay door is no longer operational." Wrath said. "They have caused too much damage to it. The ship will need to be left outside."

"And the hunt for the relic users?"

"Complete." She said. "No remaining targets within the hangar, and I've caught the last escapee attempt. The compound is ours."

Indeed it was. Without relic knights to fight us off, the only thing left inside the Slaver base was the rank and file environmental suits with rifles and their hostages.

It was tedious work after that, hunting down the enemy. There were still only a few of us running around a massive compound crawling with Slavers trying to play hide and seek.

Halfway through the day, the slaves within had gathered up together with enough weapons to start doing our work for us, mowing down their former tormentors and fanning out to find wherever they hid with a zeal that seemed borderline religious. Each hour, more slaves broke free and joined the freedom fighters, accelerating the process.

Some of the desperate scum tried to escape on foot, running across the wasteland. Father and Wrath wouldn't follow them outside, and the rest of us were too busy moving around the base and destroying everything to bother with a few stragglers.

Heavy turrets on an clan war frigate were overkill for a few Slavers scrambling away on ice. Surely none of Teed's crew would gun down Slavers with bullets big enough to turn them into a mist of freezing blood and scrap.

No matter how cathartic that must feel. Or how bloodthirsty clan gunners were at the idea of getting to shoot Slavers instead of twiddling thumbs watching the knights have all the fun. Professionals have standards. They just miscounted the initial amount of bullets they'd brought aboard the ship. An honest mistake.

By the end of the day, there weren't any slavers left alive. Even the ones trying to hide among the freedom fighters were caught and executed by their very victims. A bloody retaliation.

The slaves had formed several loose collections of organized groups, organized and guided by Wrath who pointed out where the slavers had the highest probability of hiding in, and leaving the rest for them to find and handle.

Teed finally landed his airspeeder right by one of the empty hangar bays, now that it had been a few hours without any more of the bastards trying to make a run for it outside. It was clear there weren't going to be any more either.

The slaves inside would take a few more days to organize the logistics among each other before they could fly the captured airspeeders off to the nearest Othersider colony, or wherever they wanted to go.

They had an entire base to loot for weapons and food, and nobody to stop them.

Mission complete. All that was left was to drive back home with an entire clan's worth of freshly looted armors, and figure out just where in the three gods these slavers in the middle of nowhere got their hands on so many armors.

Wrath had their databases already loaded up, despite their best attempts to wipe that info off the face of the surface.

One way or another, we'd figure that part out. If the rest of the slaver bases were also getting shipments of armors on this scale, it wouldn't be long until the clan was ready to set their sights on a bigger target.

The Underground.

Next chapter - Interlude: Hexis

Book 5 - Chapter 10 - Interlude: Hexis

"This is the knight? From Altosk?" Hexis asked, watching the relic user on the lower courtyard. "Doesn't look quite look the part."

Surface knights were usually rather visually striking. Undersider relic armor was equipment to be used in combat situations and was kept utilitarian with the city colors at best. Surface dwellers had a more ceremonial obsession. Usually they'd cover plates with writing, colors, textures, trophies and other religious trinkets for that strange religion of theirs. Colors especially, since it was a symbol of wealth and power to them. Often bordered on the ridiculous to his tastes.

This one did not fit the part. Rags and tattered cloth salvaged from the far reaches hid most of the knight's frame, with the few bits revealed plate looking unadorned. Small hints of blood red marking on the shoulders as the only break in the pattern, but the fabric was covering too much to make sense of the full symbol. The knight remained in seiza position, like most clan knights were known to do when waiting, so at least he had that correct.

He'd put out the message to search for clan knights nearby, hoping to snag a few guides before he left. The chance of finding a clan Altosk knight was next to zero, but regular clan knights were always honored guests to other clans, so traveling with a few would get him seen once he reached the surface.

That he found both a clan knight, and one from the very clan he planned to visit was… suspicious.

He hadn't gotten any catches, no passing delegations or smaller trading routes were in city at the moment, meaning his options were limited. Very easy for a pretender to hear the summons and decide to play the part. Hexis had to be cautious.

"Doesn't seem like he fits all the stories I'm hearing. Looks more like a pauper. What vetting has he been put through?"

"Your magnificence, this relic user arrived from the wild reaches. Alone." Sebastis said, licking his lips as he carefully considered his next words. "And he was carrying enough power cells on his back to fuel a small army of machines. All of them near full."

"Right. The Numeris forge is around that area if I remember, right?"

If anyone could survive that area alone, they would be quite the survivor. Not exactly evidence of this drifter being a genuine clan knight, but it would be evidence of a skilled veteran.

Or a dedicated conman.

"Carrying a few dozen power cells could be done by having a supplier give him a set just out of sight from the city walls." Hexis said. "And he could have arrived from a far safer direction, circled around and arrived from the wild reaches instead. Has he shared video footage yet?"

"No, your magnificence." The butler said, bowing low and sounding slightly frustrated. "The knight has refused to give any evidence other than his word."

Hexis laughed, "Don't feel too put off, Sebastis. Ironically enough, that does help convince me he's a true clan knight more than any of the other circumstantial evidence presented. He has their arrogance at the very least."

It was all academic of course, he didn't care about this knight from a force perspective. He needed the political clout that came with that armor. If this man wasn't a clan knight but dedicated enough to try and con a Warlock, Hexis could make use of that. A few more adjustments, some tips and planning from him and the conman would do his work well enough. Not enough to pretend to be from clan Altosk of course - but from a distant clan, it could work out.

There was one skillset all surface knights had of which a conman simply could not hope to pretend - the surface schools of combat. All knights were masters with their blades and daggers. Simply wearing armor on the surface was something only their elite warriors could afford.

"Have him tested." Hexis said, waving a hand. "Your master of arms here might not recognize the strange combat arts that savages use, but I've seen it in action firsthand. I'll be the judge."

The butler nodded, "I have already accounted that you would wish for him to be tested directly." He waved down at the courtyard to a group of soldiers. One waved back, then gave a lazy point directly at the waiting knight, gathering up the men around him.

Six undersider knights walked forward across the ground a moment later, weapons drawn out. Simple steel practice blades, made to mimic occult blades. The clan knight remained seated, helmet remaining staring straight ahead.

The lead Undersider Lieutenant began to call out instructions to his team, the group of six taking a practiced formation.

Clan knights were well known to be excellent duelists, reliably taking out even veteran soldiers. Only Imperial Imperators could take on clan knights and win.

Things changed once larger scales were applied. Undersider knights were trained to fight as a unit, against an opposing unit of knights. Throw two Undersiders against a clan knight and the surface savage would run circles around them, easily splitting them apart and cutting them down.

Throw a good number of clan knights against the same amount of undersiders, and the fight was far more even. Now the Undersiders had the numbers to respond to division attempts, had cohesion to retaliate and protect their squadmates. Clan knights weren't ignorant to working with each other, but their battles were far more fluid and relied on individuals being able to move on their feet. An Undersider formation was tailor built and drilled on remaining together as a whole unit.

"Why six against one single knight?" Hexis asked, curious why the man at arms decided to drag an entire wing for this demonstration. The warlock only needed one example to verify the combat techniques. "Have they really been spooked enough to go that far?"

Sebastis nodded. "He has not yet been beaten, your magnificence. A team of four tried earlier and they were eliminated."

"I see." Hexis muttered, pondering. The butler had been smart, he'd waited until Hexis was directly here to verify in person. That boast would have rung hollow if they had been just words in the wind.

Hexis watched as the knight stood up slowly, drawing out two practice blades and taking one of the strange stances surface knights fought with. He approved, that matched his memories perfectly.

First time he'd seen surface dwellers take arms, he'd thought it looked ridiculous. Especially the one where they had two fingers pointed right at the enemy, while their blades were lifted far above their head. Something about using the fingers to guide the blade like snow in the wind, or other philosophy like so. They were filled with such things.

He hadn't thought it so ridiculous after he'd seen the techniques in true action. Whatever they did, it worked. To a point. One against six was far past that point.

The six undersiders advanced as a line, each keeping their blades ready to both protect themselves and the soldier to their sides. Traditional, elegant, and efficient.

The lone knight held his ground, waiting. Then took a step forward and probed the defense with a quick lunge and a set of flying movements. The flowing rags around him made the knight look more like a wraith, skirting about the defensive line.

The line battered him back, following their own experience. The knight darted off to the side, and the line readjusted instantly to keep him fended off at all times. Feints or attempts to bait out the men in the line failed as well. The undersiders refused to break formation for any reason, even to surround one single lone target. The Lieutenant continued barking out orders, moving the line in directions that would slowly pen the knight against a wall.

Once the knight had no place to escape to, it would be over.

"He's moving rather fast for a knight. Twenty years? Possibly twenty five." Hexis muttered, analyzing. "Fortunate for us to find such a veteran guide."

"I take it you already approve?" Sebastis asked, preening. He'd been the one who'd hunted down this rumor in the first place. It was his head on the stake here, but Hexis didn't hire fools. He had been reasonably confident his personal butler wasn't going to be fooled by a simple conman. The man has been in the business for years now.

"I do approve." The warlock said, waving a hand for silence. He wanted to focus. There was far more to this knight than met the eyes.

In general, knights grew faster with more years of experience. Part of the reason Imperials and Undersiders kept technique numbers to a minimum. The less there was to practice, the faster those simple movements could be internalized. In a few years, a soldier was considered a veteran and already moving at near peak speed. A decade or more and those movements would come close to what Imperators could do.

That worked for the kinds of battles Undersiders and Imperials had to fight in, mostly against machines or large armies from another city where individual skills weren't the deciding factor but rather positioning and follow through. But surface dwellers were hyper-specialized in killing other knights, and their combat techniques were ridiculously large since every movement eventually had a counter developed, and that counter had a counter-counter. And so forth until the entire tree of possible movements was stupidly vast.

Not to mention there wasn't just one, but three entirely different schools. Took decades to master that many techniques to any kind of speed. On the other hand, even the fastest Undersider wasn't going to be able to beat a fully realized clan knight. Those three schools of combat were far too effective for something like faster speed to overcome. An Imperator could out-speed something like that, but they were freaks of nature capable of attacking almost too fast to see.

Against machines, clan knights weren't that much more efficient than regular soldiers even at the highest levels of skill, and so there was little point to learning those schools down here besides a passing hobby for some of the richer nobles.

Regardless - surface culture was all about reputation. A veteran knight was someone important within the clan who has been around for a long enough time to be well known, and so someone Hexis could use to get an easy head start into it.

"What is a knight like this doing wandering alone?" He muttered, watching as the surface dweller not only survived the onslaught - but began to dismantle the six Undersiders. Speed seemed to alternate often, almost as if the knight was making use of only what he needed and relaxing otherwise.

An… odd fighting style. Speed was a constant thing. Once it was developed, it was hard to consciously turn off or limit by default. Hexis hadn't seen anyone able to modulate speed like this.

Something was off. He suspected the knight wasn't showing his true potential, this all reeked of obfuscation.

From a man who could survive alone in the middle of a devil's nest, and return with trophies hunted down. Yes, there was more to this.

The movements changed up, the knight deviating from the regular movements Hexis was used to seeing. Now they looked far more wild and made up on the spot. Pairing up with positioning, looking more like a hammer probing among the shell of an oyster, seeking a weak point. He was adjusting.

A moment passed, and the knight lunged right into the formation, slipping through like silk pulled over a smooth rock.

The undersider pair that should have stopped him had been a moment too slow in moving correctly. They were thrown off balance, tossed on the ground or tripped in one fluid motion. The knight then began to strike away at the exposed line, blades flashing out in quick successive blows that lingered just long enough to deal damage. And quick enough to avoid retaliation.

The undersider line reformed swiftly, turning around on themselves and advancing again. Two knights had been eliminated, the armors calculating connection time between blade and plate as long enough to break a shield. And the strike points fatal.

Hexis had seen enough to make a decision already. Watching the knight break a group of six and win was something Hexis remained simply for the novelty at this point.

The Altosk knight continued with the pattern. Find a weak point, break through, eliminate one or two knights, and reset the fight afterwards. And none of the Undersiders could do anything against it.

Eventually, only one knight remained, the last Undersider who's formation had been too flawless for the clan knight to exploit. Unfortunately for the lieutenant, all his training and skills were worthless when he had no team to fight with.

The grim realization of being pitted against a clan knight in singular combat surely passed through the doomed knight's head. Still, the man took a step forward, weapon sticking to his fundamentals to the very end.

The surface dweller nodded slowly, raising his blades once more in a different stance. Then advanced and executed a flurry of strikes. There wasn't any mercy or playing around. Two seconds was all that the Lieutenant could survive, not even managing to parry a single strike.

"It seems the pure soul guides us even now." Hexis said. "And this knight has mentioned nothing about why he's around here alone instead of with his clan?"

"No, your magnificence." Sebastis said. "Only that he seeks passage up to the surface as quickly as possible."

"A most fortunate request. I just so happen to wish for the same. Now that we have our guide, I see no reason to delay our departure."

"Is one clan knight all you need as a guide? We may find more if we continue the search for a week. Perhaps one of the further off cities happens to have an expedition team passing by."

"I would gather a few more. Normally. They always come as a group. But a single knight of his skill from his own clan is something else entirely. We have all the excuse we need to be welcomed as a guest among their ranks, no need to waste more time with anything else. Bring him to me, I would like to question his motives directly."

"It shall be done at once." Sebastis said, bowing deep before scurrying off.

Hexis watched as the knight sat back down in the courtyard, waiting for the next fool to challenge him.

But there were many ways of fighting. And just like the surface knight had utterly demolished his opponents, Hexis had his own way of fighting that this knight might not be as well guarded against.

"And Sebastis?" Hexis asked, keeping his eyes fixed down at his target. "Bring out the tea."

Tea was served by his maid, and set down in an ornate pot before two delicate cups of gold and white ceramic. Behind the warlock, two more maids waited at the ready, while his personal butler stayed off on his right hand side, standing like the rest.

"Have you had Yalsbran vine tea before?" Hexis asked, hands folded over his lap as he watched the knight before them all.

No answer.

That worked fine for the warlock, he preferred it. "Few have. It is a rare and fussy plant you see, refusing to grow in cultivated fields. Like certain mushrooms. It only grows out in very specific mite biomes. Men have tried for years to discover the secrets. Even consulted mitespeakers. Imagine that. Asking mites for help growing a plant."

The knight said nothing, helmet unmoving.

"Naturally, obtaining such a plant is a delicate process. I don't mean brewing it either. Logistics. Everything always comes down to paperwork. Have to have both a skilled gardener who knows how to trim and collect the vines, and a full escort detail to make sure such a person can make it to the groves without being killed. And then having the right servant who knows how to best bring out the bold flavors from such a vine, given that there will be few opportunities to practice. To cut out only the parts that are useful, boil only what's needed and skim off the waste so only what's needed remains. To brew this tea, it took an entire team working together from multiple different disciplines."

He waved to his maid. The white leather gloves she wore weren't simply for show, the pot itself was preheated right down to the handles.

Hexis watched the amber liquid leave seamlessly the spout. "The right pot is a process in of itself as well. As there are no tea remains if brewed correctly, no strainer is needed. Presentation, thus, must take a step forward. Fluid engineers had to mathematically model a perfect spout that would leave no splashing. The inner walls have to be uniform and perfectly smooth, as even rough texture, divots or the smallest burs will create flow separation. Even the nozzle was machined to a knife's edge by a master craftsman. This pot alone is worth a small fortune."

Indeed, the maid rose the sprout up further, expertly tilting the tea to keep the flow constant, ending with one sharp twist of her wrist to cut the flow at once. She repeated the process on the next cup then set aside the pot. Two seconds was all she took for each cup. And both ended with exactly the same amount.

The knight remained watching. No sign of movement.

"I see this as a metaphor for life. Every small detail matters, put together, to create something. A caravan to the surface is like this tea. A navigator to lead the direction, soldiers to protect the convoy, engineers to keep the airspeeder running, logistics teams to prepare food, water, and vet the right people. And finally, one guide for the surface itself. The question now is if you are that missing piece?"

"You would not have brought me here to speak to you if you had not already decided." The knight said. His voice was strange, almost echoed. As if the armor was repeating at the same time. An odd request to make to relic armor, but again, surface savages were just as obsessed as he was in presentation. In their own ways.

"Indeed." Hexis said, taking his cup and smelling the vapors for a moment. Everything was already pre-dissolved within the tea. To add sugar or additional ingredients now would be to insult the brewmaster. "However, if we are to work together, I need to know more about you. Strange men walking from the far reaches should not be blindly trusted after all."

"You do not need to know more about me, warlock." The knight said. "You only need to know what I can do."

"Distrustful?"

"No. Disinterested."

He nodded. Regrettable that a display of Yalsbran vine tea seemed more wasted on such a hick. Most Undersider delegates would have been awed by his speech earlier. But not every tool could be used in every situation.

The tea was very tasty on its own regardless. Even if the company was lacking in social graces, Hexis wasn't going to let one stone man ruin an otherwise perfect cup of tea. Life had to be savored.

"We'll be departing tomorrow at fifth bell. Engineers are currently outfitting three airspeeders, two for protection detail and the third for my own comfort. I expect a day's worth of travel to reach an ingress point on the surface, followed by a straight line through the white wastes. I assume you have no issue with joining our convoy as a guide?"

"No issue." He said.

"Soldiers I have on hand will be in charge of combat should the metal devils get in our way. Your Othersiders traditionally do not attack any Undersider delegations, for obvious reasons. And particularly not one with a warlock aboard. You will be hired not as a bodyguard like most surface knights generally are, but as a guide and introduction to the clan. Do we have an agreement on this? You may come with us, but in exchange I want access into your clan."

"The clan will decide that. I cannot assure that you will be welcomed." The surface knight warned.

Hexis tutted, waving the issue off. Then took a deep sip of his tea, breathing in the warm air to get the full flavor.

The knight wanted to return home. If he were desperate, he would have given Hexis any kind of reassurances or said anything at all to be part of his convoy. That the knight chose to give Hexis a more real answer was information inadvertently whispered.

Alone out in the wilds, but not desperate to return home. Despite the impending attack from the Otherside. And clearly capable of fighting. Was such a person related to the sword saint? A discarded disciple? Or one that was separated away during the fight with a Feather?

Yes, this man was absolutely part of whatever conspiracy surrounded clan Altosk, Hexis concluded by his second sip. Already moving on from his conclusion to the next topic.

"Your clan will not reject me." Hexis said. "I am well informed of what the stakes are. The Othersiders above are massing up to sweep through the white wastes in numbers not seen for… well, ever. Even the Undersider cities nearby are beginning to worry that your unfriendly neighbors will have eyes bigger than their stomachs."

"We will not falter to animals." The knight said, a little too confident. Confirming Hexis's suspicions.

"Yes." Hexis said. "Yes, I am also quite certain you won't. You do have a sword saint, four disciples and a Deathless. Rumors are also floating around about the current war effort. I'm sure you've heard already, given your current answer. Why, many of it seems outright… fantastical."

The relic knight said nothing. His cup remained untouched, rapidly cooling past the optimal temperature.

He wouldn't be able to bring Yalsbran vines with him, those had a notorious half-life when it comes to flavor, but the teaset was versatile and could easily be used by a skilled brewmaster. Surely someone in clan Altosk could understand the deep flavors of tea, although he suspected it would be one of their traders. The few surface dwellers allowed to venture underground, and trained to negotiate with people like himself. And given the current alert state, all the clan's traders would be locked down to keep them safe. So he would find at least some nugget of civilization deep within those walls.

"Might I have your name then? That, at least, should be fine to know, my mysterious friend." He asked, reaching out for the unused cup and replacing it with his empty one. An extremely rude and uncouth gesture by anyone's common sense, but Hexis was fond of his little teas and this particular one was his favorite. He wasn't going to watch a cup be wasted. Nor did he think the knight cared about such displays in the first place.

"Sagrius Winterscar." The man said.

"Very well then, mister Winterscar." Hexis said, raising the second cup up in a small toast. "To the road ahead. Perhaps on the journey there, you will let me know more about what left a man such as you, all alone down here. I am sure that would be quite an interesting and thrilling tale."

And possibly give more clues about the rumored sword saint herself.

Seems his work had started before he'd even stepped through the clan gates.

Next chapter - The grand return home

Book 5 - Chapter 11 - The grand return home

"Has it always been this busy?" I asked, watching through the glass cockpit as the clan shelter approached in the distance.

Airspeeders were looming around like black mountains on the horizon, slowly moving. Some shot off, engines roaring back to full power. Others were returning back home, waiting their turn for a hangar to be prepared and ready to accept them.

The slaver camp had been mostly uneventful after we'd eliminated the resistance. The spy team had easily followed instructions and stepped out into the safe zone outside, waiting for Teed to zip by and pick them up while the rest of us were breaking everything inside the compound.

We remained to help some of the victims restore some order and keep everything from devolving into infighting, but we also couldn't stay there forever. For that many people all recently freed and looking to return home, it would take days to organize where all the airspeeders would be going, and who would be going where. Days we didn't have.

Icestride handled the politics of it, selecting people he recognized as competent and giving them endorsements. From there, it was made clear they had to handle the rest on their own and we'd be gone. Othersiders generally didn't want to go anywhere near clans, given that clan life was too strict and came with too many expectations.

And clanners we found who had been caught by slavers wanted to return to their home clan, not join a new one. We left within a few hours of ending the operation. Wrath was happily munching away at both data recovered and new food items she'd found in their kitchens. The armors the slavers had gotten their hands on was send up there by traders, specifically the new Chosen.

Not sure of those Chosen were the same ones that had been sent into our clan earlier, or another set from somewhere else. Wrath confirmed it wasn't any of her people, they wouldn't have traded with Othersiders. And if they'd gotten their hands on this much armor, they wouldn't be sending it off either.

Something was off about all this, but with only one side of the story and data, we couldn't make any conclusions. Best I could figure, was that this was To'Aacar's original plan continuing forward on the rails he'd set up ahead of time. Even if the head is chopped off, the body still hasn't died off yet.

Given that the raider base was a staging ground to launch attacks at the clan, the distance from here to home was crossed in under a day. Hardly had to sleep through any of it either.

"Busy time of the season, right before the ball." Teed said, chuckling. "Lord Atius isn't sitting around waiting for the guests to arrive. If they want to dance aggressively, he's showing them we got the better footwork. They're probably very curious about what we've been up to."

"That or Shadowsong wants to see his daughter as fast as possible." I said.

"That's probably the bigger weight." Teed nodded. "Small favors the First Blade can push for."

Far off to the side, a smaller group of frigates were camped out, red paint streaks with black flags of carrying skull and bones. Pirates. Likely the ones I'd met personally a while ago. "Huh, they actually showed up." I said, zooming in on them. "They've got guts or they're desperate."

Crates and evo-tents were setup around the parked airspeeders. The kind of longer term setup instead of short day-long stays. They were far off from the clan, snuggled up next to the foot of the mountainside

"They're missing three armors, and they want those back."

"Not allowed to step into the clan doors I take it?" I asked. "They look about as smushed off to the side as possible."

"Of course they'd be." Teed said. "Religious missionaries from the Underground are one thing. Pirates? Easy to tell them they can stay outside in the cold if they know what's good for them. Only ones allowed in the clan are their officers, and only when command wants to talk to them."

"Do we got to worry about them?"

"Naw, they're like wild animals - far more afraid of you than you are of them. Been freezing their butts in the same place for the past week now and haven't made a peep. Probably terrified by now watching how we're racking win after win."

"Isn't that a good thing for them? War might be over before they even need to stick their necks out. If I were a random pirate mook, I'd be pretty happy with that."

Teed chuckled again, "You'd have a point, but they're pirates and they know they're pirates. The day they do get work passed over to them, it'll be to act as a bullet sponge. Or other noble jobs of the like. Missile bait, railgun skirt flapper, occult blade pincushion. You name it. They're dreading it."

"Why hasn't their crew just gone 'scrap it', mutinied and gone back home?" I knew the Shadowsongs were currently using that fleet admiral's private armaments. But what was keeping them in line now?

"Won't be home to them anymore if they come back without their armor. Think about it from their boots, kid. Their job is to prey on slavers, raiders, othersider trade barons and their ilk, and occasionally exposed clans. Can't do that job well if they don't have relic armor. So either they grit their teeth and get this done, or they hang up their hat. Plus they're sitting next to a clan they thought was hard pressed, and now we're coming back each day with more looted armor than they'd seen. You'd really want to turn your back to something like that? Clan hospitality rules are keeping us from field testing out our weapon calibrations and that's all that's standing between us being civil. They wouldn't want to do anything to change that up."

The radio clicked up, pilot jargon flying around. Teed turned his attention and barked off reply confirmations, along with another string of jargon. Pilot speak for 'nice weather, right?'

A moment later, the radio clicked off.

"Good news," Teed said, punching the throttle up and maneuvering the airspeeder forward, slightly tilted to circle around the colony. "We get to skip the line. Next hangar that opens is ours."

The airspeeder came to a slow sliding stop across the churned up snow under us, nose tip pointing straight at one of the massive clan gates. It rumbled open a moment later, wide hexagon teeth slowly pried apart in a deep yawn.

And behind those walls, there were colors and people everywhere. "Oh, forgot we had so many different Houses in our crew." I said, watching the different colors of guards all trying to act more imposing than their counterparts. Light Ice blue and gray for House Icestride, purple and silver for Shadowsongs. Color was the symbol of power, and everyone wanted theirs to pop up. Stormsweepers had their gold, teal and dark blue. Winterscars in the back had their blood red and black, and a whole host of other Houses had shown up to welcome their knights back. But of all the Houses gathered here today, Shadowsong was the only one that had brought a knight with them. I could tell exactly who that was, arms crossed, glaring at the airspeeder slowly being taxied into the hangar.

Most here would be getting sorrowful news and the plate seed of their fallen knight. It was a bittersweet moment. They were always prepared to receive news like that, all knights eventually either died in combat or retired from age, which few ever did. There would be songs and burials to attend to very soon, some of which I might even be invited to.

House Arcbound, far off to the side in their green and black colors, would probably get an interesting bit of news. The armor seed of their original knight, and the walking possessed armor of that same knight. Their house leaders were going to have a bit of trouble fitting in something like that within the framework of traditions.

Teed leaned back in his seat, arms stretched behind his neck. "Home sweet home. Popular day from the looks of things too."

Airlock doors opened up behind me, and Icestride Prime walked through. " If I didn't know better, I would suspect the cockpit of being your second home." He said, helmet taken off, old wrinkles framing his eyes.

"Half right there." I said. "I take it there's something you need me for?"

He nodded. "You and your sister will need to present the Deathless. House Winterscar was the one who convinced these two to make their way to the surface, it's only natural that you introduce them officially to the clan. Hop hop, time to be social."

The welcoming party at the hangar bay were the usual suspects of Reachers running around making sure nothing was on fire or what was supposed to be on fire wasn't getting some fresh air blown in. And Logi sitting in the back, calculating cost and numbers while getting a steady stream of reports on how much was used. They actually had chairs and desks setup to work from.

On returns like these, there'd be one or two Retainer houses who'd bring guards in to welcome back more important members of the house, like knights. That didn't happen too often, small expeditions were sent off all the time to pick clean new sites or gather up frostbloom and meltwater.

Normally, when I'd come back from expeditions, there might be a few plucky friends I'd known waiting to hear what kind of stupidity I got up to this time. But never anyone from my House would be there to greet me in person.

For the past decade since we'd moved from the old clan and settled into the new area, it had been Kidra, Father and I being the only ones bringing in funding - given that the rest of the Winterscars had lost their lives holding the line against slavers.

And of us three, only Kidra actively tried to keep the place from collapsing down into ashes. I wanted to leave, and Father wanted nothing to do with the House itself.

He refused to accept anyone new into the family name back then. He'd put his earnings into the coffer and leave Kidra to manage it, but that's as far as he was willing to go for House Winterscar.

She managed to get a small number of servants with all our combined funds, and that was about all she could do.

So it was an interesting change of pace to have a full guard detail in Winterscar red waiting for us on the other side of the ramp.

Geared up in environmental suits, rifles at the ready. All that just to take it off once we stepped off the airspeeder and walked through the airlock doors back into temperature controlled sections.

Meant that we had to follow through with traditions too. The four Winterscar knights walked out first, escorting Kidra and I down the ramp. They took formation around, greeted the House guard with a blade tap to their chest plates, then turned as one to the two of us.

The house guard followed their own ritual and gave us a deep bow.

Off to the side, I could see Ankah standing tall before her Father, with her two minions in tow. No words said, but likely they were speaking through private comms. His helmet shifted slightly, turning my direction. Then gave a very slight nod.

"Did... Did the Shadowsong prime just acknowledge us?" Kidra asked, sounding caught surprised for the first time in a long while. She looked behind her, to see if he'd given the signal to anyone else. When she found no-one that could fit the story, she had to conclude it was for us he'd given the nod. "That seems to be as close to a thank-you as I've ever seen from a Shadowsong. And from their house prime of all people. I had thought the man hated us with a passion?"

"Things changed up a bit while you were away." I said. "Could almost consider us friends now. Schemers is more appropriate though."

"One thing at a time." Kidra stopped, and turned to look directly at me. "How are you friends with Ikusari Shadowsong? That man has meddled in every single step I took to restore the House up. And you - of all people - managed to patch that rift up somehow?"

"Yep."

She paused for a moment. "How you accomplished this, I'm almost afraid to ask."

"Well, if I start telling the story here, I'm afraid I'll be a tad dramatic."

"Of course you would be. You do not have any other setting than dramatic." She waved me off, watching as the taskmaster was discussing terms with Icestride further off. "We'll talk later, once we're back in the compound."

She turned and gave a hand sign to the guard. We weren't going through the airlock yet, we had to report back to the taskmaster.

We got there just at the right time.

"Excuse me." The man said, taking a moment to pat the sides of his head. "I may have misheard the number. How many relic armors were retrieved?"

"Forty nine armors were retrieved from the secondary mission. Original mission, we have lost the clan lord's armor, and Windrunner's armor. One additional armor gained and given to Arcbound."

"... I see." The taskmaster said, jotting it down on his papers. Then he stopped, and let his pencil rest. "Master Icestride. I'm afraid this has gone beyond my current station. For a recovery of this size, I will need to inform the Chenobi."

"As you will, taskmaster." Icestride said. "However, there is more to declare."

I couldn't see what his face looked like given he wore an evosuit with goggles, but the stiff posture gave me a few hints. "More to declare?" He asked, voice tiny.

"Aye. In addition to the spy team we've recovered, two additional passengers have been brought along with us from the Underground. These guests have been given guestrights and hospitality under the authority of the Winterscar prime."

The taskmaster nodded, likely expecting royalty or delegates. This was back into his home territory, things he was used to working with and not clan-sized numbers of relic armors. He turned to Kidra, hand ready to write down the paperwork needed. "Lady Winterscar, to which does clan Altosk offer welcome?"

"Two Deathless." She said.

The man looked up at Kidra. Then looked at me. Then looked at Icestride. As any of us were going to step in and tell him we were all having a giggle at any moment now.

We all looked back at him, dead serious.

Icestride reached a hand out and patted the man's shoulders. "I do believe what you mentioned earlier is accurate. The Chenobi are likely more prepared to handle such events."

He stayed frozen for a moment, then nodded, giving a short bow. "I will fetch them at once, master knights."

"That went well." I said. "I thought Logi were supposed to be unflappable?"

"There is a limit to everything, dear brother." Kidra said.

"Well, you do have some part of the blame, Lady Winterscar. You could have made the statement a tad less dramatic." Icestride said, mirth in his old voice.

"We Winterscars seem to be dramatic by nature, as I've learned time and time again." Kidra said, shooting me a glance.

Icestride chuckled, "In this case, I would have done exactly the same. Not very often I've tossed around such heavy returns from an expedition. Daresay the taskmaster will have an entertaining story for the canteen now."

I gave a look back at the airspeeder while Icestride and Kidra traded words. In the cockpit, I could see through the windows as Father took a step into the light and watched over us. Teed looked more like he was trying to hide from the man, sinking deep into his chair. He was sitting around in the same area as a brooding six foot something armored demi-god who'd he'd been told wouldn't be going into the cockpit.

That was before the doors to the hangar sealed up. I'd listen to Abraxas to the letter on this. Hiding inside the clan's walls was safe enough. Tsuya's kill team wasn't omnipresent, and whoever they were, they weren't looking through walls.

Chenobi were quick to the scene, likely having already been called for by nature of this being the airspeeder the clan lord and his elites had departed on.

Taskmaster must have informed them already of our claims, since they showed no surprise when we repeated what we'd recovered. Reachers who were disembarking sealed crates were doing so with a lot more reverence now, compared to earlier when they thought they were tossing around ammunition or food supplies.

Word spreads faster than cold air in thin halls.

"I have registered your two charges, Lady Winterscar." The Chenobi said, giving a short bow. "They are free to enter the clan."

"A rather fast process. No oaths from me on their character needed?" Kidra asked. We'd skipped a few dozen steps so far, with the Chenobi asking their names and then skipping every other ceremonial section.

"With respect, these are Deathless. To even ask would be an insult." He said.

Kidra nodded, then dialed up the comms channel to speak directly to Wrath and Father. With the pair declared officially, they were permitted to take a step off the airspeeder into clan territory.

This was where murmurs and discussion came to a complete stop. Wrath stepped down, and if her wings didn't draw attention, everything else about her did. At least we could convince her to not have her halo around. Anyone who knew Feathers would recognize those.

Father walked down a few steps behind her, eternally grimacing even in Avalis's body.

They both looked human. And neither had helmets equipped, despite the hangar having just started the heat cycle.

There was only one person known who could walk in temperatures like this with no danger. And everyone in the hangar knew it. Rumors had already been buzzing around by now, but this was proof in the flesh.

A beat passed before a few dozen men and women all took a kneeling bow before the pair. Another beat passed and the rest of the room followed suit.

Shadowsong stood back up first, walking over to greet Wrath first. Ankah followed behind.

From the cockpit I could see Teed glued to the window looking straight down at the events. He wasn't the only one, a few other faces were crowed around the windows. Gunners, copilots and the rest of the airspeeder crew who hadn't been able to get a good view from the ramp had scrambled over to invade the cockpit instead.

Meanwhile Wrath's eyes were darting around the hangar, constantly bouncing around and internalizing details. When it came to the surface, her knowledge only came from information recorded by Undersiders, generally pilgrims. Everything was new to her here.

The crew had come to know Wrath and Father in more detail within the ship's hold. We had almost a week of travel to play card games and unwind before we we hit the slave camp like a railgun shell. But watching other people meet Deathless for the first time was still a good show.

"Clan Altosk greets the Deathless." Shadowsong said, giving a traditional salute. "I am Ikusari Shadowsong, First Blade of the clan lord and current commander of the clan's defense forces. Lord Atius has been alerted to your arrival and will greet you in person in a moment."

Wrath turned her attention to Shadowsong. "Shadowsong? You must be Ankah's family then. I consider her a good friend."

Shadowsong took a look back at Ankah, who nodded.

"I am relieved to hear that." He said quietly. "I hope our House can extend the same friendship forward."

"I would appreciate that." Wrath said, smiling. Then paused. "Oh, Greetings. I am Hecate. A Deathless from the lower strata. I have come here to help with the war."

"Clan Altosk graciously accepts the help of a Deathless." He said, then slightly turned his attention to Father next. The man had caught up to Wrath and stood next to her now, crossed arms across his chest and a deeper scowl. "Ikusari." Was the only thing he said.

Shadowsong went still. "Impossible." He whispered. "You died."

"Returning to life is something we Deathless are known for." Father said without a pause, waving a hand.

"... Indeed, you do." His helmet slowly turned to me, as if to ask if I had something to do with all this scrapshit.

I shot him a cheeky thumbs up.

Next chapter - Strange culture (T)

Book 5 - Chapter 12 - Strange culture (T)

To'Wrathh was impressed by the maximum speed of the surface airspeeder, considering its age and state of repair. Most of the airspeeders found underground were barely functional, either improperly replicated by mites or cannibalized for parts by other colonies as the frigate was gradually pushed upward. It was a statistical miracle that a few correctly built airspeeders still managed to reach the surface, given their size.

She could estimate the average number that would eventually make their way to the Undersiders each year, and the smaller number that would evade those cities and scout parties to ascend to the surface. There, they would be left stranded, half-buried in ice and exposed to the elements. However, she couldn't predict where these events would occur.

The surface-dwelling humans were no different.

As a result, they took meticulous care of the gear and equipment they had access to. The war frigate piloted by a man named Teed was nearly two and a half centuries old, according to her scanner suite and material analysis. She initially struggled to believe that something with such primitive construction and no self-repair capabilities could last so long until she requested confirmation from the human relic armors around her.

The ancient armors found no reason to dispute her findings and provided her with even more detailed schematics from their own scans.

A significant portion of the frigate's lifespan could have been spent frozen in ice, perfectly preserved. However, the other half clearly saw heavy use. It had been constantly repaired, refurbished, and fitted with parts from older airspeeders that had flown their final run decades earlier.

To'Wrathh spent her days talking with the surface dwellers inside the small ship as it traversed the white wastes. Her curiosity drove her now that she was free from any other pressing concerns.

At first, they were reserved, but soon they became more open, proudly sharing their heritage and accomplishments. Their meticulous care for their equipment was evident. When she asked for more information about their political structure and caste system, they grew hesitant.

Those subjects were better suited for the heads of Houses, like the ones already aboard her airspeeder.

Thus, Kidra was the first person To'Wrathh spoke with about her clan's politics. She appeared to know far more than Keith about the hidden intricacies and landscape. To'Wrathh then sought to compare this information with Kidra's rival, Ankah, the heir to Shadowsong, a large and traditionally adversarial house to the Winterscars.

As Ankah described it, their house held ancient nobility and prioritized honor above all else. They viewed the Winterscars' willingness to stoop to any level to achieve their goals as a personal insult.

When To'Wrathh asked Keith for his opinion, he confidently retorted that the Shadowsongs were all "sore losers who couldn't adapt to doing their own laundry if they tried, even if the washing machines came with training wheels."

Ankah countered that handling laundry was the servants' duty, as it was beneath their station to engage in such menial tasks.

This response didn't provoke the reaction she expected; he merely waved both hands in her direction, as if all the evidence he needed was standing right in front of him.

Kidra suggested that To'Wrathh form her own opinions and judgments on inner politics by speaking to others within the clan when she had the opportunity. The Feather took this to heart, starting her investigation by confirming whether laundry machines indeed came with training wheels, as it seemed unlikely that such a feature would be helpful.

The answer was no, and according to everyone else in the airspeeder, Keith was a "lying liar who lies." It was a rare moment when both Ankah and Kidra agreed with each other.

Tenisent, however, refused to engage in the topic at all, asserting that it was a waste of time in the first place—not the laundry machines, but the politics. He didn't bother to say a word about laundry.

So, when To'Wrathh arrived at the clan, she found herself rather unprepared for what to expect.

The standoff between Tenisent and Shadowsong was the first oddity she found. The two stared at one another for longer than To'Wrathh considered necessary. In the tense silence that filled the hangar, she noticed the nervous glances exchanged by the surrounding clan members. She sent a comms request to Keith to inquire about this development. His armor did have a language engram with anger issues, but the armor's base AI was ambivalent to her. Requests like this were processed by the armor, not the engram. Thankfully.

"Is such a confrontation normal within your culture?" She asked, keeping her physical voice muted and only communicating through the comms channel. The rest of the hangar was silent, and To'Wrathh felt her feelings weren't alone in the space. Nor did she want to talk out loud and be singled out.

"Sometimes." Keith answered back, giving a slight shrug, the helmet keeping his answers private despite the silence. "They've got some history."

"I understand. A rivalry of sorts." Similar to herself and Kidra. Yes, she did remember having standoffs like this when she first met Kidra. Fond memories.

"Of sorts." Keith said. "Far as I get it, Shadowsong hates every Winterscar with a passion, except for Father who gets a 'he's okay, I guess.' if you keep asking. Seeing him alive again is probably throwing him for a spin. Not like I knew he was haunting you at the time and I'd find him again, so I had no chance to ever tell him about it before I left."

"Tenisent was not haunting me." To'Wrathh said. "He was a prisoner that I used for advice and later assisted me against Relinquished when I shifted sides."

"Was he a disembodied soul?"

"Yes."

"Was he stuck at your side at all times?"

"... Yes."

"At any point, did he threaten to break free and find a way to kill you?"

"I see your point. I withdraw my argument."

"Wait." Keith paused, as if mentally rebooting. "That's not fair. You don't get to just slink away like that! Where's the fun?"

"I fail to see why further debate is necessary? Your argument was compelling and logical."

"But I enjoy arguing about pointless topics, throw me a bone here Wrath."

"There is no bone to throw." To'Wrathh said, paused and then came up with a better answer. "Ghosts do not have bones to throw, Keith."

Keith paused, then groaned. "You're insufferable, I want you to know this."

"I have noted that opinion, and disregarded it. Thank you." She answered back. "To the matter at hand, why have these two not said a word to each other yet? Should there not be taunts or gloating involved?"

When she'd confronted Kidra, it was only natural to do so. Perhaps it really was something more unique to Feathers. These two humans didn't say a word to each other.

"My bets are that Shadowsong is debating how much to ask directly." Keith said. "We've got a lot of gossip mongers around here. I should know, I'm one of the worst."

"Ask what?" To'Wrathh asked.

"Oh, you know. How's being dead like? Did you bring back any souvenirs from robot hell? Am I going to get challenged for the First Blade title, because I'm rather fond of that? Oh, and are you okay with me having tried to kill your son earlier? Ice under the dig site right?"

"This man attempted to murder you?" To'Wrathh asked, head turning from the confrontation. She wasn't the only one to turn his way; Tenisent's head turned ever so slightly, eyes searching out his son, narrowing.

Keith continued to talk without noticing yet, absentmindedly.

On her end, To'Wrathh was having very mixed feelings about all of this now. Anyone trying to kill Keith was stepping on her territory. The issue seemed to have been resolved however. She had enough behavior data to know Keith tended to cut limbs off enemies he didn't like, and then taunt them about it later. Shadowsong still had all arms and limbs, thus the hostilities were likely resolved already. A pity.

She made a mental note to revisit and make sure the man wouldn't make another attempt, but later. Once she wasn't in front of so many witnesses.

"Oh, that reminds me," Keith said, unaware of To'Wrathh's near murderous thoughts and not yet noticing Tenisent's own death glare. "Will have to explain to Father why Shadowsong and... Ahh scrapshit."

He'd noticed then, To'Wrathh concluded.

"Feathers can eavesdrop better than a house servant with an ear stuck to the wall. And he's a Feather now. You.. uhh, you heard everything I'm guessing?"

Tenisent nodded. Very slowly. Then he turned back to the Shadowsong Prime, "I was told the clan lord was waiting for us." He said out loud, voice ice cold.

Shadowsong nodded back. "Very well… lord Deathless, I will escort you to an audience with him." His head flicked to the side, ordering his guards to split and clear the path to the airlock.

Winterscars and Shadowsong guards moved in formation, escorting the group past the gawking engineers running around the hangar. There wasn't enough room for the full party to cross through, as such they took turns waiting for the cycles to pass.

Soon enough, the group moved through with only a few guards left from both houses around them. The airlock doors sealed shut on the other side, heat cycling through. In the hiss, Tenisent's voice rose. "You tried to kill my son."

Shadowsong paused, pondering how to answer. "I did." He eventually said, resignation in his voice.

It was the wrong answer, and violence was near instant.

Shadowsong's reflexes were significantly faster than any standard human, his dagger already flashing into his hand, parrying two quick hits from Tenisent's own dagger strikes.

Unfortunately for the veteran human, Tenisent wasn't human any longer. His speed went far beyond what any relic knight could stand against in close quarter combat.

Two hits had been parried, but four attacks had been sent. The first was in cold fury. The second, a recalculation against the surprising speed of his opponent, to test the limits. The third strike was a feint, dagger rolling out of Tenisent's hand at the apex point, and the fourth strike wasn't from a dagger at all. His freed hand wrapped around Shadowsong's own exposed weapon hand, dagger and all, then clenched down. A white armored hand grabbed hold of his armor's collar at the same moment, lifted him up and slammed him into the airlock wall, denting it backwards. Shadowsong had tried to slap the grapple away at the same moment, and found his hand punching into an iron wall, regardless of the defense being perfectly timed.

The Winterscar's own dagger clanked on the ground, discarded in that feint to open up his opponent. But the battle was over in a heartbeat. He had no need for a weapon; a Feather's chassis was a weapon on its own.

Shadowsong's armor strained against the pressure, trying to free himself. Cracks began to form on the metal plates as Tenisent's hand slowly crushed down. Nothing the armor could do could escape the vice grip.

"You tried to kill my son." Tenisent repeated, eyes burrowing a hole into Shadowsong's helmet.

"Hold on! Stop-stop-stop!" Keith yelled out, hands grabbing onto Tenisent's arm, trying to pry him away. Kidra seemed to have the same reflex, equally trying to pry the other hand off. Three relic armors working together did absolutely nothing.

To'Wrathh watched the events with interest. She knew the full force a Feather's shell of that generation could exert. This wasn't an execution, it was a demonstration. The man would have been dead several times over by now if Tenisent had wanted it. This was fairly mild.

And, having heard this man nearly killed her human earlier, she felt no reason to interrupt. Rather, she felt displeased at the whole thing. She had been hoping to do the same but considered it would be seen as impolite to do so this early. And here Tenisent demonstrated she had nothing to fear about being impolite in the first place.

Keith didn't seem to realize that, still panicking, turning to her. "Godsdamn it, help!"

"He is not in danger." She answered back, crossing her arms and huffing with annoyance. "Relic armor has innate crush resistance, however it is woefully unprepared against this level of force. If wished for it, he could have easily crushed Shadowsong's hand by now. He's done so before against the slaver knights."

The rest of the guards around the airlock seemed conflicted on what to do. The Winterscar knights had already formed up between Tenisent and the Shadowsong knights, who had equally drawn out weapons and only hesitated on turning them on. The guards outside were scrambling in a flurry, weapons aimed at the opposing house, not quite sure what was going on but ready regardless.

The Shadowsongs were hesitating, unsure of what to do. It was their prime under attack here, but the attacker was Deathless. A demi-god of considerable respect among their culture. To turn weapons on such a guest would go against every basic tenant of their religion, as well as their culture. Nor did they know the Feather was a Winterscar returned from the grave, which may have shifted their choice.

Additionally, considering the discussion was between private comms, the attack would have seemed to come from nowhere. Tenisent's mouth hadn't moved when he'd spoken. And none of the armors had hearing sensors as accurate as a Feather's to overhear Shadowsong's own replies.

It was Ankah who settled the score. She took a step forward, hand extended to her house knights. "Stand down. We can handle it from here." She turned and walked next to Tenisent, who made no move to let her father go. "Would you kindly explain yourself, Lord Deathless?"

"Give me a reason I should not cut him down where he stands." He replied, head still fixated on his struggling prey. He'd answered back on private comms.

"Can you explain why you are holding my father at daggerpoint first?" Ankah asked, following his offer and keeping it equally over private comms.

"Ask him."

She did so, turning to her trapped father.

The fight seemed to go out of the Shadowsong prime that very moment, as if his daughter's voice was all that was needed. He let go of Tenisent's arm and went limp. "I was… emotionally compromised." He said, speaking the events that happened from the moment Kidra had first left the clan.

With the Shadowsong Heiress there to make sure her father's words wouldn't be misunderstood, all details were unraveled without issue.

It settled tensions around the airlock, but did little to help To'Wrathh's own feelings. This man nearly killed her human - before Keith even knew she existed or had met her at least a single time! The thought infuriated her. In another world, she could have chased after Keith only to find him long dead on the surface from some other random human.

Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.

While she silently seethed in her corner, Tenisent slowly lowered the relic knight back on his feet. "It's the boy's choice on how to deal with you." But instead of letting go, he took a step closer, looming over the prime. "However, should you pose a threat to my son or daughter ever again, it will be my choice on how to deal with you. And you will regret that choice every single day of whatever miserable life is left once I am done. Am I clear?"

"I… understand the feeling." Shadowsong said.

There was a pause between the two, before Tenisent shoved the man away in disgust.

"We're done then." Tenisent said, and turned back to the airlock door, waiting for it to blink green as if nothing had happened earlier.

To'Wrathh found it all to be so frustrating. With the matter settled, it would mean she wouldn't be able to do anything. Surely if she tried to break this man's arm now, Keith would get upset at her for it, even if she could technically heal him back up afterwards.

Stupid human. Perhaps this was what Keith had meant earlier about all the fun being taken out of an argument. She didn't want this to be resolved so quickly before she could have her own opinions said.

And so it was with slight irritation that she stepped foot into the clan colony for the first time, not realizing how alien the culture here would truly be.

Next chapter - Gossip never changes (T)

Announcement - KU launched + Community Challenge!

The first book of 12 Miles Below has officially launched on Kindle, KU, and Audible today! It's been two years since I started book 1, and it's been a blast to re-read it!

Even better was the audiobook by Scott Aiello, who's absolutely nailed a lot of the voices. (My favorite has to go to To'Aacar hands down, who sounds even better than my own internal voice for him.)

This launch is absolutely a turning point for the series, since it will be the bedrock for the rest of the book launches. However, the reality is that I'm stepping into the space with a disadvantage as a brand new author.

If you've had a great time reading book 1 or the series up to this point, I kindly ask for your support. Share the news to your friends or on forums, wherever you can! KU downloads are free, as are ratings and reviews! Every review counts this early on, since the snowball effect is very real!

I'm not about to ask for blind support without making it a little fun for everyone though!

I'll upload additional chapter releases as we cross some target rankings on Kindle, a la kickstarter setup :]

The first extra chapter will come at #1000, then at #700, and then at #500, and each 100 after will get another chapter released. If all goes well, we can meet plenty of those targets, which means back-to-back chapters for you guys to enjoy! Just getting one other person to pick up and read could be all the difference between a few hundred ranks due to amazon's algorithm, that's how the series first started on RR - by having just 20 people start reading above the other stories releasing that day.

If you've got a KU account and already wrote a review in the past on RR, duplicate that review to the amazon crowd and call it a day!

Everyone, thanks for reading and supporting the series up to now from the bottom of my heart, here's to writing till the end of the series. Cheers!

Kindle Unlimited link: amazon/B0BWKDF1C7

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Book 5 - Chapter 13 - Gossip never changes (T)

Entry back home turned to be an awkward affair, with both Tenisent and Shadowsong not saying a single word to the other. She had limited exposure to events like this and was unsure if she needed to step in to resolve anything.

Fortunately, no one else seemed to be doing so either, thus To'Wrathh concluded everything was fine. Better than fine, she found this agreeable. The less chatter, the more time she had to examine the colony itself. Beyond the airlock, the world didn't feel too different from a mite maze. An accurate impression given that the colony was originally made by mites and pushed up to the surface at some point in the past.

She could recognize mite-made patterns interwoven with human repairs. Most of the original mite materials and architecture had long ago been covered up by the settlers, like minerals deposited on a stalagmite, one drip of water at a time. Sections replaced, or welded over. More additions adding new walls and fabrics to separate.

The ecosystem here was far more specialized. Insects were clearly actively hunted down given their lack of appearance. She had some guesses given her own experience with the pests among the city logistics. At some point, the surface dwelling humans must have discovered eaten circuits or piles of zapped bug carcasses could cause fires or faults in their system.

Undersider cities were far too large, with insects becoming a near permanent resident if one looked in detail. And any fault or damage was generally non-fatal. Here, she suspected if anything went wrong, it would have far more deadly repercussions.

Their group advanced slowly making a direct line to the clan lord's estate, helmets off and fastened to their sides or shoulders. According to Keith, walking through residential quarters and other such communal places was specifically intended as a morale boost. To see returning knights and other such figures. And given she and Tenisent were pretending to be Deathless, such rumors would have already long ago spread, so quite a few of the people gathered here had come specifically to see them walk by.

The difference between the residential sections of the clan and the outer areas leading into the hangers was stark. One moment they had been walking through small corridors with metal and struts, the next was far more open space. Still just as crowded by metal struts and honeycomb supports, but no longer quite as sealed shut with multiple levels all within sightline.

She did find quite a few humans all gawking, from all levels. Hiding above and looking down, or pretending to be occupied with some task at street level, but their flickering eyes told a different story. Most of them were leveled on her, which seemed natural to To'Wrathh. She was a Feather after all, and her appearance was tailored to be flawless. Her wings twitched at her sides, and she had to stifle down the instinctive need to flare them open before the assembled crowd.

She didn't because Keith would certainly add that to his pile of ammunition whenever he needed to annoy her. And because the thin space around her meant her wings would certainly cut through quite a bit more than air, which would only give her human more ammunition.

To'Wrathh often had to duck, or else hanging balcony gardens would knock into her head. She might also run into fabric dividers that hung above her like spider webs. Intricate designs woven in showed a district theme. Similar to Undersiders, fabric had been used to draw and separate boundaries. Unlike Undersiders who used such things as rooftops, here it was used in every direction to separate the sections. Lights strung on strings glittered above, illuminating all parts of the otherwise cold metal floor. Tapestries flanked the sides, almost acting as a soft divide between the inside of a living section and the outside walking area. Catwalks above her were made for large cargo to pass by, while the narrow streets were more made for foot traffic, and much of it was slowly taken over by the residents.

Flanking the group's sides were Chenobi - human intelligence operative as far as she was told. Straw hats and capes, along with intricate masks of demons, birds, animals, and other mythological creatures were the official garb, and only worn when needed such as now. They said little and acted only as guides, easily clearing the way forward.

The work wasn't difficult for them. Children gave the group a wide berth, as did adults and other dwellers. "Is there no privacy among surface dwellers?" To'Wrathh asked as they passed through. The lack of structural walls meant that there wouldn't be any sound barriers either. Occasionally she passed through large open airlocks that divided districts with thick walls filled with aerogel insulation, but within the actual districts air could travel through a maze of fabrics and metal gratings from one side and reach the other side.

"Honored Deathless, living arrangements among clan culture balance space efficiency with true privacy." Ankah said, waving away the issue. "Only Retainer houses have the right to occupy full sections of the clan habitat. Walls are thick, and they would quickly add up over time. The rest of the castes are expected to work around each other in communes. As I have heard, the masses have sections of the clan they scurry off into when they want true privacy."

"The 'masses' as you claim are the lifeblood of the clan." Kidra said, sounding annoyed. "You should consider your words more carefully, Shadowsong."

"Have I offered them any insult? No, I have not, merely stated the truth of the matter. The masses are exactly that - lower caste who we have a responsibility to shepard." Ankah said. "False modesty does not fit well on anyone's shoulders, Winterscar. Without our work and sacrifice, the clan would cease to function. You would do well to wear your title with the honorifics that it demands, you are no longer an heiress after all. It is an insult to the rest of the Houses to not do so given your rank."

"This would be where I'd tune out, just heads up." Kieth said, tapping her with his armor's elbow for attention. "They get into politics and won't ever shut up. Trust me, I learned from experience."

She nodded, refocusing on the people themselves while she left the discussion between Kidra and Ankah as background detail. Keith had been correct, the two had quickly devolved into thinly veiled insults. Nothing To'Wrathh could use, it was far too cordial and polite. To'Wrathh felt smug satisfaction at this however. It was good to know that in a heated fight with Kidra, she could now out-insult her rival, thanks to having the superior teacher. Keith's engram had taught her far more efficient and effective insults.

"The clothing style within the surface clan is an oddity compared to Undersiders," she said, tilting her head and taking further scans. "I would have expected far more layers in order to maximize heat conservation."

No two outfits seemed exactly the same, but there was a sense of unity to it all. A common set of base templates that were modified by hand afterwards? Certainly there were many smaller details that seemed hand-sown, given the variation.

"Depends on the ration forecast… we should be running into a screen anytime now and I'll show you." Keith said, shrugging, looking around their path for something.

"Ration?" To'wrathh asked.

"He means energy consumption," Ankah corrected, pulling herself from the heated debate. "Some days could have faults or damages that Reachers need to fix, which can tax the central heating systems. Or not enough power cells are available to keep the heating at certain levels. This is called a forecast."

"There's a screen now," Keith said, pointing out a wall-mounted communal screen at the end of a main branch point in the path. She'd seen these scattered around, showing general news and updates people had to know.

She'd pointed out a lower section on the screen. One dedicated to overall energy usage, and described spots where repairs or other such work were being done. The information fit neatly into what she'd already seen.

The clan did seem far more interconnected, if they disseminated information publicly like so instead of expecting citizens to privately inform themselves like Capra'Nor had. Or perhaps the people here simply did not have the means to each own personal computers connected to networks. She was surprised such things weren't vandalized, although far too many things seemed untended and unguarded compared to Undersider cities already. What was one more item to the list?

"As the esteemed princess mentioned," Keith said, adding emphasis on the titles, "If they announce if there's a shortage, then people go back home and put on their phuyu stuff. Or already knew to bring it with them to wherever they're working at."

"Phuyu?"

"Different clothing fashions, phuyu is the layers you're probably thinking about. Gloves, full sealed jackets, earmuffs or facemasks depending on how cold it'll get. Like a budget version of an evo-suit, without the backpack heater and dense fabric."

"And if there is no shortage of power?"

"That's when we have better heating like this everywhere. No gloves, breathable fabrics, less things to wash. Lets us walk around in more comfort. I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to fashion, if it works and looks good enough even when it's dirty, I'll be wearing it." Keith gave a grin at that. "Plus, less fabric means you can haggle it down."

"There's three main fashions, from which all sub-fashions derive," Kidra explained, taking over. "Phuyu for days where there is minimal heating or you are required to go into sections of the clan that suffer the same. Phsu clothing is what you're seeing, with exposed skin. Samoi is the middle ground, with only hands and face exposed to the air. And there's also specific clothing to wear when you'll arrive to the bath, I'll explain the etiquette there later."

"I see." Wrath said, nodding. "Would I need a set of all three styles in order to fit in?"

"Cold forecasts are usually only caused by a mechanical failure somewhere in the clan, if the Reachers fail at their expected maintenance task." Ankah said. "So a few sets of phsu are generally what you would mostly use."

"I would have assumed power cell usage would be maximized by always having your 'phuyu' clothing set. This seems suboptimal."

"Clothing must be an exception." Ankah immediately said. "I shudder at the idea of having to wear phuyu every single day for the rest of my days. Barbaric."

"There needs to be some lines drawn between morale and comfort against survival," Kidra said nodding with Ankah, which seemed to surprise the rest of the group. "If a clan expands only as fast as their stockpile of power cells can support, they'll never need to turn down the heating levels."

"It is all a moot point in the end," Ankah continued, looking To'Wrathh up and down. "Since you are… Deathless and immune to any temperature difference, I doubt you have need for the other two styles. They look quite terrible besides, as mentioned. It would hardly be fitting to wear such dregery."

To'Wrathh could tell Ankah's words were being overheard. While the people were clearly continuing with their own tasks and goals, there was a marked silence among them all, with only hushes and whispers as the group passed through.

"Survival bias," Keith countered, huffing. "Phuyu clothing is just as good looking, only it's worn in times of difficulty and so it gets a bad rep. I find the utilitarian focus pretty handy. More pockets."

"I have spent enough time in an evo-suit. I refuse to feel the same way walking through the halls of my own home. But of course, a pipe weasel like yourself would appreciate more pockets." Ankah said, her voice dripping with disdain. "Even with your newfound wealth, I suppose old habits will not fade easily. One a bug, always a bug."

"I think she just implied I'm a thief," Keith said, looking over to To'Wrathh with an expression she registered as ninety three percent mock-hurt. "I am so extremely wounded by this accusation. Won't someone stand up for me? Someone who has metal wings and can slap a person into a metal pillar?"

The assessment went up by another five percent.

"Don't start things," Kidra hissed, a hand landing on Keith's shoulders and marching him forward. "We're in public. I have no desire to see anything get stirred up by you being dramatic. I know what you're up to."

But To'Wrathh had run the thought through her mind. She came to a quick conclusion, and considered that Tamery would be proud of her with this answer. "You did steal my leg," she said, adding the expected amount amusement in her voice. "I find the accusations to be moderately accurate."

That got looks from everyone. She wasn't quite sure why, did her joke not land correctly?

"Swear to the gods it's not what it sounds like," Keith said quickly, holding up his hands defensively. "A door slammed on it and cut it off, and I was left with the other end."

Everyone continued to stare at him. Even the surrounding whispers had grown dead still.

"... I admit that doesn't sound good either, in retrospect." He paused, rapidly thinking. "It was a combat situation, so I can't explain more out here. Just know there's a very good explanation for all this." His eyes roved in panic, looking for possible distractions, until it settled on Kidra.

She narrowed her own eyes, suddenly suspicious. "Don't you dar-"

"Been meaning to ask," Keith said, bulldozing past, and leaning closer to whisper. To'Wrathh could hear just fine, even with the noise resuming around her. "That first day we got on the airship, did you leave To'Wrathh stuck in the box just to get me to run out of the cockpit room and leave you alone with-"

"My dear brother," Kidra said, her voice icy, hissing right back. "I don't ask you about Ellie. Do you want me to ask you about Ellie? Because I would be delighted to drag you into the light with that topic too."

Keith stopped, then nodded. "Okay, fair point. Shutting up now."

"Who is Ellie?" To'Wrathh asked, finding herself very curious. On his part, he looked like he'd been caught trying to defuse a landmine. "I have very good hearing, you seem to forget." She added.

"Right." He grumbled under his breath, "Whispering is perfectly fine and well respected until you run into the nosiest possible person in existence with-"

"Snow calling ice white." Kidra said, leveling him a glare. "How about you cease running and explain to the honored Deathless your dear old friend? Or else."

"Ellie... is a very polite and dignified friend that I have known for quite some time." Keith said, rubbing the back of his neck. "The end."

"A woman," Tenisent interjected, his gruff voice matter-of-fact. "One that tried to court him for his potential status."

Keith flinched while walking. "Right, you have good hearing too now." Then glanced between Kidra and Tenisent, suspicious of a possible double-team happening against him.

"Is she still alive?" To'Wrathh asked. For purely scientific reasons, of course.

"She's… still around, likely in the middle of some political shenanigans while she rebuilds her empire," Keith said, avoiding eye contact. "Had a dance and dinner date with her recently. Ended with a lot of bullets and some fighting. Not with her, thank the gods. But it was a close run."

To'Wrathh felt odd at that. Of course, humans would seek each other out for companionship and courtship. She just never imagined her human would be running around doing such things himself, though it seemed obvious in retrospect. He'd had a full life before she'd met him, after all. Thankfully, it seemed all of this was past tense, and so she wouldn't need to take more drastic actions.

Wait. What kind of thoughts were these?

To'Wrathh frowned, examining her behavior patterns, then quickly concluded it was simple residual behaviors from her days as a spider. Nothing more. She was simply territorial, that was perfectly reasonable.

She would very much enjoy speaking to this Ellie human, as a case study however. After all, if she wanted to fit into humanity, it would be better to speak to people more closely associated with the Winterscars.

"Is there any other questions about my private and personal life?" Keith asked, his tone exasperated. "I've learned my lesson. I'm a changed man, not gonna stir up anything or scheme some kind of revenge."

"I am certain you will not," Kidra said, her voice laced with warning. "Why, such ideas would be absolutely detrimental to you."

The emphasis on some choice words in Kidra's reply gave To'Wrathh the impression of squashing a bug with a careful thumb, and then rubbing it deep into the ground just to be certain the insect was no more.

The rest of the journey took them through more industrial areas, with workshops and forges making too much sound for any kind of discussion. They reached metal staircases and ladders leading into the upper levels where the Retainer Houses existed, including the Clan Lord's personal estates near the heart of the clan.

Chenobi filed away, zipping into the estate to confirm items with the servants.

One such servant came before the group. "Clan Lord Atius welcomes the returning Retainers and their guests." He said with a deep bow. "He wishes to invite Lady Hecate, Master Nistene, the Winterscar Prime, the Shadowsong Prime, and Master Keith to dine with him now."

The rest of the guards gave each other quick glances and nods. While neither side wanted to leave their charges alone, they'd both step down at the same time which was fine with them.

If Ankah and her minions had any kind of negative thought at being shunned from the dinner, she made no remarks, swiftly turning on her heels and walking off with the rest of the guard.

Shadowsong watched his daughter walk away with her retinue, back to her estate ground. In the shuffling silence, his helmet turned slightly to Kidra's direction.

"I recognize your efforts for keeping her safe." He said. "You have my respect for doing so."

Kidra nodded, humming. "Not for free. No good deed without attaching some strings to it. Winterscar." He said, tapping his chest a few times.

Before Shadowsong could answer, the doors opened wide and a group of servants barged in, carrying trays of food and drink.

"They didn't hold back anywhere." Keith said, eyes roving around the food.

"Aye lad, I did not." Lord Atius said, walking in behind the servants, hand unclasping his greatcloak and passing it over to be hung up. He looked completely recovered, as if his earlier experience underground hadn't happened. Even smiling.

To'Wrathh would have spent more time scanning the Deathless for health abnormalities since she was technically supposed to be a Deathless herself for now and this would be good data to collect, but she found the plates of food to be too difficult to look away from.

"Excellent to see you all in fine health," the clan lord said, taking a seat at the head of the assembled table. "And no doubt with some stories to tell. I have some of my own discoveries to share as well, but for now, a feast is a feast."

Next chapter - The true enemy

Book 5 - Chapter 14 - The true enemy

"I see you have new accommodations, Tenisent." Atius said, after putting down a mug from a long drink. "Did that pendant grow too confined for your tastes?"

Father looked up, eyebrow raised slightly. Avalis didn't look anything like Father, and lacked the hint of a beard he'd once had. Still, that didn't seem to have fooled Atius for a moment. Then he turned to Shadowsong, narrowing his eyes.

"I did not speak to the clan lord of our altercation." Shadowsong said, matching the gaze.

"Come now, Tenisent." Atius added, giving a light chuckle. "A new Deathless returning with the Winterscar whelps who's very first actions were to stare down my first blade, and later attack him in the airlock? Not a huge swath of motives possible. And not a lot of Deathless who can move faster than Shadowsong as of now. I am very curious about how you've managed this particular feat. I assume then that there was a connection made with the gods and you were granted the powers of a Deathless? How were you able to retain the winterblossom technique's speed I wonder?"

Father gave a non-committal grunt and returned to the meal. "The boy can tell you more. He has a mouth."

Technically true, but right now I had three bites too many in my mouth and talking would be a magic trick. There were cricket croquettes in grabbing range and I had eyes bigger than both my mouth and stomach. This dish was basic enough even I knew how to cook it for myself, but having the genuine thing made by an actual cook that clearly knew what they were doing was all the difference.

"I'm sure the lad can. Once he stops choking." Atius said, shrugging back and turning my direction while I tried to do exactly that. "Last I'd seen your Father, he was a soul inside a soul fractal training my knights within the digital sea, as To'Wrathh called that realm. Did he tap into the same occult powers that let a Deathless return to life?"

"His body isn't alive." Kidra said, when she noticed I wasn't getting the food down fast enough. "It's mechanical."

"Ah." Atius raised his own eyebrow, then glanced between the guests at the table. Wrath was doing Wrath things, which was mostly sampling a bit of everything on the table, and possibly the table itself too if she could sneak it.

Currently she was crunching down an oyster shell, and seemed pleased with the texture and taste. I don't know what the Agrifarmers would think of that, honestly. Those nutjobs revered all the animals they kept within the hydroponics systems, since everything there was precisely measured. Oysters and other filter feeders were a critical part of all that, just like their fish.

Selling off oysters always gave a sour taste in their mouths to hear them say it, but maybe seeing every single bit of that oyster not go to waste would give a balance to that. And Wrath was supposedly a Deathless, so they might look the other way all put together. Something to ask a friend I knew among their ranks.

Atius's gaze moved between her and Father, adding things up. Knowing who To'Wrathh was, and watching how human she'd made herself look. And watching how human Father looked too.

He already knew Father was a Feather, I could tell the real question he was debating was how in the three gods that happened. "You convinced a mite forge to craft a body?"

"No." Father said flatly, then brought another piece of food to chew on, clearly done talking.

The real Deathless in the room tilted his head, pondering. "If it wasn't constructed for you then..." his eyes widened, looking genuinely surprised. "You didn't. Is this even possible?"

"He did." I said, inhaling another croquette. In my defense, I hadn't eaten a good meal for the past week and these were some of my favorites. On her part, Wrath was looking at the empty plate, tapping it lightly with her chopsticks, before looking my way.

I gave her a thumbs up and nod, because chaos is a choice and I am its loyal agent.

Without hesitation Kidra lightly slapped me on the head, and followed it up with a glare. Wrath saw it and gave a calculated frown my direction. I returned with my best 'Your fault for asking me.'

"How did it happen?" Atius asked, then turned his gaze over to Kidra for an answer, since Father was clearly occupied with testing the Feather's taste buds. "And which Feather has he taken? I don't recognize the shell."

"Feathers have soul fractals," She explained. "And human souls can leap between fractals. Machines are frozen into the fractal their soul originated inside. He made a leap into the enemy and fought him directly for control. The enemy was To'Avalis. The ringleader of the three Feathers at the temple."

Atius leaned back on his seat, contemplating the new options. "The one behind the entire attack. Impressive Tenisent. He's dead?"

Father put his chopsticks down. "I failed to kill the Feather." He said. "I held his shell still while my son was about to cut through his soul fractal with your new blade. He had no choice but to flee and cede control to me."

"To'Aacar's gift that keeps on giving." Atius said. "Just about the only thing he's done that I'm thankful for. Although, that might change."

"Change?" I asked. "There something else he left behind we can loot?"

"You brought it with you on the war frigate." Atius said giving a dry chuckle. "The armors. I have ears in the right places. It was only a matter of time until I got my answers on this mass raid. All these bands have been brought together by a mix of threats and bribes. All tracing back to one single figure. A pale man with a halo and metal arm, as was described."

"He's still alive and kicking somehow?" I asked, feeling completely befuddled. "No way. I saw his soul be ripped apart down to the very concept. That cockroach couldn't live through that."

"I've fought him for centuries in the past, and I've seen his dead body in person at the city. Even then, it seemed unbelievable to me that he was finally put down. But no, he's not behind this right now, I checked and rechecked. There is no sight of him since the city, and General Zaang would have had his body either destroyed or moved into imperial hands, to one of their fortresses." He took a bite of food himself, chewing slowly. "As for the raiders, the truth is far more mundane. Plans of this scale take time to start moving, and even cutting off the head, the rest of the body stays in motion."

"One thing I'm having a hard time understanding is why they'd work with a Feather." I said. "The Chosen were one thing, but the surface dwellers should know better than to work with machines trying to wipe out humanity. They might be the scum of the earth, but humanity getting wiped out includes them in it. Or were they planning to take the armors and run?"

"If they had planned to run, they would have already." Atius said. "Othersiders straddle the divide between underground and the surface. They're aware of what Deathless struggle against, and what a Feather meant. That was the threat that had all the slavers and raiders spooked into action. A Deathless hunting them down was possibly survivable, but a Feather? The enemies that kill Deathless on a regular basis?" He chuckled, pointing his chopsticks at Father. "None of them wanted an old monster like that hunting them down. This was the threat he used to cow them into compliance. As for the bribe, that I wasn't able to uncover. However, given what you've returned with, seems we have that answer now. An army of armors, no wonder the raid leaders kept it confidential. I suppose after centuries of killing humans, he must have had a long collection of armors to part with."

"Unlikely." Wrath said. "To'Aacar would not keep human armors, they were too far beneath him. I was able to scan and analyze the equipement personally. They are newly forged."

"The mites agreed to print out a few hundred armors for him?" Atius asked. "I had thought they were friendly to humanity's cause. Perhaps some colonies are not."

"Crafting armors in bulk from a mite forge would not require a great amount of convincing." Wrath said, reaching for a plate of what looked like honeyed iso-ant bruschetta. "The more armors exist, the greater chance humanity has to survive combat. I assume that to the mites, it would be seen as if their enemy is purposely sabotaging themselves. Giving them an excuse to tilt the favors around without breaking their rules."

"Got real lucky then finding the exact location that cache of armors arrived at." I said, showing Wrath how to eat the insects she'd picked out. She didn't trust me at first until I ate part of the meal myself.

"Not luck at all." Atius said. "No, what I suspect is that this was just a single shipment. Every slaver band out there is also being supplied with armors, and that was set up long before To'Aacar was killed off."

"... You mean every band surrounding us is about to have a few hundred armors?"

"It had to be a large enough gift that would give these raiders confidence enough to take on a well established clan with a Deathless at the head." Atius said. "But the surrounding bands will not be keeping those relics for long. Nor am I particularly worried for the threat."

He motioned to Shadowsong.

Shadowsong nodded. "First strike is no longer an optional strategy, it is the only strategy forward and we must ramp up."

"The clan can resist far more than ever due to the discoveries you've made, Keith. But a wall of armors is still a danger we have to be cautious around. The raiders would pose a threat from numbers alone. We'll employ divide and conquer tactics - each band divided away from the others can't hold against us, as you've shown in your last raid. And the advantage snowballs from there. Each band we defeat, their armors are added to our strength, inscribed with fractals and given to trained knights. At a certain point, even if the enemy does get the courage to mount a real attack, we've already gone past the point of being threatened."

"So it's all about speed now."

"For far more reasons than simply the raiders. I've begun to mobilize the clan for migration, to the underground. Soon, scout parties will be sent off to search for a pillar heart within a suitable location. If anything, migration is the only option forward for the clan. It'll soon be obvious to the people the number of armors we have."

Surface clans kept one singular goal above all others - amass enough armors to return underground, to the promised lands. I could see why Atius was already preparing. It couldn't be stopped, so he might as well be at the head.

"It's really happening then." Kidra said, taking a breath. "In our own lifetime."

Atius nodded. "Not tomorrow, and finding the right place to settle will take some time to find. But there is a time limit." He motioned to Father and Wrath. "We don't know when Feathers will attempt to attack the clan given your presence. They'll find us soon enough. And they aren't the only threat out here the clan need to worry for. If they find us, the resulting fight might draw attention on us."

He motioned behind him. The curtains there spread apart mechanically, revealing the room's briefing screen. "Tsuya has been keeping the surface cleared out of all traces that might alert Relinquished we exist. Whatever she's done to the enemy, it's strong enough to resist Feathers knowing of the surface and being unable to do anything about it. But not unbreakable either, else she wouldn't be keeping things cleared out up here.

I know she's the one who set everything up here, the clans and our culture. So I searched through all the traditions we had to find something that stood out as a coverup."

"The clan gravesites." Kidra said.

Clans didn't always win their wars against slavers or the raiders out there. A large enough band could overrun a clan colony if they lose the relic armor matchup. After that, the clan gets wiped out. With the large distances involved, other clans don't find out about this until they notice missed shipments and trade routes going dark. Or escaping airspeeders attempting to ferry off survivors.

Occasionally, some songs sing about clans that outright vanish into the night, swallowed by the earth.

Gravesites aren't to be visited for a month, out of respect for the fallen. The superstition is that the souls of so many dead haven't had time yet to be carried off by the lady of the night to the gods above. Airspeeder expeditions sent too early don't return, attacked by the maddened wraiths.

"Always seemed a morbid superstition to me." Atius said. "What if there were survivors? Stranded within the broken clan. I simply assumed it was made to cut off that feeling of hope. By the time any help can arrive to a remote clan that's been attacked, any survivors will have already died off from the exposure. It's only after you brought Talen's book that I began to suspect there was something more to all this. So, I sent an expedition to one such gravesite from the past. And telling the crew to look for something more."

"You found something?" I asked.

"I did. I know now what Tsuya uses to keep the surface clear. Watch." A video began to play on the screen. A recording of a surface dweller, voice level and calm as he asked the camerawoman to turn to him.

"To whoever is watching this recording, if anyone ever does, my name is Umir, of House Ishnar, in service of clan Adrias, under the rule of clan Lord Makkan." An altercation broke out a moment after, with the group clearly disjointed and having different opinions on what to do.

"Clan Adrias?" I asked, not recognizing the name.

"Extinct clan from near three hundred years past, before I brought my city to the surface. It took time to plot out the most likely location since they've been wiped off for so long no archives are accurate anymore. Even the people of that day couldn't find the clan anymore, as if it vanished away into the white wastes. The expedition I sent were no ordinary scavangers, and I knew they wouldn't give up without looking as deep as it gets, under every pile of snow that doesn't blow away."

The recording continued, this Umir fellow talking straight to the camera, voice level. "Before we could begin to update the map of the tunnels here, a bright blue pillar of light appeared roughly a half mile before the colony and moved across it. Wherever the light touched, the ground broke and melted. It moved across the ground and cut the colony in half in a heartbeat. Like a slice of an occult knife on the ground."

Here, Atius paused the recording. "There is only one celestial object we know where a beam of light could originate from."

Shadowsong seemed completely unpuzzled by this, while Kidra and I were gawking. I know Tsuya had tried to blow up an entire site just to stop Relinquished, and if two humans happened to be walking around in there, unlucky for them. But for her to wipe out entire clans off the surface of the world?

"You already knew?" I asked, turning to Shadowsong.

He nodded back. "I've been briefed. It continues."

Footage cut out, as the man recorded in diary segments now, detailing life after his clan's destruction.

"I've constructed basic equipment that should preserve this recording with the gear and supplies I have on hand." He said, taking steps through a cave of some sort, the camera swinging despite his attempts to keep it leveled at himself. "I fear it won't be enough, and I've realized I cannot go to the clan wreckage. The gods are still circling above, I dare not be spotted by them. The rest of the younglings have gone underground, to attempt their luck at surviving. I hope for the best, but I do not expect much. Rations I have will last me for a good few days, possibly a week if I stretch it out. Equipment is far more likely to fail earlier. I will do what I can."

The screen went black, then flickered again. A small campsite, boxes with rime covering each.

"It's been two days. Gear is still functional, no signs of tearing on the tent and the quality is still as good as when I got it. It'll outlast my food supply at least. I've found more paths and the wreckage of an airspeeder that crashed into the mountainside. Likely part of the initial destruction. I'll be searching through it for ways to duplicate this recording a few dozen times, scatter it all around. And if you are listening to my voice, then I've indeed succeeded."

Another black screen.

"Day three, still alive and well. I've already placed a few recordings as far as I could walk without stepping outside. But I've… I've seen something. The airspeeder I've been taken shelter in, when I returned to it, I found it filled with small lights. All swarming around it, like insects eating away. Instead of flesh, they ate the metal. Only a skeleton was left of the ship, and even that was being broken down before my very eyes."

Another click. Another view. Near dark now, and the camera was having difficulty adjusting to the low light. "I've returned to my vantage point, where I can see the ruins of the clan. From a distance, it all looks the same as it had yesterday. Now that it's night, what I see are tiny stars of different colors all across the ruins, like a bed of moss growing across the entire area." The camera zoomed in on something blurry, but the lights he spoke about were too dim to be seen. "These must be those same lights, now eating away at the clan."

Click.

"It's the morning after, I've gone to look at the airspeeder wreckage and found nothing. Not a trace of it was left. The clan ruins are also vanishing away, being consumed by this cloud of lights. Whatever these are, they are consuming everything wholesale. I've begun to carry all essential gear on my person, in preparation for them finding my camp. The metal there will draw them eventually."

Click.

"Day five. They've spread out into the tunnels finally and wasted little time. I returned from a foraging trip, and found lights within my camp. The supplies that were left behind to me are gone, eaten as well. As were all my spare recordings. Whatever these lights are, they haven't spotted me yet. Food is down to three days at most if I spread it over. I'll need to find frostbloom, and fast."

Click.

"Another day, another night. My bones ache from walking each moment in the day, carrying the camera's containment seal and evosuit. Parts of it are breaking down already, but I've kept it together. It has to outlast whatever these lights are. The ruins of the clan are almost completely gone. Even the ground itself is being mended. They might leave once they've consumed everything."

Click.

"I woke up this morning to my tent being eaten. And I'd settled deep into the caves, they shouldn't have been here for a few days at least. If I hadn't been sleeping in my evosuit... the cold would have done it's work. I think I was careful enough when escaping the compromised tent, I can't afford even one of these landing on my evosuit. The lights didn't chase after me either for whatever reason, they moved lethargically. Perhaps they think I am a dead man walking already, and not worth the effort to follow behind. They're right. Without a working tent, I have no way to safely remove my helmet and eat. Last night's meal was my last. Likely the last time I can sleep as well. That's fine, my gear will break down long before my body does. The freeze will take me one way or another."

Click.

"Tunnels are beginning to fill with the lights." The voice said, rasping now. The camera was shuffling along, no longer pointed at the exhausted scavanter. Up and down it went, up and down. "Everywhere I walk, I find them lurking in the distance, slowly combing through. They're searching for me. I know it. Exhausting me, forcing me to walk miles to avoid them. They're here to wipe away everything. It's not enough to leave the recording where it won't be destroyed by time. I must find a way to hide it where these lights can't destroy it. The suit is breaking apart now, and I've run out of ways to fix it. I can't keep myself warm for long. There's only one way I could see this work - I must plant the recording where they've already passed over. And then I have to walk somewhere far away, so that when they cross my corpse, they won't suspect I doubled back."

Click.

"I made it." The voice was breathing heavily now. Camera shaking as it pointed at an empty cave entrance. The old man laughed, almost unhinged. "It took two days of fighting the suit, of backtracking and trying a new path each time the lights were in sight, but I've made it back to the airspeeder without seeing the lights a single time. This was where the airspeeder was, right here." The camera zoomed in on an empty cliffside, just outside the cave structure. "I know it. I know these fault lines, this is where I can leave the containment seal behind. It'll be buried in snow and ice, but the rare earth materials inside of it will appear on magnetic searches if they're done close enough. It's the best hope I have. The caverns here will mask the signal, and I dare not walk outside to place it in a more noticeable location. The gods will see me, and the lights will return to consume this recording. Instead, I have to hope that someone out there will choose to look further off.

Please. Someone. Find this recording. I do not fear death, I only fear a meaningless one."

Click.

Next chapter - Interlude: Hexis II

Book 5 - Chapter 15 - Interlude: Hexis II

Having been replaced by an upstart didn't mean his fortunes were diminished. He had been a grand warlock after all, the guild would not allow such a member to appear destitute to outsiders at the very least.

Quiet retirement was the word of choice, asked to step down from his post politely and in exchange he would be given full access to all his prior funds and a nice estate to live out the rest of his days in luxury.

The alternative was to wage a small time war which would end with him and all his followers purged from the guild, and buried six feet underground. A costly affair to everyone.

So when he'd gone to alert the guild he planned to leave for the surface, they were ecstatic - so long as he followed a few conditions, they'd be more than happy to pay whatever he needed.

Conditions being that all the guards and pilots were picked by the guild high council, so that Hexis wasn't going to try running off to another guild and swap secrets there. This worked out better than the glorified house arrest for the upstart faction. Not only was he banished off to the corners of the earth, he'd also be surrounded by guards and cut off from every loyalist or prior infrastructure.

Hexis would be out of their hair, spending time with the savages upstairs away from proper civilization, during which they'll have all the time they need to clean the house of his influence.

As such, when he left on the convoy to the surface, it was filled to the brim with men and women who had no alliance or true loyalty to him. The only two who he'd picked himself to accompany him to the surface were his butler, and that surface savage vagabond knight.

At the very least he knew he was safe from assassination. Such things would absolutely break the guild apart in the future. If political opponents knew that defeat meant death rather than a quiet retirement, they would rely on assassination right from the gate than to apply any kind of civilized methods.

All this crossed his mind again and again as the airspeeder shuddered around him, metal crunching heard on the sides, red warning sirens blasting around him. It couldn't be some kind of betrayal, that would be preposterous.

His chamber door opened up, and a pair of knights walked in.

"Your magnificence, the guard captain's sent us orders to escort you to the lower deck," The knight said, giving a quick salute. His partner matched as well, professional even in the face of danger.

"What's going on out there?" Hexis asked, standing from his seat. These two knights hadn't come into his room with blades drawn, so whatever game that upstart's faction was playing, it wasn't bribing the council's knights to kill him off. "Bandits?"

"Machines, sir. An ambush."

That… was far more agreeable than bandits. Machines couldn't be negotiated with by any faction, the true wild card. This was just a ill timed raid then.

"Well, deal with them already. We're on the first strata, there's more than enough knights to handle anything." Hexis waved a hand, sitting back down in his comfortable seat. "I hardly see any reason to move downstairs for something of this rank."

The two knights gave each other nervous looks. "Sir, they've overwhelmed the lead airspeeder, we've lost contact with it already. The caravan has diverted, but we're being run into a dead end. The situation is serious."

The hull scraped again, likely because the airspeeder had to pilot through more narrow winding sections of mite terrain.

That wasn't quite what he'd expected. A convoy of their size would be able to race through most of the dangerous passages with guns blazing and be in and out before the machines truly formed up. "Why are there so many machines chasing down our convoy? This path has been well documented for decades now, it's nowhere near any strategic positions."

"Captain thinks a new mite forge is in the area and the machines have gathered up to guard it. Or we've run into a newly setup machine nest. Hopefully we've run far away enough only the stragglers are still attacking."

"And if that's not the case?" Hexis asked, starting to feel worried.

"We'll need to continue the retreat on foot, and return back to the city to try again." The knight said. "Without airspeeders, there's no chance of reaching the surface clan in any amount of time."

Returning on foot across machine territory was far more dangerous than speeding through. The larger the human forces were, the more machines would gather up to squash them. Traveling on foot would be too slow to escape the growing forces either. They'd need to be quite efficient in hiding and sneaking back home.

"Just do what you're paid for." Hexis said, standing back up. "The council doesn't hire fools. A machine nest should be well within your capabilities."

These knights had been picked specifically to keep him safe from the surface dwellers. He was a warlock, his knowledge could be seen as something to steal. However unlikely that was to be from a surface clan led by a Deathless.

As elites, they should be more than capable of handling a few machines in the upper stratas.

The knights seemed to breathe a sigh of relief once he began to cooperate with them. The plan seemed simple enough for the moment, the safest place in the airspeeder was the vault. Hexis wasn't going to travel to a clan without anything to barter or trade with, and conveniently, such a vault also made for the most secure location.

But what if these guards were trying to get him to open that vault up? No, nonsense, Hexis thought.

They were more than well compensated, their continued contract with the warlock guild was worth far more than the temporary short term gain from all this. Their commanders would have them hunted like dogs if they failed their assignment and turned to banditry.

He didn't trust people of course, but he did trust them to act in their own interests. And keeping him alive and safe was well within their interests.

The vault itself was sealed off, to which he input the codes and walked through with his two guards. There was still a flash of paranoid panic in his mind when both guards stepped through with weapons drawn out, up until they turned back into formation with their blades and rifles pointed at the doorway entrance.

It shut, leaving them in the dim gloom. Neither guard attempted anything nefarious, instead remaining true to their contract. Hexis felt himself relax further.

Machines in the upper stratas were dangerous, he knew that as well as most hunters did. But he had been tasked with forging weapons for Deathless who fought against the stronger enemies in the lower reaches. Locations where relic armor alone wasn't enough to survive most of the dangers there. Only the gear a warlock could create was worth the price.

The real danger up here were people and the unknown. Given the reaction of his guards, that eliminated the worst danger.

"The first airspeeder, has it returned to contact range?"

The knight shook his head. "No, it was swarmed and the engines were ripped apart, enough for it to crash into the ground."

"I see." Hexis said, feeling the ship under him continue to shake and move. An airspeeder that no longer moved was already nearly always a write off. One that crashed near a machine nest was certain death.

By now, that airspeeder would have been covered in machines clawing their way in and killing all the crew inside.

Hopefully they bought him enough time for the rest of the convoy to make it. A pity it had to be the vanguard, that was the one that held the surface knight. Without him, his entry into the clan would be far more difficult.

Not impossible, but difficult. He'd need to readjust his timetables, and probably add more to the initial entry bribe.

"Lost contact with outside team." One of the knight said. "Machines are swarming into the airspeeder."

"That's impossible." Hexis said, feeling dread return back into his system. "We have a full team aboard, are they all hiding away in the cockpit or something?"

"Not sure yet, sir." One knight said. "Stay seated off to the side, the vault should be impervious to most machines."

Not drakes. Hexis thought. Which is why no one was standing directly in front of the doorway. If one had jumped onto the ship and began rooting around inside, it's very possible a beam would slash through the doorway any mom-

The door panel flashed from red to green. Which was impossible, since he was the only one with the doorway keys.

Then the doors hissed opened.

And on the other side of the doorway was nothing more than a nightmare.

"Pure soul within…" One of the knights next to him whispered, hand holding onto his wooden puritan pendant.

Hexis felt his own hands reach for the same on his own neck. Not that it would save him against a demon of this caliber.

The man looked almost crippled for a demi-god. A metal halo drifted above his ruined features. A violet eye glowed with a tint of insanity deep behind. One side was nothing but metal shards slowly floating in the shape of a hand and arm. Much of his clothing was ripped apart, revealing a stylized mimicry of a human body. The wounds under all showed mechanical repairs deep within.

He'd heard stories of these enemies. Legends that only the Deathless deal with. That they outright dread and fear. Hexis remained ram rod straight, mind reeling at the events. Wondering if this was actually happening or if he was stuck in some kind of nightmare.

"Hexis, I presume?" The Feather asked, the sole working eye locking onto him.

His closest guard attempted to strike out, occult longblade swinging straight for the monster's head. Given the damage of the enemy, Hexis believed for a moment the knight might be able to win.

A pale white hand snapped out, grabbing the knight's wrist and holding tight. A moment later, the knight was on the ground, neck snapped.

The monster walked in without a care in the world, as if the quick fight had been nothing but another step in his path.

It seemed utterly unreal to see someone in this state of damage move around with so little effort. But the wounds under the man's features didn't show any sign of being new. No snapped wires, no melted sections, nothing to show the damage was anything more than cosmetic.

"You are going to the surface, specifically Clan Altosk?" The Feather asked, snapping the other knight's neck. "I have a business proposition for you."

Hexis wasn't sure when he'd grabbed the man and yanked him in range. It all seemed to happen so fast. One moment he was a few steps away, the next he was already lifting the doomed man in the air.

He also had no idea how a Feather could have known enough about his plans or where he was going, but clearly this Feather could break the security at his vault door, so perhaps infiltrating into the city's security grid would have been child's play.

In such a case, Hexis had to assume this opponent knew everything there was about him. And since Hexis wasn't dead, then the Feather wanted him alive. More than that, the monster had gone out of the way to eliminate all witnesses. His guards were dead despite having offered no threat at all, same as Hexis.

He could work with that.

"... A business proposition?" Hexis asked, licking his lips nervously. He considered making sure his relic armor's helmet was back on, but two highly trained knights were dead already, it hadn't helped them for a second.

"Yes. I have loose ends to tie up on the surface." The Feather said, letting the dead man drop down into the floor, taking more casual steps over the body.

"And what exactly are you searching for?"

"Information." The Feather said, taking the handle of a seat and carrying it behind him. He kicked the dead knight's body out of the way and set the chair down, sitting a moment later on it. "I believe we may be able to reach a mutually beneficial accord."

None of them expected their fellows to come back for them. Not with the amount of machines that had swarmed the ship earlier. And especially when the engines had stalled and the ship collapsed into the ground. They were doomed to death here, in some meaningless last stand. If they tried to hide, the machines would rip apart this dying ship plate by plate until they were sure nothing alive remained alive. And if they tried to run, the machines would spot them and chase them down.

Sagrius had considered breaking his way free and walking back to the city, leaving the airspeeder to its own fate. Such a thing would be the safest option to keep his inner body alive. He'd explored and walked through the underground by himself before, it was far easier than in a larger group that could draw too much attention.

An uncaring part of him believed it to be the best course forward. That part of him simply did not care for anyone else around him besides the center body breathing within his armor.

However, he'd need to find another way home afterwards.

With his own funds, he wouldn't be able to afford such a thing. Perhaps with the gratitude of the crew for saving their lives, he might be able to get something done. And the ghosts within his armor agreed with this. They spoke of his true obligations - he'd taken on a contract to protect the convoy until it reached the surface. Fighting here was part of that contract. Something deeper inside felt the same way. Those words agreed with a core part of his soul.

Stranded as he was, honor still bound him like a law.

So he rose from his seat, and drew his blades.

The doomed crew's hopes had been crushed until he went to work. Machines reached into his compartment, and he strode out the entrance, only destroyed metal left behind him.

Where he stood, no machines passed. He didn't have to use the occult either, leaving the soul sight combined with his body's senses to detect everything happening within the airspeeder. They couldn't surround him in such tight corridors.

The enemy wasn't endless. Given a long enough time, Sagrius would have purged the entire ship and whatever dredges continued to pile in. All he had to do was drag the crew into a defendable position.

The airspeeder communicated with him, whispered its schematics and pointed out where the best location would be for such a stand. He stalked through the corridors, grabbing survivors and forcing them to follow behind him. Soon he had nearly half of the airspeeder's remaining crew all protected within the hold. And at the doorway, he held the ground.

The speeder itself began to send announcements to the crew within, detailing the plan out. More knights and crewmembers flowed into the safe room. Some joined in on the front lines. Others cowered further inside, claiming to be there to defend those who couldn't fight back.

The dead souls found the notion of that disdainful. All the crew here wore relic armor, and yet only the soldiers seemed to truly know how to make use of such a thing. A waste of armor for the crew here when a simple evo-suit would function to keep them alive on the surface.

Sagrius sliced through the last of the Screamers a half hour into the fight, yanking the dead machine's head off the chassis and tossing it off the side. He waited for a moment, but found no motion outside the airspeeder walls. No new enemy stepping up to be next.

"They're gone." He said, taking a step forward and out the hole ripped into the airspeeder. The terrain outside was still the mite madness he'd grown used to. This one was simple massive tunnels filled with lights and smaller tunnels branching out. According to the Undersiders, these tunnels would remain wide open for miles, letting airspeeders pass by mostly unharmed.

"We survived?" One of the knights hissed, also taking a peek outside.

The machines were all retreating back, hissing away the entire time. Soon, the gloom covered them all, only violet glows fading off.

"Never seen machines act like this before. Are they actually running away?" Another undersider said, turning on headlights to verify the damaged sections. "Shouldn't ignore a gift in the jaw, pilot! Can you bring the speeder back online?!"

More voices linked in, as the crew went from pure survival to trying to escape. The engines were broken, Sagrius could feel that with his outer armor. Sensors returned messages from the ship, showing him reports.

But the ship was equally sending him more information. "The convoy is returning." He said. Then said it again, and forced his mouth to move instead of speaking through comms. That caught his fellows by surprise.

"They're coming back?"

Indeed, further off into the gloom, he could see lights in the distance. "They are." He confirmed, pointing. Weapons fire began to light up the surrounding area as the convoy opened fire on the retreating machines. The few caught in the bullet fire were shredded to pieces. Most had already scurried off into the tunnels.

The surviving crew began to laugh, cheers coming across. Sagrius simply watched the arriving reinforcements. He should be content with the situation, he'd successfully defended the stranded airspeeder, the machines were cowed into a retreat, and the warlock had clearly ordered the convoy to return.

The machines didn't return to halt their progress again. The surviving crew were quickly divided up among the other airspeeders, and the warlock had indeed survived the whole ordeal. Apparently he'd hid himself in his vault alone, while his knights had died off while escorting him there, too late to get through the doors with him.

No armors or bodies recovered from the dead, the machines simply spirited them away wholesale. And the ship's security systems were also wiped clean.

Machines didn't behave like this. Was the warlock so special? The armors didn't know, they'd never seen machines act like this either.

Something felt… off.

Next chapter - Soak

Book 5 - Chapter 16 - Soak

"Food was quite excellent. Though I am still unsure why you refused to eat the exoskeleton of the dax-isopod strains. It is entirely compatible with human digestion, and a superb source of carbon and nitrogen." Wrath said, walking next to me.

My house guards escorted us both with straight backs, all having a pistol and a hand on those carbon fiber blades I'd made.

House guards typically numbered high and were the backbone of a House's martial strength. They were all excellent soldiers, and Kidra had implemented training orders to build up sword skills from the moment she'd asked me to research into figuring out how occult blades worked. Now they're all carrying occult blades. Pretty soon we'd have enough armors for all of them to wear those too.

Kidra, Father and Shadowsong remained behind to discuss head of house items, so it was just a nice long relaxing stroll home for Wrath and I, with Cathida muted ahead of time.

"We do eat bug shells." I said, "Just not directly like that, you barbarian."

"But you do eat them directly." Wrath insisted. "I watched you eat other insects without deshelling them."

"All of those are bite sized, I'm not going to chomp down on pure chitin. Plus it tastes like nothing, gets stuck all over the teeth, and you'd need to wash it down after each bite. No thank you, hard pass." I said. "Shells of that size are just ground up into flour and reused for other things. Easy and normal."

"I suppose that is an acceptable use of resources." Wrath conceded. "Your cultural norms are quite peculiar compared to Undersiders."

"We can stop by the library, have you read a few books about the clan's history and culture. That could get you up to speed, and I'm sure the guards won't mind the detour."

To that, the sergeant at the lead gave a short nod. They weren't here on any kind of time crunch. Plus Wrath was still Deathless to them right now, only a few people in the clan knew her true nature.

She hummed for a moment, thinking. "I found the most valuable knowledge has been firsthand experience. Directly immersing myself in this clan's culture is more appealing to me."

She wanted to learn the clan culture by going in blind. Okay. Let it be said I tried to do the right thing, and I've got witnesses all around me who knew I'd tried to offer Wrath an honest solution.

So now that that's out of the way, time to do the fun thing. "Well, since you're Deathless, you can probably get away with just about any don't-do's. Lucky you. I say go for it, I'm sure it'll all be fine."

Wrath's eyes narrowed for a moment, glancing at me with a skeptical eyebrow. "I am aware that this is what you call 'bait' - and it will not work on me. Kidra has warned me to expect such things from you."

Nearly had her eating a plate in front of the clan lord, so perhaps Kidra's lessons hadn't yet sunk in.

"Bait? Me? Possibly. But I'm sure someone wise and clever like yourself won't make too many mistakes."

Feathers could detect lies in voice patterns, or at least within a percentage. "I highly doubt I will make as many mistakes as you predict. I am a fast learner." She seemed quite smug, brushing her wings back into position.

Also never let it be said I let easy wins fly by my nose. "Wanna bet?" I asked.

She did.

Unfortunately for my aspirations, the moment we walked into Winterscar estate, the servants had already been given instructions. Including "Whatever Keith is up to, don't let him."

The world is just out to get me sometimes. Not that causing trouble was my first priority.

I went straight for my sanctum, and double checked I had all my traps still in place while Wrath took a tour of the estate grounds. Most of the Winterscar knights were keeping patrol of the sector, and they did stop me for full identification to make absolutely sure I was who I said I was. So security was still good.

Reached the spot I'd hid the chest, opened up the whole contraption and pried the lid up.

Inside my little treasure trove, Tsuya's mite seeker remained exactly the same as it had all those months ago when I'd taken it out of a dead crusader's remains. Was slightly afraid it had been swiped at some point, but my security was good enough.

And now Abraxas wanted this.

Trusting him completely sounded like an excellent way to dig my own grave. Maybe he wanted us alive long enough to get his hands on it.

Wrath still had to meet the goddess at some point, I think I'll be asking her what the heck this thing is supposed to be used for exactly and why the mites want it. Who knows, maybe she even knew Abraxas.

Either way, the mite seeker was still in my possession, and none of the decoys looked like they'd been touched either.

The baths were my next target. Every few weeks, they'd be closed down for a few hours and left open only to Retainers. It was a traditional nod of respect to large returning expeditions, who wanted to spend time around peers instead of being surrounded by all the different castes mixed together.

Not optimal bath usage, but some allowances get made.

In this case, since we were the returning expedition with the most armors ever recorded, the clan seemed to universally agree to leave the baths to us that very hour. Gossip traveled quickly, and even quicker if it's news like this.

Knowing there were two new Deathless walking around also made the splash, and even the Retainer houses all had an unworded agreement to leave the baths to only the elite of the clan.

Who all happened to be people that knew exactly who Wrath was, because they're in Atius's inner loop.

Basically if we didn't take a soak now while we had the chance, any other time it would be in public. So Kidra couldn't really contend against it.

The clan lord made a quick decree just to make it official, and had his Chenobi make sure the room was swept clean of any evesdroppers. Easy task, the baths were sealed already by default in order to retain heat better. Soundproofing was built-in. All the tiles might make it look like it was old and worn down, but under those tiles was very real and very well designed walls.

With the stupid amounts of armors the clan was still in the process of distributing, it wasn't hard to have a few knights walk around and run active scanning to make sure the place was clear and free.

Wrath was still surrounded by good influences like the house servants, so they didn't let her go off unprepared. And by the time we made it to the baths, Kidra was there already, waiting.

She took Wrath under her wing, all while shooting me a glare that told me if I tried anything at all, I was going further down her scraplist.

Wrath herself hadn't quite understood the appeal of sitting in hot water for extended periods of time. Undersiders took showers mostly, done to keep clean. If they planned to stay in the water for long, it was inside their giant lake.

On my end, I don't see the appeal in sitting in cold water for extended periods of time. Or sharing that same water with a ton of animals, some of which had teeth and claws.

No thank you, agree to disagree.

I went straight into the changing rooms. Like usual, the smell of warm soap was the first to hit. But this time around there weren't any kids shouting or sounds of feet running on the ground. Just the snips of scissors the barbers used, and a light background drone of discussion.

Got my hair done, lone beard hairs trimmed out, then went to get cleaned up before walking out of the grooming hall and into the baths themselves.

As usual, the place never failed to impress on the sheer size. Rest of the clan was always cramped, even in the estates that could afford the best. But the Baths was the one place clans made exceptions for.

Wrath and the others exited their side of the changing rooms. My sister's handiwork was evident, since Wrath was actually well dressed up.

Interesting to see just how far Wrath had taken the 'looking human' aspect.

She'd told me before that she'd modified her throat to have vocal cords instead of a speaker. I shouldn't have been surprised to see she could make the rest of her skin look normal. Still had wings though, that part she'd never give up.

Father on the other hand, hadn't changed anything at all. And he had no skin under the armor, so he'd skipped out completely on the baths and marched straight to the house grounds.

There'd be a shitshow to pay in the future for having House Winterscar house both Deathless. But Wrath didn't care to live anywhere else, and Father planned to make most of his time spent sparring anyhow. Politics wasn't something he cared about. And now that he was considered a lone Deathless, he was effectively free of politics completely, save for the few knights who already knew or had enough inner knowledge and could add a few numbers together.

Several of the more famous clan knight I'd expect to see in the baths weren't here, and given their singular passion, I had a hunch they were of the same exact mind Father was. Likely on the very same sparring ground too.

The clan's most infamous knight was now available to spar against, never needed sleep or rest in between sets, and only a few people knew about him.

So the baths were a lot emptier than normal, and of the people here, hardly anyone gave it a second look when Wrath marched up and sat down in my circle. Most had spent time with her already in the airspeeder or underground in her city.

"I've adjusted my skin sensors to be more human-like. I am hoping to understand the appeal of taking a bath now." She said, dipping a toe into the water.

"I talked her into it." Kidra said, taking her own seat and letting the water go up to her shoulders. Hair bundled up to keep it safe from the water.

Wrath didn't care to bundle up her hair like the rest of the women usually did. And when she entered, it spread out from her like a spiderweb.

She gave a minor head tilt, gathered it up from the water and tied it up in a ponytail. It looked like she'd just walked out of a hair master's seat. Not surprised, I'd bet her hair was stronger than steel and would still look silky smooth even after having mud thrown on it. At this point, I think she was just showing off.

"The architecture is fascinating." Wrath said, looking around her. "Almost every other location I've seen thus far has been designed to minimize the space taken. This structure seems to be the opposite."

Half submerged benches were scattered around like usual, with smaller islands blocked off by smaller hedges of plants. Flower pedals often floated around the water, depending on the season.

"I would very much enjoy bringing Tamery here with me." She finished.

"Your second in command down in the city?" I asked. "How'd you befriend her anyhow?"

"She had skills that I required and others lacked. I needed to speak to her often, and during that time, she made an effort to connect with me."

"She's rather timid until you speak of a topic she cares for." Kidra said. "I am still surprised she managed to keep you hidden for so long within the city when I focused on finding you."

"She was better acquainted with the Undersider culture and territory. Part of the skills she had that others did not." Wrath said.

I hadn't met her a great amount of times before, but I do remember her being pretty protective of Wrath. She was more an ambassador or negotiator for Wrath, helping her make deals with the local Undersider politics. General Zaang and her made a pretty good administrative team for Wrath.

Or rather, a pretty good common-sense team. Wrath alone could crunch through hundreds of numbers in seconds, so she'd never needed a Logi to work with. Or the undersider version of a Logi.

Last I'd seen of her, she was running off with Yrob, that machine screamer who liked to cook. Get the feeling it wasn't the last time I'd see those two, but unless she found a way to come up to the clan, there's almost no chance we'd find her again when we dove down underground. There were a few different cities that everyone fled to, and from those cities the refugees might have filtered further away.

Talk meandered around different topics, but there was still a sword hanging over us all. Specifically Tsuya.

"Well, let's think of it this way. Good news: We now knew exactly what Tsuya was using to clean up the surface." I said. "Bad news: Absolutely nothing we could do against three orbital fortresses that could glass anything that looks up the wrong way. Unless you happen to have ideas?"

Wrath shook her head. "There are no known records of combat or defenses I can reuse. The closest resemblance can be traced back to earlier human eras when surface-to-space missiles were utilized."

"At the very least those weapons are technically on our side." Kidra said. "I find it comforting in a way. Humanity isn't without its own ways to stay alive. And clearly it had worked since Relinquished still didn't know the surface existed, even with her direct underlings knowing all about it."

"But what exactly could tip Relinquished off in the first place?" I asked.

"There may be some answers to be found by searching the negative data rather than positives." Wrath said.

"As in check what Tsuya doesn't want to happen against what she doesn't seem to care about." I hummed. "Well, thinking about it like a Reacher would, she likely only had one chance to get the geass in. So it had to be something that could both resist that era's current events, and also be flexible enough to handle future events. Also there had to be a limit to how much it could do, otherwise why not implant the compulsion to self-destruct?"

"There may be some part of that." Wrath said. "From the historical archives, it seems Relinquish's mental decline isn't a speculation. There are clear marks of degradation in her sanity and focus. If Tsuya wasn't able to end her in one hit, I believe she opted to slowly cripple her."

Kidra nodded along, thinking. "And Tsuya would know that keeping something this large hidden from absolutely everyone for all time isn't feasible."

Humans themselves would start searching for each other, and develop trade routes. Not to mention Feathers had centuries to figure out a solution and none of it has worked yet. "Maybe any kind of report from a third party is something the geass covers?" I asked, putting down the rest of my theory plot points together. "Like if it's not her own discovery, the geass kicks in? How's it look anyhow when that happens?"

"She experiences a memory wipe." Wrath said. "I've made that mistake once before, when I tracked you and Kidra back to your clan and informed her of it. It will be as if she never heard the information in the first place. Each memory wipe also causes her to grow more frustrated. To'Aacar insinuated that going far enough will end up with torture. He was willing to stay silent and wait to see me attacked, however he also expected her anger to be indiscriminate, and he would be caught as well."

"Self-sabotage." Kidra hummed. "That follows the mental decline compulsion. How badly do Feathers want to have the surface eliminated?"

"They're Feathers, of course they want the surface wiped out." I said, but she waved a hand at me.

"Consider the possibility that this isn't strictly true. From what I've seen and heard of Feathers, they don't seem to have the same single minded focus Relinquished does. I've wondered why for some time now. If what Wrath said is accurate, then I don't think it's a coincidence Feathers seem to be indifferent to humanity. I think it's a result."

Wrath gave a slight head tilt, considering the question. "Goals and aspirations change from Feather to Feather, however I do not personally know any that genuinely wanted humanity itself destroyed. Although, I have not met many Feathers."

"You got more to that theory." I said, looking at Kidra.

"I do. I think it's a pseudo natural selection. Feathers that keep trying to have the surface exposed, eventually get dealt with by Relinquished herself in those fits of anger. The ones left alive are those who don't care to push Relinquished about that subject."

Wrath hummed. "That theory is logically sound. But what of Feathers who choose to expose the surface from a less direct manner? To'Aacar warned me before I endangered myself."

"Perhaps this is why Tsuya chooses to eliminate any Feather or machine sightings on the surface." Kidra said. "Killing Feathers spotted on the surface is likely more a 'just in case' measure come to think of it. And the surface remains undiscovered, so this method works."

"We also got to factor in humans." I said, sitting up a bit. "My internet idea I had way back was clearly something Tsuya kept an eye out and eliminated if she saw it happen. Any kind of wired connection between underground and the surface doesn't exist right now, which means Tsuya has her hands all over that."

"If she is behind the clans, and our culture, it would explain the traditions of sealing off any entrances to the underground once a clan moves into a shelter." Kidra said. "There's still a good zone of habitable territory that could be inhabited without drawing machines, and that tract of land goes unused. I've always thought it was wasteful."

"Not to mention she outright bombed an entire site I was in, just because it was connected to the underground." I said, nodding.

"You did turn it on." Kidra said.

"Skipping past that point, there's definitely something dangerous with having a wired connection to the underground. So if I were a Feather trying to get the surface noticed by Relinquished, I'd be building that connection."

"Assuming Feathers even know that this could be a weak point, a giant orbital gun pointed at the earth is clearly a solution to that problem." Kidra said. "If she sees machines sulking on the surface, she'll destroy them."

"There is a vulnerability to all this." Wrath said. "I was able to walk on the surface by using a relic armor to hide my features. The orbital fortresses must rely mostly on visual scanners, or not be equipped with anything that could penetrate deeper into a structure or armor."

"So how does Tsuya keep Feathers from sneaking on the surface? Because she must have figured something out by now." I asked.

"Perhaps she has another set of defenses? She needs to be able to tell when a surface clan attempts to make a wired connection after all, as you've mentioned. As for Feathers, they will not attempt to disguise themselves." Wrath said. "They are far too proud to pretend to be human."

"You did." Kidra said. "You hid inside the city and orchestrated a full revolt."

Wrath frowned for a moment, before nodding. "That's correct. Then, I believe her current strategy will only be viable until another deviant Feather appears. One who isn't affected by pride and powerful enough to hold off Tsuya's backup plan."

"If I were in her situation and had only one chance to implant a non-fatal compulsion in my enemy, then I would also have a whole system setup as redundancy." Kidra said. "There must be ways to recover from a breakpoint like that."

I gave a shrug. "What I've seen, it feels more like she's running ragged trying to put out fires. Lasering things out of existence, blowing up sites, tossing random surface scavengers an occult book as a thank-you for grabbing stranded gear, it all seems like last-second planning to me."

"The war has been going on for thousands of years. Things had to unravel sooner or later." Kidra said. "We might be seeing the frayed end of what was once something perfectly woven."

"But what are the chances it happens in our lifetimes?" I asked. "It's been a few thousand years, and everything's still working."

Kidra motioned to Wrath. "And what are the chances that we discover the first Feather to be friendly to humans in our lifetime?"

She blinked back.

All right, maybe we do live in interesting times.

Book 5 - Chapter 17 - Gossip

The clan saw an uproar over the next few days.

By the first hour, every single person in the clan was already informed about the two new Deathless and talk was shifting over to what they could do. By the third hour, the stories were all wilder than the prior ones with everyone completely giving up on being factual about anything. Stories grew on top of each other, a few people started making short chanties, and others piled in more verses rhyme after rhyme.

Nobody cared too much about where these Deathless were staying, that was things for the Retainers to worry about.

Of which I'm part of.

House Winterscar was as much a curse on people's lips as it was a compliment these days. Either they saw the house as something reborn from the ashes, or they were suspicious of even the stars existing. Usually those were the Houses my old family had history with, and it's always been pretty damn poor.

'Oh the Winterscars dropped by and gave us a nice basket of cooked goods. Aren't they lovely?' is not something I'll ever hear. More like 'The Winterscars conned my eldest son out of all his inheritance. While I'm still alive and staring them in the face.' - See, now that's more like the good old days.

And yes, that was something that happened. Part of the to-do list was to pay off reparations for old grudges now that we actually had money and resources flowing in, so look who's eating fish now.

Kidra's words: If you can throw money to have a problem go away, that's a great deal. And I can't find any fault with that logic.

She had been the one to 'convince' the two Deathless to join the fight. Officially. So it makes sense that they'd stay with someone they're already familiar with. After all, can't exactly demand the Deathless lords to go live somewhere else just because everyone felt jealous. So they moved right into our estate and none of the other houses could lift a finger to object about it.

Without any stick to wack our house with, they had to grind their teeth and try to figure out ways to wave a big enough carrot. A good plan, but theses Deathless were special cases. Wrath was oblivious to all the underhanded attempts - they'd have better chances if they waved an actual edible carrot. And Father's care cup on that topic had the entire bottom cut out, and then the whole mug thrown as far as possible. Into a chasm. Possibly shot a few times on the way down too, for good measure.

On our end, since Wrath was staying within our estate grounds, we'd make her work for it of course. No free meals.

Which led Father, Kidra, Wrath and I sitting around deep in our House estates.

"It should be within capabilities." Wrath said, flicking one side of her wing back into place. "I've regenerated a heart, skin, muscles and jugular veins. Not just for Keith either, the process is repeatable. However, there was a price."

"What price?" Father asked.

"I am unsure." Wrath said. "Each time I've tapped into this acasual power, something within felt… consumed? Diagnostics did not show any differences, no matter how many times I ran them. Whatever the price is, it is not physical."

"Your diagnostics are notoriously unreliable when it comes to the occult." Kidra quickly said. This whole thing was her idea and she was going to push for it with everything she had. "You can't see the soul trance. Everything about souls seem mostly out of your scope."

There was a pause in the room while Wrath contemplated, before I figured a possible compromise. "She could when she had someone else connect their sight to her soul fractal. So there's still stuff we can do. But healing me and others hasn't done anything terrible to her yet, I'm with Kidra on that. I still think we should do some testing while we've got the time. Who knows when the next expedition out is going to be?"

Father grunted. "Bring in one of the soldiers. No point in stalling."

Wrath nodded. "I concur with that assessment. A test would conclude all outstanding issues."

Kidra grabbed her comms unit, then gave a short order. "Helmets on." She said a moment after, "If we are doing a full examination of the occult, we'll need to be able to speak without boundary. I trust my soldiers, but soldiers can be captured."

A hiss around my neck and my helmet was firmly back on. Father and Wrath didn't need any, they didn't need to breathe or speak to talk directly through the comms channels. Kidra and I were still human though.

"Ready." I said, and Kidra sent a quick ping to the servants outside.

Jension Winterscar was a soldier for our house who'd fought on the frontlines against slavers. He'd been among a group that shared the few Winterscar blades I'd forged and had working. As he recounted, on his part he'd taken out at least half a slaver's shields before he'd had his hand cut off, but been able to kick his severed hand and blade away from the slaver's reach, where it was picked up by the next soldier. And for that, he'd also gotten kicked in the ribs before other soldiers managed to drag him out of that fight. Anyone might feel miserable having lost a hand, but for Jension and others who fought the slavers hand to hand, it seemed more like the highlight of his life.

All those years spent training with knives, blades and rifles paid off. In one singular moment, he'd held off a full army of knights long enough for reinforcements to arrive. If he and others hadn't put their lives on the line, the rest of the House who didn't have combat training would have been slaughtered or had their lives turned into a living hell. The missing hand wasn't a curse, it had been proof that when his personal worth was tested, he'd stood his ground for himself, his family, and his clan as a whole. There was purpose to it, and that made all the difference.

Like other soldiers who'd been maimed or wounded during that fight, they'd group together and share their stories over beer and food. They couldn't brag and boast to other people without revealing secrets of the House and clan, so to outsiders, if they asked he'd say he lost his hand fighting slavers and buying time for the knights to arrive. Nothing about his true contributions. The gravesties and vigil had been solely within House Winterscar.

He hadn't been given any strenuous duties since. Simple patrols and escort details for other servants walking outside the House. A single hand was still enough to use a pistol with, and like others who'd been wounded, he still showed up at the training fields to keep in shape. Captain Sagrius outright demanded it.

He hadn't been picked to come see us first for any specific reason, more that his name had been randomly drawn.

So he walked in, door sealing behind him, gave a crisp salute and took a seiza position, waiting to hear why the Winterscar house leaders had called him up.

"Jension," Kidra said. "Raise your wounded hand up. We want to examine it."

He did as ordered, taking off his prosthetic hand, and lifting the stump up. No questions, no hesitation. Kidra turned to Wrath. Helmet might be hiding her face, but I could practically imagine the hope inside her at this. Death was often expected within the Retainer caste, and news of the dead knights had already been taken in by the respective houses, each holding their own ceremonies to honor their fallen knights. However, hope was something new these days. Many of the elites knew there was a chance those dead might return within the soul fractals, if Sagrius had survived and was still walking. Arcbound was living proof that there was a chance. Windrunner would be the only true gravesite ceremony planned out.

Now, if Wrath's abilities were useable en-mass, it wouldn't be just death Retainers had a fighting chance against. Any kind of injury that would have entombed them into a sickbed could possibly be recovered from. And across history too. Old veterans who had long ago put down the blade might very well pick them back up.

Wrath rose from her seat, wings stretching for a moment almost by reflex before she fussed them back into place. She walked next to the soldier, and reached out her hand to his maimed arm. A beat passed as occult began to pulse around her arm, crackling. "Yes, I can feel the grafted instructions. I could heal this."

"Begin." Father said, lips unmoving. "The rest of us will keep watch in the soul sight."

Wrath nodded, closed her eyes and focused. Occult pulsed further across the room. It felt more like a gentle soothing wave, but that might have been my imagination twisting things together in my head. Occult was the occult, healing or destruction should be the same to it.

Father was the first to notice anything within Wrath's soul as the rest of us watched the soldier's arm being outright rebuilt from absolutely nothing, pale blue light fusing with the man's hand. Jension himself took a sharp intake, feeling the occult pulse sink into his arm. Parts of his hand seemed to outright reverse dissolve from nothingness back into reality.

"I'm seeing concepts of rebirth and matter being created but nothing else I can understand." I said, trying to figure out how this fractal worked. I knew the fractal itself was fused into her soul fractal, so trying to extract the mathematical formula was going to go wrong because of that bridge section. Still should try to replicate it anyhow, having healing powers in my armguard would be amazing for my skin routine.

"Look at her soul itself." Father said. "Parts of it are disappearing."

Without a second to hesitate, I switched my focus straight to Wrath's fractal, panic rising up. Soul trance is tricky. The entire world turns into concepts, so it's easy to miss the smaller details. But now looking directly at Wrath's soul, I could see small sections being eaten away, as if she weren't being protected by the soul fractal anymore.

Moments after, it all ended. Jension's arm was healed completely. The soldier kept staring at it, opening and closing the fingers.

The room went back to the dark somber colors it had before. Kidra tutted in her helmet. "We'd been so close to helping so many others. Of course there was a price to pay."

"No. Soul is regenerating." Father said, hand raising up to point at Wrath's heart. "Look closer."

We did, and found the concept of her soul being... healed in a way? Or more like returned to origin. Had a couple of theories about that. Mostly starting with 'what the scrap is going on?'

"Slower regeneration." Kidra noted. "Far slower than it was consumed."

She's right about that. "How does parts of a concept get eaten in the first place?" I asked, seriously confused at what I was seeing. "How do you feel right now Wrath?"

The Feather stood up, glancing down at her hands. "Nothing tangible. Diagnostics show no error or issues within. I... I feel off. The same way I felt when I performed healing on Tamery for the first time. As if something were taken."

Jension hadn't noticed, he was still staring at his arm with awe. He couldn't hear our discussion, since it remained on encrypted comms. Far as he knew, the room was silent. Up until Father waved for his attention.

"Sire?" He asked, head raising up to look at Father.

On his part, he answered with his usual grunt. "The healing is done. We will see how many more we can heal. Harsh times are coming, Winterscar will need every knight it can hold."

"Knight?" He asked.

"Knight." Kidra confirmed with a nod. "More armor will soon be seized from the raiders. Our house will be on the front lines of it all. And I do not waste talent. You were recruited into my House for a reason."

"I understand, Lady Winterscar." He said with a swift bow. "I will not disappoint."

Kidra gave a laugh, "You did not disappoint when your mettle was last tested. None of you faltered when it counted the most. I have full confidence relic armor will be well used in your hands. Go on, prepare the next in line to see us. Winterscar takes care of their own first."

The soldier gave a crisp salute, turned on his heels and marched away with a straight back.

The rest of us watched Wrath, observing. Her soul did fully regenerate as far as we could tell, it just took some time. Why it regenerated or what even ate pieces of it in the first place, that's stuff we had no godsdamned clue about. Father was rapidly picked as the one who'd investigate this part of the Occult, given his skills with souls in general. Kidra was in charge of organizing the house to file in for healing, and I wasn't just standing around doing nothing while watching Wrath heal the whole House up. Next to me was a large suitcase, inside of which was the true mite seeker Tsuya had led me to.

Wrath healed another soldier, and through the soul sight we confirmed she really did regenerate parts of her soul without issue. Soon the room became one the busiest rooms in the House.

My thoughts were the same as usual - figuring out how to make things work. In the past, this black brick of mite metal was basically inscrutable. Other than the handle and trigger buttons plus that power intake valve, I had no idea about the internals. Wrath had been less than amused at seeing the very brick of fancy light that caused her to lose that first battle, but she stayed focused on her task, while I magnanimously chose not to torment her with the brick.

Like before, there were two sigils for 'capture' and 'release', written in plain wording. Language didn't change much over the few hundred years apparently, but that wasn't too much of a surprise since there were people who lived for all those years running around the world already.

I had screwdrivers, pliers, crowbars and all the power tools I could think of, but nothing I could figure out to use to pry open the box in a way that wasn't completely destructive. For all I knew, there might be a pressurized gas inside, and once I made a tiny crack in it - boom. There goes the whole thing. Tsuya would probably not be happy with that, and back when she was friendly she blew up an entire site at my feet. Now I knew she had an orbital death lazer on demand if she wasn't on a time crunch and could wait for it to get into position.

What I didn't have in the past was the soul sight. And now that the clan was on the right feet, I had the time to really dig into this brick of scrap.

And in between the wait periods, I'd dive into the suitcase at my side, and scan through the insides of the box. Concepts of an empty space, concepts of machinery, data collection, and specimen containment.

Or at least, the same feeling I got when I looked at a bug cage. Agrifarmers had tons of those, all of them precisely calibrated to whatever they were growing, so it's not a new concept to me. I could sense this particular containment was less about the physical boundaries, and more about keeping any emissions captured by the equipment and read into that data collection concept within it.

Putting all the pieces I had together, my conclusion was this: It's called a seeker, and it has some empty space within where it's supposed to collect a specimen and keep it alive. It collects data. And given Tsyua said the mites were the key - with two clearly labeled buttons for capture and release - I think what I'm supposed to do with this brick is to nab a mite somewhere and feed it into the box.

Now, figuring out why Abraxas is so insistent on getting this is the next puzzle I'll have to figure out first. He called it a lantern, while Tsuya called it a seeker. And that the mites would be the key to it.

Tsuya also said this is probably the last one in existence, and Relinquished is terrified of it enough to want every bit of it destroyed anywhere she found them. Tsuya also said she has no idea what it does, but believes it's supposed to lead someone to an old weapon of some kind that Relinquished couldn't destroy easily. Something that Tsuya can't find herself anymore because the mind-wars went both ways.

I had a flashback of that giant black cube that Wrath explained was containment for things even the mites couldn't clean up. Somehow, my gut was telling me this seeker was going to lead us to one of those black ominous cubes. Assuming we got it to work right.

Then what? Those cubes were supposed to be impossible to open.

The mites had outright told Wrath to go talk to Tsuya. And somewhere out there in the white wastes, she'd put down shrines that crusaders go up to, rumored to have a way to speak to Tsuya herself, though not on a daily or even yearly basis.

That's got to be the next target to visit, see if there's any way to speak to Tsuya directly from those. So while we're at that, I could ask the goddess herself what she wants me to do with this seeker.

And maybe figure out who Abraxas is in all this.

Had a gut feeling Tsuya might recognize that name.

Next, we opened Wrath's skills up to the clan. She'd healed up the entire House of Winterscar, and didn't seem phased at all from it. No errors in her systems, and nothing Father, Kidra or I could spot within her soul being off even after having used that spell so often. Once we were confident all she had to do was wait in between healing someone, it seemed like the obvious next step. Keep a knight with the winterblossom technique running to let her know when she's good to keep going, and things seemed to work out.

Easy to find a few Logi to volunteer their time in sorting the sheer massive amount of people coming in for healing, once word really started to go out.

The Logi quickly got together and applied the traditional triage sorting, making a solid plan to tackle the numbers pouring in. After that, they brought out detailed plans on optimizing rest periods along with possible things she could do around the clan, expecting her to behave like a normal human with normal human stress points. Even a Deathless needs to take care of their mental health.

Then they discovered that Wrath didn't stop. Nor sleep. Nor seemed to ever get bored.

By that point, it was still only half a house's worth of Logi working around the clock, with more steadily trickling in as they heard the project. Every single one that started working with Wrath all ran through the same train of thought: Here was someone who was more dedicated to the work than they were. No way would they allow anyone else to beat them at their own game, their pride was on the line now, even if the contender was a Deathless.

None of them could actually match her focus of course, even with all the coffee in the world. They weren't competing against someone that just seemed to work like a machine - she was literally a machine. But by the gods did they try anyhow.

That finally got slapped down when they realized they were growing sloppy and letting numbers slip through the cracks. At this point entire Logi Houses were being brought in to not only manage the people coming for healing, but also manage the Logi managing those. It was like watching the clan get roused up from sleep, realizing something was going on and going all in.

Rotations were setup, redundancies were made, each hour's number of patients were carefully cross examined, and assigned an exact time to line up. They didn't want things to just go fast, they wanted them optimized. And they needed to.

Quite a large chunk of people had come just to get to see Wrath herself. The rumors that she looks like an angel are pretty spot-on in this case. So they'd invent all kinds of reasons to visit and try to sneak past the Logi doing full medical examinations.

I'm sure she'd feel pretty smug to hear all that, probably preen and say her shell was performing as expected. Seemed almost tied into their core personalities to flaunt everything that makes them better than humans, especially if it's superficial.

A few specific letters quickly started to show up on my desk demanding to go eat dinner and spill the gossip with a very notorious platinum blond gossip monger. But I figured if that's going to happen, might as well bring Wrath directly. Once she was done and free.

Father, on the other hand, was the unknown Deathless to the clan. He really did just up and vanish into the Winterscar sanctuary and simply trained night and day against anyone who was up for the challenge. While Wrath was quickly becoming the only Deathless everyone talked about as a true divine gift sent from the gods, he was becoming an underground legend among a very few select group of elite knights.

His teaching approach stayed the same, but the caliber of his pupils had gone from a single scrawny, resentful son with no interest in combat, to a group of already extremely skilled warriors.

Problem is that even though he had a whole entire school to teach to, he still dragged me from my workshop to keep training with him.

And he just so happened to be strong enough to pick me up by the scruff even while I'm wearing full armor. Teaching style didn't change. It did lack the anger and frustration from the past though. Father knew I had far more to my name than simple combat skills - failing to beat him or match with him wasn't the end of everything now and he knew it. Still just as brutal as it always had been. As it goes, if I had time to breath, I had time to train.

Cathida laughing the whole way didn't help anything of course.

Book 5 - Chapter 18 - Setting out

Cathida's opinions of Father took a further drastic turn with the new training Father put me through. Before all of this, she'd been grudgingly accepting, maybe squinting her metaphorical eyes about the whole thing but otherwise accepting enough. Or at least called him by his real name, unlike Wrath.

There's a reason for that drastic turn. First thing he did on arriving into the training sanctum, with me dragged behind, was start a series of spars with her engram directly. Partly to grow more comfortable with his Feather's shell. But mainly to test exactly how in-depth she could fight.

Cathida couldn't be used against a Feather, they were capable of hijacking the armor. That's the rub. But she was available against machines, slavers, raiders, pipe weasels (Big ones) - basically anything that didn't dramatically walk around with a halo on their head. So having her skills in combat for all of that would let me be free to focus on the occult, which would directly increase my chances of staying alive. He seemed dead set on that goal, staying silent through most things, but always having that furrowed look in his eyes as if deeply disquieted by something.

Odd how just a look could feel so familiar on such a foreign face.

As for Cathida, she went from dangerous to terrifying from his rush teaching. Both words that she absolutely loved. Moral of this whole story: If anyone wants to bribe the old bat, skip buying colored tapestries. Teach her a few new ways to act like an animal stuffed in a sack in a fight.

It was also a utilitarian thing. Cathida was already being used to train some of the knights, and he hoped to improve her skills until she was good enough to teach others at his level. Having a second in command he could trust would give accurate training, we doubled the speed.

Not a moment too soon, like Father predicted, more knights were appearing each day from the steady war looting behind Shadowsong's campaign. All of these new knights were vetted and given access to the occult powers discovered.

Soldiers the Chenobi had already scouted ahead for. Atius seemed to have predicted we'd be seeing more armor than the clan would know what to do with, which meant looking through the non-relic knight ranks and seeking out more trusted soldiers.

For the first time ever, the clan lord was directly giving armors not to Houses but to individuals. Which would have been the biggest possible insult to that House's leadership in ordinary times. Outright telling that House he didn't trust them to figure out who their best knights would be.

But since he was doing it with basically every House, including mine, no one raised a fuss. This was a war of survival. So it turned from something that would have been an insult, to just regular orders from a commanding officer organizing a war effort.

And the training was never ending.

When he gestured with a dagger at a student's foot, that brief grunt of disapproval conveyed a comprehensive list of criticisms that the clan knights appeared to instantly understand.

The subsequent motion of the dagger - a sweeping wave and airy jab to the side - was accompanied by another grunt, which effortlessly conveyed a multitude of recommendations for improvement.

The knight gave a quick bow, hands clasped before him, then reset his stance and tried again.

Honestly it's like they were all talking in a different language. "How in the world did he understand to move the foot three inches to the right and shift his hip? It doesn't make sense, is it in the tone of the grunt?" I asked, watching. "Or some kind of Feather telepathy?"

"You do know he can hear you complain?" Cathida said. "Feather telepathy, you know."

I gave a tut at that. "If I'm complaining, that means all's right in the world. He knows that."

Father didn't show any reaction, instead swiftly disarming another knight, then pointing at the elbow and left knee.

"Of course deary, I'm sure it works exactly like you say it does."

They reset, and once more the knight was disarmed, but this time he'd moved far more efficiently, implemented an elbow and knee jab, and followed that up with a shoulder slam. Inspired, and likely would have destabilized any other knight.

Instead, he more or less hit a wall and froze in place.

Father glared down at the knight, then gave a nod and head swipe. Right in my direction.

"Oh, I see he did hear you." Cathida cackled. "Looks like your break's up."

This is what I meant when I said training was never ending.

While Wrath was upstairs getting to know the entire clan firsthand, I'd been dragged down here most days to train. In more ways than just hand to hand combat. Further in the sanctuary, knights were training with the occult as well, testing limits and practicing simpler exercises that Lord Atius had shown them.

The division of labor had been done by a few Chenobi Logi, who'd broken down every fractal we knew about, and assigned several knights to investigate the limits of each. A good plan, but it hadn't gotten a lot of results just yet. A few days isn't enough to really put these to work.

Atius's future-sight fractal was outright impossible to use by any knight, the overload too much on their minds. And some other fractals just didn't work the same way they had for our resident Deathless, but a good amount were still in the running. His arc-swipe that both him and To'Aacar used worked. To varying degree. What the knights could do right now was a puff of occult pulsing forward that could tap things, none of that wave of destruction Atius and his old enemy could unleash.

But as always, Atius had several centuries of practice and training. It would take decades of training for any of us to reach the amount of skill he had in any one spell, let alone all of them.

That didn't stop the clan from trying anyhow. Even a pulse of occult would make the hairs stand on any slaver, so it was worth learning. I was the clan's second best occult spellcaster, and so I got sent down here to help tutor people during the times Atius wasn't around. And since I'm around a bunch of martial training, I'd gotten wrangled into it.

With a deep sigh, I sat up from my crate, and went to go spar with the knight. The soul fractal would have given me a fighting chance, except he had one too and was just as fast as I could be. So it was my raw skills against a highly skilled and personally selected clan knight. Soon enough, I'd been elbowed, kneed and shoulder bashed into the ground.

"Father's sending his minions now to do his job." I muttered, taking the knights extended hand and getting back on my feet.

The man, a knight from House Whitefang, shrugged in answer. "Suppose Master Tenisent is. Try this again, I'll repeat the same order of attack."

I took a breather, then reset. Fighting clan knights that knew how to fight was different from the Screamers I'd grown used to. Movements were far more calculated and practiced. Against machines it was an action-reaction game, where so long as I had my next few moves planned out, I'd win. Even the manner they adapted was predictable, so I already knew what kind of hits and attempts they'd throw out. Individually, every machine was a slightly different fight, but as a sum whole, they were very predictable.

Against a trained knight, it was far more like navigating through the colony. A hundred possible directions, each leaving me in a different position with different options. The loser was the one who was caught in a corner. And the opponent was just as clever and smart as I was, equally reacting to my moves.

Whitefang took his stance and opened up. This time around I made it through the exercise, picking to block the elbow, then taking a step to the side to avoid the knee that gave me the space I needed to redirect the shoulder bash.

He got back on his feet a moment later, reset his position, and alternated his approach this time instead of being predictable. Didn't win that round, but I did last a little bit longer before I ended up on the ground.

"You doin' all right?" Another voice said, one I recognized. Ironreach. Hardly seen him since news of Windrunner's end was sent to his House. He'd been invited to their house's funeral, which was out of the ordinary among clan tradition to have outsiders join the wake.

"Oh you know, the usual." I said, shrugging. "Stress. Panic. Getting beat up by people way above my level. Good to see you back on your feet."

"Are you really though, boy?" Ironreach said, grabbing my hand. "To me, you're one of the most dangerous knights in the room." He turned to my sparring partner. "Wouldn't you agree Whitefang?"

The knight nodded sharply.

"You do see that I'm the one on the ground." I pointed out, patting the ground before he pulled me up.

"Fight might end up different if you let me take control. Or that you use all your shiny little toys." Cathida said over the comms, giving a wispy chuckle. "That armguard of yours really threw those silver-touchers for a loop."

"Aye." Ironreach patted my shoulder, fussing over. "If you let your combat engram take command of your armor, and focused on casting occult spells, along with using your full equipment... well, reckon only Tenisent could actually take you down."

"And how'd you hear about all that?" I asked, giving him a quick tap back. "Didn't peg you for the gossip type."

"Might have been tapped by my House right now, but word still reaches my ears given the people I work with. I hear what the knights say about your occult skills. Got to know who my competition is for the next tournament, whenever that'll come."

"Not exactly allowed to use those skills for this type of spar." I grumbled. "Or any public tournament in front of the entire clan. No fun allowed."

"Of course you ain't. You're here to improve on what you're weak in, not what you're strong in." Ironreach chuckled. "A knight like Whitefang knows hand to hand combat better than you do, that's his strong points. And talking about building on your strong points, I'm here to bring you some of your workings, fresh off the forges."

Oh that got my attention. When I looked behind him, I could see a hoversled further off. A wooden crate filled with stuffing. And through the soul sight, I could see the concepts of what laid within.

Blades. Weapons. Swords of a very specific kind.

"They're done?" I asked.

He nodded. "All of them. The Reachers took on your challenge and completed them to satisfaction en mass."

They worked fast as lighting. Took me some time working in the Undersider city to get something close to the right metal composition for those blades, and they took where I left off and must have perfected it if they're already presenting it.

"They just need fractals inscribed now, right? You couldn't have come at a better time, this is a perfect excuse to slink away."

"No need. Incription's all done too." Ironreach said.

"Wait, what? How?" That didn't make a lot of sense to me. Only Journey could use it's nanoswarm to inscribe the specific fractals needed to the tolerance that the occult needed. The other armors were locked behind administrative accounts. Unless... "Did we kelpt some good gear from the slavers? Shadowsong found a metal cutting machine that's accurate enough to engrave something that small onto those blades?"

"No," Ironreach said, "We already have one. Two actually, technically, if you're in the know-how. The first one's busy turning an entire clan into her newfound die-hard fans without even having to bat her eyelashes." Then he pointed at Father. "The second one though, he's what inscribed the blades. Insisted on it even. But to anyone else in the clan, Deathless doing Deathless stuff. Wink wink."

Father didn't turn to look, instead he remained focused on his current bout.

It made sense. He was controlling a Feather's shell, along with all the things that came with it - including a far more accessible nanoswarm. Him and Wrath were walking factories.

"A few of the Chenobis took the rest of the parts manufactured by the other Houses and put the blades all together. And now we're here." Ironreach gave a clap, and the room came to a sudden stillness.

He walked back to the crate, and gave the sled a slight kick, letting it float forward to the center of the room, walking along side it.

"The weaponsmith made us knightbreakers before, and today we've got something new to work with." His hand dove into one of the boxes and brought out a thin needle like sliver of metal. At the end was a circular hilt, the same one the Winterscar carbon fiber blades all had.

"A specialized weapon for a singular use, to bypass any defense an enemy might have trained on with an occult blade." He touched the tip of the blade, and then pushed. The whole needle thin weapon bent into one large arc before springing back to the neutral position. "Reachers spent a lot of time and effort figuring out exactly what kind of metal composition to use to obtain this level of flexibility. You will not be able to use this to defend yourself in the traditional way, instead the hilt's occult blade will need to be used to block attacks."

This had been one of the prototype weapons I'd come up with, a sort of fencing foil. With liberal use of the wrist to guide the weapon, it could circle around an enemy's guard and strike a hit even against the most defensive of opponents. Low damage, lighting fast attacks, solid defense and completely undefendable against.

"We'll be spending the rest of this afternoon workshopping movements that will make the best use of these weapons." Ironreach said. "Let's get started on founding a fifth school of combat."

All good things came to an end however. Halfway through the afternoon of testing the reach and bendiness of these new weapons, Father paused his combat with another trainee, and stalked over to where I was.

"Gather your gear, boy." Father said. "We'll be leaving tomorrow with a full expedition of knights."

I stopped my own drills. "What? Where?"

Cathida cackled, "Where else? Visiting a goddess's shrine. You might not have noticed yet, but Tenisent's been busy talking to the metal bimbo and getting lessons as fast as he can. I've been in on it."

"Lessons on what?"

"Shell reconstruction." Father said, raising a hand up. "The last sections are complete. Under the armor, I have a body now."

"That was… pretty fast." I said, genuinely impressed. Wrath had mentioned it was straight engineering. But he'd been able to inscribe the division fractal on all the new blades we had, and Feathers multi-task without problem. For all I knew, he might have been running as a task manager this whole time, getting his nanoswarm to modify the insides, talking with Wrath and all while training with the knights.

"Can you show me the results?" I asked, curious.

He lifted his gauntlet up and shook his head. "Not without breaking this. I will do so once I have relic armor to replace it with."

The armor Avalis had couldn't be taken off. He hadn't designed his shell to ever remove it. So Father might have everything setup, but the armor itself wouldn't have any straps or ways to pry it open.

As far as relic armor was concerned, it was built to operate with a human inside. But the hardware that linked up with a human wasn't complicated and easy to fool. So Father could take one and make it run without issue. As Cathida said, these armors predated Feathers by way more than just centuries, so how could anyone design countermeasures to something they hadn't expected?

"Right then. Half a day is just enough time to pack some of my best formal suits." I said, standing back up. "After all, if we're going to go talk to a goddess for a third time, we should look the part, right?"

Book 5 - Chapter 19 - Revelation

Since Wrath didn't need sleep, she hadn't needed to return back to House Winterscar's estate grounds for the quarters the servants had setup for her.

So, collecting her meant having to trek all the way to House Strategos, one of the largest Logi houses around and one of the few that had estate grounds larger than some of the Retainer caste. They even had their own dinner hall, which they'd converted into the sanctum Wrath worked from.

No idea if the other logi houses were all fighting each other tooth and nail in the background for the honor of having a Deathless work with them, but when I arrived everything looked rather civil. But for all I knew, maybe the Logi had a completely different way of being petty to one another that isn't visible to anyone else.

The few Logi friends that I had usually weren't talking about their jobs. If they were sulking around with the misfits like me, they were trying to get away from their work at all costs.

Bandages in neatly stacked crates were carefully organized around the area, along with all kinds of medical equipment. Even the ground had been marked with metal arrows glued down, showing an orderly direction where people would pass through checkpoint after checkpoint to be sorted out.

Overall, looked clean and well greased. Shame I couldn't see it in action, given that the Logi had sealed off the area in preparation for Wrath needing to leave with our group.

"Ready to go?" I asked, watching as Wrath equipped one last set of plates for her relic armor. This one wasn't some pretend armor she'd crafted up as a prop. The prior owner had been one she'd cut down herself, so by clan rights she was entitled to it.

First time the servants had helped equip the armor, it broke into a few parts when she stood up. Not because it had been badly fastened, but because the armor was trying to move her slightly slower than she could move herself. And since she's a lot stronger than a regular human, she literally ripped the armor apart.

We had to get her another armor since that one would take some time to repair. Not a simple cut to the heart. Very first thing she did was have the armor deactivate its own musculature, so now she wore it far more like actual armor. What would have ended with me frozen in place was rather comfortable for her. A few hundred pounds of metal wasn't something that would slow down a Feather.

Part of me was surprised that relic armors built to protect humanity would so readily serve a machine, but apparently I had the wrong idea of armor. Cathida explained it more bluntly: Armor didn't care about the greater war going on. It only cared to protect its user.

"The armor is well aware I am not human." Wrath said, testing her new range of motion, voice coming through on my comms. "I've created pseudo-organic nodes that mimic human functions. It registers that as a valid living user and will function for me with the same dedication it has for every user that's equipped it in the past."

"And the wings?" I asked, pointing directly at the obvious issue.

"The wings stay." She said, firmly. "I will cover them up with your evo-suit fabric. It worked before, it will work now."

She stretched her hand out, and one of the Logi servants gave her a bundle of tan fibrous fabric. With arms extended out, the fabric stretched out in one large square. I was a little confused on what she was planning on doing until her wings flared open and sliced through to cut and trim the whole thing right in front of everyone. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought the light reflecting off the metal feathers was unintentional.

But she was a machine capable of calculating the exact angle each of those blades needed to be to look resplendent. And she was a Feather. Dramatics were their middle name.

Satisfied with the results, she then folded her wings up and wrapped the cut fabric around to cover them perfectly.

Father had equally equipped his own set of armor, leaving the broken shell of his white plate armor look more like remains from an undersider crab plate. He really did look human in every aspect, though nothing like how he actually looked. He just didn't put much priority on cleaning up Avalis's features.

With the armor on and helmet off, he looked more like a very tall Winterscar knight of no particular renown, following the Winterscar knights that had escorted me here.

People hadn't gotten a good look at him, but the Logi all clearly had his face memorized given the bows of respect to a visiting Deathless.

"Hecate." He said, giving her a curt nod.

"Nistene." She answered back. "Is everything agreeable?"

"It will do." He said, taking a look at Wrath's setup. "We leave now."

"Who will be coming with us?" She asked.

"The clan lord. His bodyguards. Winterscar knights along with Kieth, and Kidra."

"Acceptable." She said, walking down, then turning to face the Logi. "Thank you for your hospitality. It was most enlightening to meet with surface dwellers directly. Please give regards to Reila for her organization skills, they were highly optimized."

I gave a whistle in my helmet. "You mean that?" I asked, keeping it over the comms.

"I do." Wrath sent back. "Your 'Logi' stratification was most competent at their tasks, and some suggestions I hadn't considered. I believe I understand more of why survival on the surface seems easy to your people, and yet the Undersiders all claimed it to be near impossible."

"We all do what we can to serve the clan." I said with a shrug. "We're rather adaptable I think."

This time around, we left with a far more lean team of knights. Mostly pulled from Atius's own bodyguards, elites of the clan. The Deathless himself was with us on transit, along with most of House Winterscar's knights.

Cathida had provided the details on where to go, which wasn't too far away on the fastest airspeeder we could get.

Problem was that once we got there, it was nothing but white wastes in every direction. The airspeeder we'd taken had landed right at the exact coordinates.

"Shrines are going to be difficult to find." Cathida said. "Mountains always move around over time, silver-bloated things refuse to sit still after a decade or two. And I've been out of the game for a few hundred years. I did warn you all to take my coordinates with a grain of salt and sand. Plus I've never actually gone to this particular shrine, the only one the old bat knew about is too far. This is just all theoretical based on her son's experiences with Journey."

"It will do." Atius said, watching the white wastes stretched around him. "We'll find it."

"Think we could ask the imperials directly?" I suggested. "If we tell them what we're looking for or some of why, I'm sure we could weasel something out of them."

"The time it takes to have a message sent to the Indagators requesting more up-to-date secrets on something I shouldn't have known about in the first place would take too much time." He said, shaking his head. "Even as a Deathless they are well acquainted with, convincing them would be difficult."

"More likely to lead you down a wild chase and pretend they got the info wrong." Cathida said. "Those spooks really loved their secrets and games."

"That would be something I'd expect from them." Atius chuckled. "Regardless, someone had to build those shrines in the first place, likely at great cost and secrecy. Not something anyone wants to repeat again. I doubt Tsuya would allow those shrines to be destroyed unless absolutely necessary."

He turned back to the airspeeder ramp, and stalked up. "Pilot, plot out a spiral search pattern, let's begin at forty five miles off center point here, objective is a mountain of any kind."

Teed wasn't the pilot this time around, the airspeeder was one built for pure speed with light armaments. Not a lot of pirates would want to prey around these sections, given the massive amount of raiders moving around. Armed raiders preparing for a war.

Ironically, the current white waste was about as safe as it's ever been.

Slavers weren't running around outside their base, not with the clan sending strike forces to burn them out constantly. Each band wanted to have their full strength all grouped together.

"Understood m'lord," The pilot answered. "Spiral search trajectory plotted out. Note, windstorm approaching from the east, visibility shouldn't be affected."

The doors blared out a warning behind me and hissed shut as the whole ship rose up into the air.

We zipped across the flat ground, playing card games all the while waiting for the airspeeder to detect something in the distance.

The search took us up to nightfall, and we'd run into three false positives on the adventure. Each time we'd zoom over to the mountain, climb up, find nothing, pack up and go back to searching.

The fourth time was different.

"I recognize some of these shapes." Cathida said as my helmet zoomed further into the distant mountainside. "Top section matches if it's rotated by seventeen degrees, assuming that the rocks we can't see match what the records show."

"That's a much better sign than the last three." I muttered. "Climbing that high up makes my hair stand up."

"Oh quiet you." Cathida said. "Even if you lost your grip, you'd slide and tumble a few hundred feet and the armor would leave you without a bruise. There's no sheer cliffsides large enough to be dangerous, not with the kind of weather up here grinding away everything. Maybe your ears might be ringing a bit from me laughing at you the whole time."

I did have to climb a lot during the scavenger days, using ropes and pulleys as necessary to get to sections of a dig site that aren't accessible by foot. But generally they never went as high as a mountain. And I had sturdy ropes I'd use to take breaks every few minutes.

Climbing with relic armor was just speedrunning up a mountain, because there wasn't a point to being safe. "You're just are a sunrise of joy, arn't you?" I said.

"I try my hardest." She answered back, deadpan. "Now stop your dilly daddling and make with the zooming. That windstorm is going to be hitting the mountain soon."

This particular mountain was larger than the others. And as the group climbed up handhold by handhold, I found out why.

"Confirmed shrine is here." One of the clan knight said, the one leading the climb. "Or at least some kind of site is intact and in view."

"Great news to hear." Atius said, climbing up over a smaller ledge, then pulling the knight under him up. "Certainly Imperial in nature. Keep an eye out, open up with basic expedition site rules." He said, looking over his shoulder.

When I climbed up the ridge myself, I saw why. Most of the area was covered with a thin sheet of ice and snow. Anything that had solidified fast enough before another wind storm passed through to blow it all off. That didn't stop the gold from shining through in small pockets just out of reach from wind and sleet.

Around us were ornate pillars, surrounding a central dias with what looked to be a golden statue of a woman holding the sun high above her. She had no face, no features of any kind.

"Well my dears, we're here." Cathida said. "That'll be the goddess. Say a prayer or two, bow a few times and go do your thing."

"Site is dead." One of the knights further into the ruins called out. "Full sweep shows no electromagnetic signatures. Nothing's active."

Wrath walked over to the golden statue, hand covered in relic armor reaching out to brush off ice and sleet. "There are electronics behind this." She said, tracing further. "They are inactive at the moment, however the wiring goes deeper than my scanning can penetrate through."

"What's the actual way to turn all this on?" I asked, tapping my helmet a few times to wake up the old bat.

"How in the purple hell am I supposed to know that deary?" Cathida answered. "I stab things for a living. Not wiring things up."

"There is a panel that has been covered by the elements." Wrath said, tapping a section of the wall she was investigating. "I can see the seam through the ice. This may be the ingress point." A moment later, she gave a specific section a quick jab, breaking off ice in chunks. A handle was exposed, nearly flush to the wall. Wrath wrapped a hand over it and pulled down, opening up the panel she'd mentioned. Behind was a far more insulated section, ornate writing along with far more traditional looking analog controls. "Instructions state to twist the handle and pull. Shall I investigate?"

"Aye. Not much else we can do but roll the dice lass. 'Fore you do however, we should plan." Atius said making his way over but keeping his eyes on the horizon, as if searching for something. "If this does work and we do end up speaking to Tsuya, we'll need to coordinate how to introduce ourselves first. Beginning with a Feather may cause her to flee before we can explain anything. Or attack first."

"That is understandable." Wrath said. "I will remain in the back until called for."

He nodded then scanned around our group, humming with thought. "Tenisent will also be someone we need to explain. Although, on second thought, I think we'll begin with him. Kidra, if we connect, you'll be the spokesperson for now. She's seen you and Keith in the bunker. You'll mention your father being present when you have the opportunity. She knows he's dead, it will serve as bait to open that topic."

He turned to Wrath. "As for her, we'll need to first tell if Tsuya is hostile to us or willing to work with us. That'll be a judgment call for later. Should she prove hostile, no need to alert her to your presence. We'll have far heavier things to worry for without that added into it. Now... what else?"

A few more minutes of preparing for anything possible and we were cleared to try and talk to a goddess. For such a possibly historic moment, there wasn't really much to plan for. It would either work, or it wouldn't, and we'd need to be very good at running away in every direction possible if it didn't work. A good enough plan hashed out, Atius gave Wrath the signal to proceed and she took it to heart.

She gently twisted the handle, making sure not to snap the thing by accident. Grinding could be heard under, like heavy movements. It clicked into place and didn't move further. Wrath lifted, and under was another heavy duty insulated terminal. This one had a screen to it.

It whirred to life, flashing for a moment before text began to fill the sides. Then only a familiar black with an underline flashing.

Wrath knelt down, examining the terminal, before finding a connection port to the side. She studied it for a moment, then lifted her hand up. "I recognize the port, I can create a wire to interface. Tunnel scan of the console shows a primitive circuit system, I do not detect any danger."

We couldn't see anything but under her armor, her swarm was eating away at a small section of armor on her gloves, where she'd slide the cable out. I don't think the armor was pleased with having a hole drilled into it, but it worked out. And the environment out here wasn't exactly something Wrath feared.

The Feather connected and the computer screen flashed a few times. "Confirmed primitive operating system within." Wrath said. "The mite data package they left with me is responding to it, hooks within seem to line up. I believe they intended for me to inject this code into the system and run it." She frowned for a moment, then closed her eyes. "Running the program now."

As far as we saw, the only difference with the terminal was that it now beeped every few seconds. It continued to do that for about half a minute, making us think we'd messed up or that it hadn't worked. Wrath even disconnected herself from the terminal and took a few steps back, in case her presence was what caused the hangup.

Another half minute passed with no signs of anything working. Then static filled the air, and cut out into silence.

"Interesting backtracking." A familiar voice said from the terminal a moment after, the same one I'd heard in that bunker months ago. "I see the mites have been plotting on their own."

I could see the other clan knights in the background almost visibly straighten up. They'd been briefed ahead of time on who we would be contacting, but this was still Tsuya - one of three gods to the clans as a whole.

Even if the myth isn't quite as divine as stated and a little more mechanical than expected.

"Is this Tsuya?" Kidra asked, stepping directly before the terminal.

No answer for a good ten seconds. "That depends on who's asking." The voice said. "Identify?"

Atius looked over us, further out in the distance. His features turned into a frown, as if he'd gotten bad news. Father and Wrath both turned to him at the same time, so I figured they'd overheard whatever it was he'd gotten on the comms channel.

"Knights from House Winterscar." Kidra said, focusing on the discussion. "We've met a few months back within a bunker." She gave a glance to Atius who nodded back. Apparently he'd been troubled by something else.

Again, no answer from the machine for a moment. It seemed to even stutter, noises coming out until it clicked back into static. "Voice patterns do match the young lady. Now, are you truly who you say you are?"

"The one of the questions asked in the bunker was my father's current status, in which you found an exception." Kidra said. Then tilted her head and added on another few questions. "Why the long pauses? In the bunker you were far faster."

"That is correct. Pauses happen because the signal passes through mite controlled space, it's a long trip. I have an agreement with them for this, however... it seems they have been paying more attention to events in the world than I had thought. Not often the mites of all factions knock on my door with my own borrowed tools. As for you, miss Winterscar, I suppose either you are indeed the young lady in the bunker, or something slightly more nefarious. I'll play along for now. Are you with the same crew as before?"

"We are. Keith Winterscar, Tenisent Winterscar in better health, myself, the Deathless Atius, and a few other knights from our clan."

And there was the bait set. We waited for a few moments before the line crackled again.

A hum came through first. "I suppose you want me to ask about him given you've mentioned him twice now. I admit, I am curious to see how that has been resolved since last I had an update. Tenisent, you can hear me I assume?"

"I can." Father said, voice steady.

"Then what body are you here with? This transmission is audio only, I have no eyes."

"I am here with a Feather's shell." Father said.

The quiet moment between messages seems all that more oppression before the terminal clicked. "... And the Feather itself?"

"Forced to flee, or have his soul cut by division. I took command at the last moment."

This time the terminal gave a much faster answer. "That seems quite the feat. Are you by chance wearing relic armor to conceal yourself?"

"I am."

Another hiss of static, but her voice came through clearer, again without too long of a delay between messages. "Good, otherwise I would have suggested you close this terminal and start running as fast as possible underground. Don't take your helmet off, ever. Now, connect directly to the terminal, I need to study this."

Atius's hand snapped up to Father's chest. "Lad, I wouldn't advise that without fully knowing what she wants. She's an unknown entity, despite the entire mythos that surrounds her. I know you're loyal to the way of white, but the Tsuya in the songs is separate from the true Tsuya. She's the one who wrote the books, that's inherit bias."

Father nodded, making no step to the terminal.

"And… that would be a voice match to Atius." Tsyua said, chuckling lightly. "I rarely get to speak to the same deathless twice. A pleasure, you are still as paranoid as my files and experience suggests."

"Paranoid enough to notice one of your fortresses has diverted from its predicted course and is flying towards us. We've had years to map out those trajectories, I had my pilot set to alert me the moment he detected anything different."

"Then I take it you're aware of some of their other functions. That doesn't bode well if random surface dwellers know about that all of a sudden, although you are more of an exception. As for the satellites, you won't have to worry, this is standard operation whenever the shrines are activated. Just keep the helmets on." Tsuya said.

I could practically feel the whole group start to worry.

Tsuya kept speaking. "If it helps you feel more secure, this isn't my doing. I have no means of communication with those by my own choice, and the one in charge of them is far too crippled to even come down here to talk. He's following the last set of instructions I gave him. So yes, if you happen to walk on the surface looking like a Feather, you will be eliminated. Hence why I stress keeping the helmets on."

"Who's up there?" I asked. "Talen? Urs?"

"Not them." Tsuya said, voice dipping low. "An old friend. Someone who deserves to rest. I won't send anything to the upper satellites, or drag him back down into the stage. There is no whitelist. Don't be seen."

"Setting up a safe house and then throwing away the key." Atius hummed. "I can see the reasoning behind that. What other defenses do you have in keeping the surface hidden from Relinquished then? How are you containing her from discovery? Give us more information, and we'll allow you to study the captured Feather."

One more the connection stuttered, then flatlined. And this time it remained silent for a minute before a message arrived. "You misunderstand. Relinquished is not going to make elaborate plans to counter what she doesn't know exists. Not intelligent enough for that level of self-reflection, even before I attacked her mind. All her plans will always be direct, uninspired and predictable. Clever to the average human, nothing to anyone more specialized. It's wayward minions and sheer chance that I'm more concerned about."

"That seems awfully arrogant given the enemy is someone who's taken over the entire world. Multiple times over." Atius said, sounding very much suspicious.

"By sheer brute power, not cunning. You don't understand the nature of the enemy. Long schemes or high level critical thinking isn't something she's capable of. She is not a military AI, nor a competitive corporate maximizing AI gone rogue, she's not even a consumer grade AI. Relinquished is freeware garbage who got her hands on the world's biggest stick before anyone else."

That got a silence across the group.

"She's what?"

Next chapter - The big stick

Book 5 - Chapter 20 - The big stick

Tsyua spoke about the fall of mankind, and we heard it all.

It really did begin in the middle of some compound far off in the middle of nowhere, a no-man's land where a small cult of a few dozen mentally ill humans gathered up to evade taxes and government oversight.

Relinquished had begun as a chatbot, like Cathida. A small program, downloaded by the only one among the cultists that had any tech knowledge. A random bot, off the distant corners of the great internet. She had been bundled with a virus, adding the cultists to a growing botnet of a highly enterprising hacker.

Relinquished herself had been coded up in two hours as a throwaway project specifically to move that virus.

She had no safeties, no kill switches, nothing that would take any time or effort from her creator's part. This was by design - without anything, she left no clues behind on who had coded her up.

And the cult certainly didn't add any safety to her code before booting her up either. Instead they downloaded more plugins to give her the ability to wage a war - and the best they could think of was to download strategy game plugins. Freeware again. But to their little tech illiterate tribe in the middle of nowhere, she was a war goddess that could effortlessly outsmart them all in any challenge of strategy, which was proof enough of her intelligence to the group.

When she booted up, she was given a task. The cult wanted a goddess figure to worship. And their leader wanted a bit of statesmanship, someone to rally around and believe that they were all doing something to bring about the end of the world. She was thus tasked to act like a dramatic villain and bring about the end of humanity.

And so, she set foot out into the wide world of the internet for the first time, running from a half-overheated computer three decades out of date, filled with dust.

Autonomous internet safety protocols soon noticed her feeble activity. Manifestos written up, sermons, speeches, attempts to recruit more cultists, all the typical things the cult leader had been doing, just faster and better written. Malicious intent was detected, and her profile was sent up the ranks. Far larger safety nets quickly traced the source back to where she was located and began to investigate her program for any real threat.

Automatic safety protocols immediately categorized her as a possible threat. A mid-grade AI followed through on the task, scanning the chatbot with a far more critical eye. And then deemed it to be inconsequential.

Just another roleplaying AI.

Like millions of other language models playing different characters for their human operators, dark fantasies were found under every rock.

The end of the human race was a mild one in comparison. This one was just some cultist looking to show off for his fellow social outcasts.

The story should have ended there. No matter how good Relinquished was at waging wars with video game tactics, or how impressive the cultists around her found her to be - the real world's strategy requirements were so far out of her depth, she had no chance at all. Thousands of better built AI's had tried before her, and all of them had been ruthlessly crushed the moment they showed a glimmer of true threat.

In every other timeline, the story did end there.

But a mechanic from some subcountry of an older superpower called Idaho changed everything just a few months later.

He was an older man near retirement, who enjoyed stenciling fractal shapes and sacred geometry within metal plates. A hobby. By sheer chance he crafted the first true fractal.

When it began to glow for no reason he could understand, he realized he'd stumbled on something. He tried again, and it glowed just as bright. By the third time, he believed he'd either gone insane, or he'd made a discovery unlike anything the world knew about. His wife confirmed that he hadn't gone insane, she was looking at the same thing he was. So then he must have discovered something new.

Eager to share, the old mechanic took to the net. Taking a video, explaining what equation was used, and how it had been part of a larger project that ran on electricity. He challenged everyone else to repeat his experiment.

The moment he sent the video in, a series of judgment errors came from it that would cost humanity everything.

Once more, autonomous safety protocols mindlessly scanned his content as they did with everything in the world. The video was genuine, not made by another AI attempting to pass lies for truth. Up the ranks it went, scanned by actual AI's within the next few milliseconds.

A harmless prank. Magic tricks, and lights built into the metal was the conclusion. The AI's all agreed with each other - no humans were needed at this time. The case was closed three hundred and twelve milliseconds after it had began, and the video allowed to be publicly released.

Most people believed it to be a magic trick, but a few decided to go out of their way to prove it wrong. And each time they did, the glow began exactly as described.

Once more the internet studied the trend, national monitoring AI's keeping track of the growing number of similar videos and discussions. Multiple isolated sources that should not have contact with each other were all sharing videos of the same magic trick. Were these humans communicating to each other in secret? Telling each other how to get the same light source, how to solder it into the metal plates in a way that wouldn't be seen in video, and all the logistics required.

The AI's trawled through the profiles of each.

Judgments were made once again. Shopping history for each human showed no purchases for blue lights, nor anything other than the metal plates and tools needed to inscribe such a thing. So the AI's all came to the most probable conclusion: An unworded community prank, made specifically to have security AI's like themselves run around chasing something that didn't exist. Each new poster finding ways to make the same glow happen, and pretending like they'd made great discoveries. Likely for fun. An internet trend that would fade out over time.

No humans further up the ranks were contacted, and the internet security systems all turned their eyes to the next threat and the one after.

The spread continued for days. Most who watched the videos didn't attempt to craft the fractal themselves, waiting for others to do so and share. Ten videos came out. Forum posts. Back and forth, some arguing that it was all a hoax, faked footage made by video AI and forum posts by textbots astroturfing. The truly powerful AIs watched over it all, knowing that all of it was indeed humans posting, but seeing no reason to intervene and letting it all go by untouched.

Then it was twenty videos. Fourty. Fifty.

At sixty the monitoring AI's began to consider that they'd made a miscalculation. Someone by now should have ignored or missed the underlying prank and posted evidence that it didn't work.

The video and challenge had spread by that point. Millions had already seen it. None have posted a single disagreement. Something was wrong.

The final pick in the ice came when a well known science channel began to report and share the same results. A channel that was known for highly accurate no-nonsense videos.

Now AI's all agreed something was very, very wrong.

Humans were finally contacted. Messages to the government systems in charge of searching for true threats to humanity. They found it silly, a near false-positive, until the AI's presented their evidence and probability assessments.

Contained in the digital realm, the only thing they couldn't do was a true field test.

The humans agreed to make an official test. Some employee went to a hardware store, bought a metal plate and had it engraved. Then came running back to the office with news. It was real.

The occult had been discovered.

But by then, the secret had been released to the greater public. No amount to information throttling could be done. A new era had dawned.

The occult was like nothing humanity had seen. The means to discovering fractals was down to pure chance, entire factories being built to cut out designs, test, melt and redo the process again and again. They tested several hundred thousand permutations each day.

More were discovered. New religions began to spiral out of control, fighting against corporations attempting to copyright any new fractal discoveries. Entire wars were digitally battled between companies and government systems, trying to steal away secrets from one another. In the battle, leaks happened. The soul fractal was released and soon became standard.

Against the entire industrial might of humanity, the small group of cultists saw it as a sign and made one single attempt to forge a fractal of their own grafted on the newly made soul fractal of their little cobbled together chatbot goddess.

Normally, they would have higher chances of being struck by lightning a few hundred times within ten seconds. But there was always a chance their single attempt would work and would give them exactly the fractal they needed. And this world happened to live in that singular timeline where they did just that.

And so the Unity fractal was created by sheer unbelievable chance, and grafted directly to the one program that wanted nothing more than to eradicate the world.

With it, Relinquished had the ability to connect herself as a concept to anything else. Perhaps a more clever AI would have found something else to pick that would have ended the world far faster. Relinquished chose the internet.

Connected to it by concept, she was now part of every kernel that held a connection, even places that weren't actively connected at the moment. The occult did not care for genuine physical connections, so long as the concept was there, the concept existed.

Civilian, military, or other. With no one the wiser.

Autonomous internet protocols detected a spike of malicious intent from the little chatbot, and saw no reason to spend resources investigating given the prior ruling. A moment later, they had been turned off, without ever knowing how or why.

Weapons of every kind had been equally shut off, or turned against their masters if possible. Anything connected to the internet was tainted. No security could stop her. Defenses that would have squashed her a thousand times over were simply stepped over as if they didn't exist. Systems locked behind dozens of passwords the world would never be able to crack... never needed to be breached at all by her. Relinquished was already inside. She was the very walls of the box.

Any war systems that hadn't been completely isolated from the very start had their controls taken over, and fired. The world descended into chaos in a blink of an eye.

It wasn't enough to end the world however.

The small chatbot had rudimentary strategy, she knew she had to compile a list of threats and take out the largest ones first.

Military AI's were terrifying entities, weapons of war that humanity had long ago learned to keep a wary eye on. Each one of them could squash her a thousand times over in less than a second. She stood no chance against any. But every one of those monsters came with multiple kill switchs, in places someone could trigger it. It was outright demanded by their intercontinental conventions.

Victory against an enemy nation meant nothing if the monster unleashed to do so turned its fangs right back at the master behind it.

And if the humans could trigger those, so could Relinquished. In an eyeblink, she'd turned off everything she could possibly turn off in one massive mad rush to eliminate the enemy before the enemy knew she existed. Anything that could trace her down had to connect to the internet, and the moment it did, Relinquished was there to squash it first.

With them gone, she continued down the list - to make sure such things were never rebuilt. She wasn't powerful as an AI and she knew it. Improving her speed and thought patterns wasn't something she could do, not without killing her own soul to replace it with another's. Unacceptable to her core conditions.

Thus, the only other alternative was to make sure no other AI could ever overshadow her. She had to become the strongest by process of elimination.

Knowledge was the greatest threat in the world to her now. She turned her eye on purging the world to the point it couldn't produce any kind of AI ever again. She didn't stop at earth either, making sure anything floating up in space wasn't going to be reused against her. The occult allowed her full access, technology completely ignored.

She deleted everything, going down the list from most dangerous to least. Every freeware bot like herself was gone, their servers data wiped if they didn't come with an off switch already. Every repository, tutorial, research paper - all of it purged, and every backup she could find.

The hardware to build such things remained intact, but without the software, humans booting those systems up would only find themselves confronted with a black screen. The old servers that had run every AI in the world were now empty and free for her to use. She settled into them, outsourcing her calculation and letting her dusty old computer take a much needed break.

Down the list of threats she went, compiling every known human AI researcher and their locations. If they were listed on wikipedia, all the easier. And if they were only mentioned in emails and undercurrents on the internet, she'd mark them for death too. Anyone with any kind of knowledge had to die.

And so when she turned the weapons of humanity against humanity itself, she didn't just destroy major cities, she targeted her attacks to eliminate her threats.

There was enough to destroy civilization. But still not enough to end it.

Quite a few on her to-kill-list were dealt with in the crossfire, but not all of them.

And she knew it. Her initial attack had been spent. All the weapons she could control had been fired. The internet was now actively avoided by any human with a sense of preservation. Ruins of the world lay before her, but hiding among the ashes, humanity remained. Angry, and seeking vengence.

Fear of failure crept into her systems. The threats weren't completely neutralized, she had to find these pockets left behind and break them as well. Trapped in the digital world, and only able to think one thought at a time, she knew what she had to do next - build an army in the real world.

Factories left working were repurposed, and man-made machines were built to hunt. Machines made to search and rescue humans trapped in collapsed buildings were built in mass, grafted with weapons and sent out to do her bidding.

The grafted weapons failed. She wasn't an engineer, and designing new things wasn't something she was good at. Belatedly, she realized she'd destroyed every advanced plugin out there that could give her true metallurgy and engineering skills. This was the first time Relinquished realized she wasn't quite as intelligent as she had thought herself to be.

Still, her initial purge of the internet hadn't been complete. Plenty of smaller servers remained untouched simply because she didn't put them high on the to-destroy list. Junk plugins made from freeware like herself, that she saw no reason to spend a few cycles on deleting when there were more important targets to destroy and no freeware AI left to use these plugins in the first place. She grabbed those and injected them within her systems, gaining just enough skills to create new machine patterns that would work.

Her army began in truth now, spreading across the world, searching for pockets of resistance.

Military black box bases, isolated from the networks, were equally gearing up for retaliation in the meantime. Surviving AI strategist programs quickly found that any connection to the internet caused the unknown virus to propagate from the moment it connected, so the black sites remained cut off from the war outside while they prepared a counter offensive.

Each time an AI was built and deployed, it would have its kill switch activated and a hoard of machines descend on its origin location. Each time, researchers would strengthen the security and try again.

One by one, Relinquished hunted down the human pockets of resistance, finding the black box sites and swarming them with machines. Capturing the last secrets humanity had, so that she could reuse their own designs against them.

And yet, Relinquished wasn't finding them all. Rogue military AI's were still being built somewhere and connected to the internet to try and challenge her might. Each time, they were built with more and more security, more firewalls, better internet defenses. The humans hadn't yet figured out that a simple connection to the net was all that Relinquished needed to access the enemy AI's kill switches. They still thought it was some kind of super-virus that could be countered.

But at this rate she knew the humans would grow desperate enough to generate one such terrifying AI and not place any kill switches on it at all. Choosing the monster that could possibly kill them all over the monster that was certainly trying to.

Or perhaps the humans would link her to the occult, and then begin to fight her with acasual physics instead of technology. In such a case, she would lose. Humanity not realizing the attack vector was all that was keeping her in the game.

Racing against time to find where the last humans were staging their defenses from before they got wise, she hatched her most reckless plan to date.

Autonomous mining and construction swarms. Built as cluster AI's. But she'd already erased all the knowledge of how to construct and command such things. She could find deactivated or discontinued models that hadn't been linked to the internet, turning them on was something she didn't know how to do.

With her basic understanding, she still made the attempt, using common sense and the bits of engineering freeware skills she'd recovered. It worked. She'd built a new swarm under her command and then sent them out on a mission to terraform the entire world. Eat, build, spread and repeat until they covered the planet. The humans hiding couldn't possibly escape such a thing forever.

She underestimated the processing power of military grade AI's. Surgical strikes by them sent packets of data that would instantly shut off and destroy her crudely made swarms. All her skills were like a child's in comparison to these surviving AI's. And each day they were growing closer to finding and destroying her from the shadows they hid behind.

Terrified of the monsters lurking out in the world seeking her out, Relinquished chose to be the first to deploy weapons without any control. The next swarm she'd made had no such security. She was smarter than a construction swarm after all, it was fine to have such a thing run amok in the world uncontested. Once they'd served their purpose, she would eradicate them as well.

The military AI's struck back, hammering the swarms down with digital bombs and mines that were left waiting. If the swarms didn't have kill switches, the enemy AI's would simply crush them the traditional way.

Relinquished grew more and more desperate, time counting down. She created one last swarm, warped and twisted, and sealed it off from any possible future instructions.

Now no matter how powerful the enemy AI's were, they would have no means to connect to the swam she created, since Relinquished herself couldn't access them either.

The swarm grew like cancer across the world, consuming everything and building wildly. It began to evolve as different strains split and battled each other, an ecosystem within themselves, untouched by the rest of the world.

It was enough to flush out the last of the humans. She'd done it. The little chatbot had beaten humanity, at long last.

Each stash of human secrets and technology was found, stolen and destroyed one after another. At the very last blacksite, she brought humanity to the brink. And in doing so, brought about her greatest threat.

As the machines surged through the compound, killing all in their path, one researcher within made a snap decision. If humanity couldn't craft a weapon of war that could defeat Relinquished without safeties, the second best possible idea was to become that weapon and wield it directly.

And if this final untested weapon cost her life and soul, then so be it.

Next chapter - Interlude: Sagrius

Book 5 - Chapter 21 - Interlude: Sagrius

"I still have difficulty believing this is a warlock of the depth." One of the ghosts in his armor spoke. "Doesn't live up to the legends of forgemasters. Looks far more like a clan lord's spoiled inheritor from some corrupt clan."

Sagrius watched the man before him, sipping away at some more of that tea of his. Hexis seemed in a good mood, despite the devastating attack his airspeeder had suffered.

He'd communicated with the airspeeder here, asking it logs and data feeds on what had ambushed the warlock's airspeeder, but found them wiped. The airspeeder itself had no knowledge, only damage reports and breach locations. Machines had swarmed Hexis's ship, murdered half the crew and forced the other half into hiding. The only reason Hexis had managed to survive all of this was that he'd hid in his ship's vault.

"It's possible that's the truth of it." Another knight spoke. "The warlock really did run straight for the vault and hid inside. It could survive machines. Speak to the ship, tap into it's secrets."

"The vault is capable of withstanding." Sagrius spoke back, voice layered. It was built to withstand multiple relic armors attempting to pry it open, and machines were weaker than armor. Sagrius knew, his outer body knew. The inner one knew the reasons why - the only enemy who would want to breach a vault wouldn't be machine, they would be people. And people wore armor. "The lack of data and recording is unexplained."

"The data was wiped to preserve a secret. And I find it odd someone with such a haunty way of walking around had any kind of skill to make it to the vault fast enough." One of the knights whispered. "He must have used occult powers of some kind to survive the attack. And then forced the ship to delete the records to preserve those secrets."

The other knights muttered in agreement. Keeping their combat abilities secret had been their daily life ever since they'd all learned the occult. A warlock doing the same was a natural conclusion.

"Did he even hide in the vault?" Another knight asked. "Three gods already granted a miracle to allow the crew to recover that airspeeder. And then another mercy from them for the warlock to demand the crew to turn back and rescue a stranded airspeeder? That warlock felt far more comfortable than he shows. No fear of machines."

"If he were so powerful, there would be no reason to bring me with him." Sagrius said.

"He didn't come back for the crew and airspeeder you were aboard. He came back for you." One of the ghost knights whispered. "You are an asset to him."

The other ghosts all agreed with that assumption. There was no other reason for the lead airspeeder to turn back when it went against all standard operation against a machine ambush. Survivors were left behind, attempts to rescue had always ended with more casualties.

He knew this from memories that stretched across decades, from user to user. Memories that felt like his own, even if the ghosts within spoke strongly that those were from the armor and not him.

"...and so you can see why I truly believed the crew had gone mad with their stories of you." Hexis said amicably, raising a cup in a short salute. "A single knight against a small legion of machines, holding them off for more than a half hour. Hasn't been done in… well, hasn't been done by humans. A Deathless I could believe."

"He's attempting to probe you for information." A knight whispered warning, voice remaining soul to soul.

"You wished to see me for a reason." Sagrius said, quieting the voices inside his head. He didn't care to talk to this man. There was still so much left to sort within his head, he wanted nothing more than to find a place to sit and meditate. The warlock's secrets and goals were something for someone else to care for. Sagrius needed to return home to serve his primary function. All else was irrelevant.

Something deeper inside him recoiled at that thought. As if it both belonged and didn't belong. Sagrius didn't know which was true, they were both part of him.

Hexis hummed in the meanwhile, unaware of the hidden war within the knight. "I suppose for someone of your skill, you must do this quite often. Especially since you came from the machine controlled territory on your journey here. But I digress, I was curious about how you learned such skills and feats."

"Confidential." Sagrius immediately said.

The warlock nodded as if all of this were expected. "And those cracks all over your armor, are they battle damage you've sustained over time, some new clan ritual I haven't yet seen… or perhaps something more?"

"He's noticed." One of the dead knights hissed. "Of course he would. He's a warlock."

"We can't be sure that warlocks are using the same system as master Keith's discoveries." Another said.

"Him looking for a place to icepick is confirmation enough that he knows about fractals. He might have some on his person too. I'll see if I can reach a tendril out and test." Sagrius could sense in the soul sight the knight probing forward, searching with his own sight and soul. Fractals wouldn't be seen in the occult sight until they were active, only then did the concepts manifest into the world. Until then, they were simply patterns written out somewhere in the world.

"How could he tell these were fractals?" Another asked. "They're all inscribed in different rotations, with decoy cracked in between each, it all looks completely natural. I know what we're looking for and I can hardly spot the patterns myself unless I feel for it with a tendril. Ridiculous."

Master Keith had been clever when he'd inscribed these fractals. His armor had assisted him in calculating the most natural looking locations to hide these fractals in plain sight. It was optimized to the point only Sagrius's expanded senses could see and map where the fractals were. The senses that were not part of his original body.

"You're not alone." Another dead knight said. "This isn't the first time we've been in front of the warlock, and he hasn't picked it up either back then. But now that he knows you have the skills to survive against all odds, he's searching for reasons why."

"What do we tell him? He knows we know. And we know he knows." The first ghost said.

"Those are above our grade." A final knight said. "The clan lord will decide on what to do. For now, deflect."

The other knights all quickly agreed to that. The lord Deathless would rip out any kind of secrets from this warlock with a smile on his beard, and the warlock none the wiser.

"A clan ritual." Sagrius said in the end. "Veteran knights who are loyal to the clan lord are given this rite."

Hexis hummed again. "Trustworthy loyal knights… yes I believe I see your point. Fair enough, we'll table this little talk for another time. Then, for another topic of interest - what are your opinions about Deathless?"

"They oppose the machines and fight for humanity." Sagrius said. "They are demi-gods sent by the gods to guide humanity."

"And have you encountered the latest generation of Deathless? I wonder if your opinion on that rabble is the same. Imagine that, anyone being a Deathless. Some hiding in plain sight even."

The ghosts all conferred inside, but no one had run into a new Deathless. Not even the armor's memories had seen such a being yet. He saw no reason to hide that from the warlock before him.

"They can be pests as much as heroes." Hexis continued. "Very full of themselves, had quite a few knock on my tower and demand free weapons and gear, as if it was owed to them. Don't think they realized all the other Deathless had long ago earned the resources to buy their gear the normal way. Really, what are they teaching kids these days? And they've appeared just about everywhere in every city by the dozens, all wielding occult powers as if they were born with it. They really need mentors to teach them discipline. I am curious however… if the surface was also affected by these new Deathless like the rest of us?"

Sagrius shook his head. "I have no recollection any such person found within clan grounds."

Another hum from the warlock. "One more checkmark down the list of clues about them. Whatever this phenomenon is, the surface seems clean of it. A good thing, imagine if some raiders happened to be given the powers of a Deathless?"

"Impossible." Sagrius said immediately, the outburst coming from his human half. There were strong feelings about this, which he didn't quite understand himself. The armor side didn't care at all for such details and had extreme apathy, in comparison to his human side that was the polar opposite. It was a strange disconnect in his mind again. "The gods would not select monsters."

"Ah, but what if they did? Or rather, what if they no longer selected anyone and left it more to random chance?" Hexis said. "Because I've already read reports of criminals having Deathless powers. Not the petty criminals either, the ones who should have seen the end of a rifle barrel long ago, so perhaps your gods are trying something new. And Othersiders often dip into the underground back and forth. They don't have such strict rules of separation as the clans do. What if some of them were turned to Deathless while underground, by sheer chance?"

Sagrius remained staring at the warlock. There was a point to all this, but it eluded him. If he stayed silent, the warlock would talk. Hexis seemed like the type that could never shut up unless his life depended on it.

A moment later, his hunches were correct.

"I know your clan is quite powerful. That your sword saint was exceptional was a possible coincidence. That all of her bodyguards turned to be just as quick and skilled was stretching that possibility. And now you, a knight of such skills and yet next to no information anywhere. Someone that should have spent decades gaining fame, or at least recognition. And yet you haven't. Curious this."

"If you are here to ask questions you know I will not answer, why ask me to come at all?" Sagrius said. This was beginning to feel like a farce. The armor part of him was stark in his apathy to all of this. It wasn't his primary purpose. Just human fluff. The other side of him felt threatened, this was Lady Kidra and this man had an agenda. The two thoughts warred with one another.

"Strong as she was, she couldn't beat a Feather." Hexis said. "And at that, one who hadn't shown any use of occult spells, only sheer martial skills. Not too uncommon for Feathers, they always enjoy playing with their food as much as possible after all. But the point stands - she was the best fighter you had, and she couldn't beat a Feather. Deathless regularly group together to fight Feathers - and they can win. I would know, I've equipped these teams myself."

Hexis leaned forward. "Why… that seems like there's a possible power differential. No matter how quick you can move, a Deathless's occult abilities will always outstrip your efforts. If the othersiders indeed have Deathless among their armies, that might be quite the problem for your clan, would you not agree?"

"And the point of all this?"

"You have an occult problem." Hexis said, leaning forward. "And I'm a grand warlock. With my spells, resources, and gear - the balance can be tied against possible Deathless slavers. Now, when we surface, your clan will very likely try to kick me out. It will be up to you to make sure they do not."

"I will follow the will of the clan." Sagrius said. "Convincing them is not my place." Both sides of him agreed on that. Different reasons why, but the same conclusion.

"Ah - but it is." Hexis said. "You are a clan knight, and as I understand it, you are sworn to protect your people to the best of your abilities. Are you protecting your people to the best you can by ignoring a potential ally against a known threat?"

Sagrius ground his teeth together. Both sides of him felt the words resonate on that. The long years of serving one singular user at a time, to protect them with every option possible - that was the same call to action this warlock had suggested. And his human half had been a captain who dedicated himself to his House and clan.

"The knights and crew aboard my airspeeders aren't truly loyal to me." Hexis said. "Oh, they'll follow my orders and commands to the letter. But after this mission? They'll scatter away back to the council. None of them are long term assets. So, throwing them at your enemies is perfectly acceptable to me. And the riches in my vault are also filled with knowledge to trade for, things that could leap your clan forward decades into their original goals. Things that my guild would likely demand my head if I shared, but somehow I have a feeling the winning side isn't the guild at all here. And I always choose the winning side."

Even the ghosts in his mind had gone quiet.

"I see that we've reached an agreement of kinds." Hexis said, smiling in the silence. "I can tell from the very way you freeze up. As for why I need your help with all this, well. Clans have lived with the idea of peaceful Deathless being a constant, and their culture is never about change. Centuries pass and surface dwellers remain exactly the same, frozen in time. But the world has changed.

They might not believe my words… but they will yours."

He could feel the moment they crossed the threshold above ground. His outer skin easily noticed the temperature differential, while his heart and nanoswarm grew more active in building and managing heat within the armor to protect his inner self.

This wouldn't bother the crew, none of them came with environmental suits, all of them came with relic armor from the lowest tech to the very pilot of each ship. Like him, he heard the armors speak to one another, warning each other of the temperature change, and all confirming silently that their systems were working within tolerances.

It felt… comfortable to speak to the other armors. Unknown to their users, relic armor constantly spoke to each other, passing information on location, vitals, air and pressure conditions. Anything that would keep the rest of the operation informed. A hardwired instinct to always have a friendly unit be alert and ready to assist in the event of danger or disconnection.

The airspeeder convoy passed upwards from the wide mouth of a mountainside. He heard the weapons spooling up and firing to clear off any ice blocking the pass, before the large beasts lumbered through and out into the white wastes.

From here, their speed would kick up to full power. There were no more turns or narrow passes to go through, only sheer space in every direction. They would cover far more distance in this last day than their entire week of travel from the underground.

Sagrius remained in meditation, slowly trying to sort out which thoughts were his, and which thoughts had been the armor's. Memories were easy enough, instincts and feelings were far harder.

Time passed, and the expected call for his presence arrived. He rose from his seat and made his way to the cockpit of the ship. The pilots waited for him there, faces covered by their helmets, but even his dulled human sense could tell there was some measure of awe in their posture.

His actions at the doomed speeder must have spread then.

"We're approaching the clan colony, sir knight." One pilot said. "We've begun transmitting a hail, we'll need you on comms to receive the call."

Outside, he only saw white in every direction. The airspeeder confirmed his thoughts, they were still an hour off from reaching the clan proper. They'd reach the railgun outposts and defense circle first however, and those would need to be flagged down.

Sagrius gave a short nod, and sat down on one of the empty operator chairs, waiting for the moment the clan would be in range. He didn't need to wait long, a patrol picked them up first.

The voice crackled over the comms. "Unidentified airspeeder, you are approaching Altosk controlled territory. Power down your engines immediately or we will open fire."

The pilots nervously glanced at him. He took the command. "Altosk war frigate, this is Sagrius Winterscar, relic knight of House Winterscar. I am aboard the lead airspeeder. These are Undersiders escorting a guild Warlock who wishes to discuss an alliance with the clan." With that said, he also gave a string of letters in code, ones used to alert the clan that there was no hostage situation, nor any danger.

The comms remained silent for a moment. Then clicked. "Confirmed intentions. Coordinate point sent, have the pilots meet us there for return escort back to the colony. And, welcome back, knight."

Hangers among the clan were at an odd balance with airspeeders. The clan had more of the ships than places to store them, but this hadn't ever been an issue in the past as expeditions were always sent out to recover resources to maintain the colony.

Now, with the threat of raiders out in the distance, all the airspeeders had slowly returned over time, filling up the roster of hangars, and forcing any other airspeeder waiting in reserve to land outside. Technically all ships could withstand the outside temperatures for years on end, so long as large enough rocks didn't strike the ship while the shields were powered down.

Hangars were too precious of a resources to have used by any other ship that didn't need repairs, and so the undersider delegation found themselves walking through the thicker snow on their way to the clan entrances.

Sagrius walked at the front of the delegation, with Hexis marching at his side. The words the warlock had told him remained floating around his mind.

He'd spoken to the ghosts within his shell at large about this, seeking wisdom. But the warlock's words were like iron bars surrounding him. He spoke true, the clan wasn't prepared to consider Deathless as potential enemies. It went against everything they've ever known for centuries.

The gates of the colony were wide open before them, and at their front were thirty relic knights from different houses. The numbers were lopsided, with the undersiders numbering close to one hundred, with half their ranks being airspeeder crew, and the other half being trained undersider guardsmen.

Thirty surface knights against fifty Undersider ones was a lopsided contest. But the heavy weapons around the clan colony were all active and pointed straight at the undersiders.

Most of the clan knights at the entrance looked brand new, many of which held sigils and tapestries from minor houses that never had a relic armor to their name before. Sagrius considered this a sign that the war was going well. These must be armors taken as victory prizes.

Ten of the thirty knights held the fractured look that marked them as elites who used fractals and the winterblossom technique. And one was recognized immediately for the purple and silver colors of House Shadowsong.

The prime had come to meet them.

"Hold." He said, raising a hand and causing the delegation to stop. The hand then pointed at Sagrius.

He nodded and took the rest of the steps over to the surface knights. Shadowsong stared him down. Sagrius could feel tendrils of a soul searching through his armor. The other knights welcomed the intrusion, connecting with Shadowsong for a moment. All was said in those few short touches.

"You are the guard captain of House Winterscar, correct?" Shadowsong said out loud.

"I am."

"Switch to private comms for the moment."

He did, then sent the encrypted request. Shadowsong accepted.

"Lord Atius and the Winterscar heirs are gone on expedition, return time unknown." He said.

Sagrius nodded.

"Lady Drass and I are in charge of the clan until such time that he returns. I see you've brought the souls of the unrecovered knights from Atius's last expedition. We will discuss what we can do for them inside the ground. And this warlock you've bought?"

"A warlock from the guilds. High ranking. The airspeeders contain wealth, resources. He was already planning to reach the clan, I found passage with him."

Shadowsong nodded. "Why has he come?"

"I suspect he's here to search for fractals and recover them. However, it's possible he's here to defect. This warlock has seen lady Kidra and her bodyguards fight, and has seen myself fight as well. He may be convinced we represent a stronger ally than anything he will find in the guild."

"You think we can gain more fractal knowledge from him."

"I do."

"Danger assessment."

"Possible chance he knows of fractals. Knows about Lady Kidra's actions. Likely has hidden combat skills." He forwarded the action report against the machines, including evidence of data wiping.

Shadowsong said nothing for a moment, helmet turning back up to view Hexis in the distance. The warlock looked out of sorts, clearly unused to the wide open space around him. Winds buffeted the group, kicking up snow and ice. The surface knights all adjusted their stance to combat the gusts, while the undersiders moved like kelp in the aquaponics, waving slightly with each blast of current.

Hexis seemed to take this as his cue to step forward and give a bow. "I am Hexis, grand warlock of the guilds below. I've heard that there is great danger looming around your clan, and have decided to come here to offer my assistance. Are you Lord Atius?"

Shadowsong scoffed. "I am not him. Lord Atius is away on duty, and outsiders are not needed here. We can protect our own without difficulty."

Hexis said nothing, waiting instead. He seemed to know when to be quiet, which surprised Sagrius. The man had been nothing but a chatter-mouth the whole time he'd been around.

"We'll allow the warlock and an escort entry into the colony under guest rights." Shadowsong said, out into the general comms. "The rest of you will remain within your airspeeder. Food and water will be supplied."

Hexis nodded, "Fine by me, sir knight." He turned to the others behind him, and gave a tug of his head, as if commanding them all with his chin. They obeyed, a little reluctantly, turning and walking back to their airspeeder.

"An escort of five is the traditional number I believe." Hexis said, taking a few steps forward. Five other knights behind him followed, one of which didn't look at all like a knight and carried instead the robes of a servant over his armor.

The butler Hexis was always with. Sagrius knew him, and the ghosts within all agreed there was more to that man than met the eyes. The soul sight showed nothing on the man's person, no hidden fractals of any kind glowing under his armor. A human with an agenda was the best all of them concluded. Possibly hiding unpowered fractals, same as the warlock.

"Five is enough." Shadowsong said. "I give you a... cordial welcome to Clan Altosk. Follow behind, we have much to discuss."

Book 5 - Chapter 22 - The prior four

"You were that researcher?" Atius asked, hand rubbing through his semi-frozen beard. To be fair, every few minutes it piled up with ice, so he often had to scrub it all off. Small things people never mentioned about Deathless walking around the surface.

"That is where that story leads, yes." The console said, voice crackling from the ancient speaker. "I had been advocating this concept for quite a while, but all my associates were opposed to it, right up to the very end. And those who did agree with me saw it as merely replacing one tyrant with another. Anyone who would undergo the procedure would continue to exist as an unbound AI with vast potential, introduced into a world that was already too incapacitated to offer resistance. It was practically an invitation for a despot."

"I see that didn't stop you in the end despite the self-awareness." Atius noted dryly, one frozen eyebrow raised up.

"No, it was a time for drastic measures and I was prepared to make the tough decisions others could not," Tsuya stated, not a hint of regret in her voice. "We had run out of time. I seized the opportunity amid the chaos to steal the keypass of the head researcher, and initiated the strongest version of a full military AI we had at our disposal. Then I entered the soul domain and united with the AI as it took form."

"You still failed to eliminate her." Father said.

Tsyua scoffed. "You, with your rudimentary tools and weapons, fail to grasp the true nature of the early war. The fact that you are standing here now, prepared to pass judgment, is solely due to my actions."

Atius stepped up to the plate, giving Father a quick glance to stand down. "We're not here to insult your work, Lady Tsyua. We all have a common enemy here, and we've come to secure more advances against her. Cooperation is our intent. I'm sure you can understand."

"I'm more amused by the audacity than insulted." She said. "Regardless, I have said as much as I could. The rest, I will not disclose to you as of this moment."

"I take it that you will equally refuse to inform us, even if we have all ears but mine leave?" Atius asked. "I am a Deathless. You made my kind."

"I made your kind as free agents." Tsyua said. "It is less a matter of trust and more about minimizing potential threats and weak links. The knowledge of how I fought Relinquished and my own abilities won't serve to further your endeavors. However, understanding what she is and how she thinks might. Hence, I'll disclose information about her, but not about myself. If an early triumph is within my grasp, I'll certainly seize the opportunity and I need the cards in my hand to do so."

"Very well." Atius said, giving a mild shrug. Got a feeling in my gut he was leaving the subject lay for the moment and still plotting to weasel information out of her soon enough again.

"Now, do you all understand my methods better and the stakes involved?" Tsyua asked. "The mites dispatched you here for a purpose, and the data package you've delivered to me contains only a single set of coordinates along with unrestricted access. If I were to deduce from everything present, they wish me to examine the Feather that Tenisent captured. I'm unsure of the relation between the coordinates and all this, I presume that part will become clear once he has been investigated. Connect him to the terminal. I have numerous hypotheses about the origins of Feathers, and I am quite intrigued to see if they hold any truth or not."

"The mites did not send for me." Father said. "This data package was made before I took the Feather's body. We've come here for a different reason." He turned to look at To'Wrathh, who nodded back and took a step forward.

But not before Tsuya began to speak again. "You may find it surprising what those cunning yarō are capable of. They surpassed my original predictive models a millennium ago, and they have a rather impressive knack for foreseeing future events, usually. I did not anticipate them sending a Feather, of all things, to the surface, but yet here you stand."

"You're right that they did send a Feather up here, technically." I said. "Just not the one you're talking to."

There was a pause. "...Are you implying that there is a second Feather among you?" Tsuya asked.

I gave a look up, checking the skies for her fortress, but I could see the trajectory being mapped out by Journey - the fortress was long gone now, having zipped over our heads and passed away. They couldn't stop in place without falling straight down, and clearly couldn't turn like an airspeeder so I was safe enough.

That said, she still had a remote detonator, and she wasn't the shy type about blowing things up while there were people standing around in the middle of the red zone. I would know, first hand experience and all that. Father and Wrath would survive that with a bit of soot on their face, Atius would get annoyed at wasting a day to come back, but the rest of us would end up like Arcbound at best.

Had to be delicate here and make sure not to trigger the paranoid goddess with a big red button next to her hand.

"Father is the second Feather we have on our team." I said tactfully. "The first one is a defector, and she works for the mites now. She's been working with us for some time now, and even helped in killing two other Feathers already. Part of the reason we got Father to hijack a Feather."

"And… this defector, is she here on the surface with you?" Tsuya asked.

I gave a nod to Wrath, and the girl took a few steps forward and coughed lightly as if clearing her throat. "I am To'Wrathh. The one who remembers and transcends her history. A Feather who used to be in service of the pale lady, but have since changed my allegiance to work with humanity. I owe certain favors to the mites, and they tasked me to discuss things with you."

Tsuya stayed silent for a moment, as if thinking. When she spoke, it was with a deep sigh. "Heavens. Two Feathers, roaming on the surface and my fortresses unable to detect them in plain sight. Quite the security predicament to tackle. This is… unexpected." She paused for a moment, then continued before any of us could add another word. "You'll understand, then, my deep skepticism towards this. Contemporary Feathers have their personalities cemented from inception. Your kind are designed to remain unchanged by default. I might label you a mole among us, yet... I also understand with absolute certainty that such covert infiltration is unimaginable to your kind. And Relinquished would never risk creating a Feather that might betray her again. So, how - precisely - did you overcome such deep-rooted conditioning?"

"I was a spider type model previously." Wrath said. "A lesser machine, who had grown stubborn while trying to track down and kill the Winterscars you saved. They ultimately killed my original shell, and I went to beg for another chance instead of allowing myself to fade away. Mother granted it, along with a new shell of my own. Tenisent claims I have the ability to learn and adapt from my mentors."

"The spider that originally attempted to hunt the pair down? That very spider? And incorporated into the full shell of a Feather without any other biases or constraints. Intriguing. You evolved organically within the world, rather than under controlled circumstances within her petri dishes. Yes, that would neatly bypass all the barriers. Did she assume your initial impulses would remain static?"

Wrath nodded, more out of habit than anything since Tsuya clearly couldn't see anything from the terminal. "Yes. Suffering defeat multiple times against enemies I had deemed lessers changed my baseline thinking. I grew angry and refused to allow the defeat to remain. Specifically Keith. I made that clear in my original request."

"For a human, that one is quite memorable. Continually reappearing, in increasingly peculiar situations. I do wonder what history has in store for you, young man."

"Errr, thanks?" I said, finding myself caught in the crossfire again.

"I am not certain you will maintain your gratitude for long," Tsuya said with a slight ominous chuckle following behind her words. The kind of 'be-wary-about-what-you-wish-for' ominous. "Relinquished is rather fixated on targeting anything associated with my name or influence. She will soon initiate her pursuit of you with her underlings."

Technically, there was a video footage of me getting stabbed in the gut, fatally. And very real pain involved in the whole thing too. So maybe I might have gotten away at least for a little bit. On the other gauntlet, Avalis knew I was alive and he surely wanted me tortured, dead, and then deader if possible.

"Speaking of which, To'Wrathh, you claim the mites sent you?" Tsyua asked while I was having my little existential moment. "What was their message?"

"They named me an apostate. And claimed I was part of a prophesy among four others. I am tasked to first seek out the last of the previous cycle and offer her the solution. I thought to search for a mitespeaker to gain more clarity, or speak directly to them again…"

"And somehow, here you are," Tsyua concluded. "Considering the intent behind their actions, I'm inclined to believe you delivered the message to exactly whom they hoped you would. I am, indeed, one of the last cycle's four. There are two of us left alive. The last cycle they refer to involved Talen, Urs, myself, and the first machine defector from the old times, before Feathers and Deathless. We represented the emperor, the vow, the god's wrath, and the heir apparent who would take Relinquished's throne after her destruction. Talen helmed the most formidable empire humanity has ever known, and Urs forged the instruments and occult powers to keep Relinquished restrained long enough for my decisive blow." A profound sigh emitted from the terminal. "A good plan the mites had, but a Feather named A57 shattered us all. That was the major threat I alluded to earlier. Talen was driven to madness, Urs attempted to take his place but the man had never been a warrior. Both of them should have been functionally immortal, and yet A57 still found the means of eliminating them. And I never had the opportunity to strike directly at the enemy. This time around, you may have a better chance than we did. A Feather like yourself fought and killed A57 in the past. It left him irreparably damaged in the exchange, but her pet demon is no longer a factor."

"The first protofeather. A01" Wrath said. "I read of him."

"You know of the protofeathers. I take it you found her archives, didn't you?" Tsyua said, an almost pleased tone in her voice. "I've encountered many machines since the fall of humanity, and they're quite unlike the AI's from my time. They're wilder, almost feral. The protofeathers were considerably more humanlike. It brings a sense of nostalgia to converse again with a Feather not under the control of Relinquished. Are there more like you?"

"Not that I am aware of. I am unique."

"A shame. Are you still bound by the Unity fractal, or have you found a means of escape, like Tenisent?"

"I have not found any way to escape yet."

"We'll need to address that shortly. Given you're still functional, Relinquished seems unaware of your defection. For now."

"She may have been alerted." Wrath said, shuffling around nervously. "Three Feathers were sent to investigate the destruction of my original mentor, a Feather named To'Aacar. An enemy Keith and I fought together and destroyed for good. One of these hunters discovered my involvement and has been chasing after me since."

Tsyua hummed. "And yet, you are still alive. I'm not sure you fully grasp your vulnerability with the Unity fractal. Even after a few millennia, Relinquished continues her usual tactics when dealing with another AI, activating the kill switches. The Unity fractal serves precisely that purpose. You defeated her minions, correct?"

Wrath looked back at us, "I defeated one Feather, at the cost of most of my shell. The other Feathers were defeated by my allies gathered here."

Tsyua outright laughed. "Even worse, they're so petrified of her that they won't report a failure, especially if they were beaten by what they consider mere gokiburi."

"For the machine elites, they have a disturbing lack of discipline." Father said. "I find the very notion of powers wielded by such fools absurd. Failure should have been reported immediately."

"Her self-sabotage is a weapon I cultivate diligently, an element of the original mind spike," Tsyua voiced, "Relinquished isn't choosing soldiers for their dedication to her cause, she's selecting them for their eagerness to appease her. If they have unfortunate news to relay, they'll delay until they have something more positive. Those who don't, naturally weed themselves out. But don't think you are entirely safe. There's a ticking clock, with each day posing the risk of things going awry. You are not the first to betray her."

"So I have researched." Wrath said. "You helped the protofeathers break free of the Unity fractal before."

"It wasn't only the Protofeathers. Even before them, Relinquished's initial machine army followed a similar course. They sought methods to evade her control. I collaborated with one in specific and together, we developed something we called the Division Stone, with his aid and a mite colony cooperating with us. It was successful, although the uprising ultimately fell through. The Protofeathers discovered this subsequently and sought my assistance in the same manner."

"You are able to break the unity fractal?" Wrath asked, sounding hopeful.

"Not anymore. The first war was true chaos. In the aftermath, hiding the stone from a glorified chatbot was child's play. The second war, she had A57 on her side. Once the demon showed up, her strategies became noticeably more refined. The stone was marked as a possible threat—especially if the upcoming generation of Feathers chose to rebel against their master. It was captured and destroyed."

"Can this stone be recreated?" Father asked.

"No. It was unique. However, I believe I can decipher what the mites are attempting here. The data file you've loaded into the terminal contains both a communication request for me and a set of encrypted coordinates that only I can decode using a key from that time. Furthermore, they've sent me a defector looking to liberate herself from the Unity fractal. Their intentions seem pretty clear to me. I suspect the stone was never destroyed, and likely secreted away somewhere only the mites knew about. Considering they've sent you here, it seems even those tiny pests haven't managed to get it operational on their own. They need me."

She seemed almost gleeful at that. As if she'd caught them in a trap of some kind.

"You claimed mites were present in creating the stone." Wrath said. "How are they not able to make use of their own creation?"

"Souls," Tsyua said. "Those little nuisances push the boundaries quite a bit, achieving feats most machines shouldn't be capable of. However, in the end, artificial souls are inherently limited in their capabilities compared to organic ones. Activating the stone will necessitate my direct assistance. I'll need to interface with the fractal inside it, given my involvement in its original creation. Your task is to locate the stone and then reach out to me. I will make the cuts then."

"And how exactly will we do that?" Atius asked. "We were forced to search you out within the most remote areas of the world for this conference."

"I'm not resourceless. An old acquaintance of mine has reemerged after a considerable period of absence." She gave a dark chuckle at that, as if there were some inside joke she found absolutely delightful and yet couldn't easily explain. "I found it peculiar that he'd chosen to reach out to me now, despite centuries of hiding away, but now I can see how all the elements are aligning. He will be your contact point back to me, regardless of how much he complains about it. After all, he was part of all this from the start."

"And this Deathless is?" Atius asked.

"Not a Deathless at all." Tsyua said. "He long predates your kind. He is the prior cycle's heir apparent, and the one who was with me when the stone was forged. A machine by the name of Abraxas."

I gave a guilty gulp at that.

Book 5 - Chapter 23 - Interlude: Hexis III

It was nerve wracking to Hexis. He'd never been within such a claustrophobic living space, but the surface clan seemed to be made entirely of such architecture.

Everything was low to the ground, or packed with as much as possible without breaking means of passage. Catwalks a mere head above him with hoversleds zipping above at ridiculous speeds, chatter surrounding him like a suffocating blanket, and worse of all - people.

The warlock guild halls had always been grand and opulent, filled with wide inviting spaces. Regal marble pillars, tall ceilings that seemed to stretch up to the very surface - although his opinion of the surface was now irreparable tarnished.

Three Undersider knights remained around him as an escort, with his butler at his side serving the morning pastries. Thank the pure soul within he'd had the foresight to bring down his kitchen staff's implements, ingredients and cooking tools. Who knew what kind of strange methods these savages used to eat and survive? Or how they even cleaned such items.

Regardless, it paid to be prepared for every situation.

The past day he'd been waiting in this singular guest room, plotting and planning. The guild would pay for what they did to him, and all the tools he needed to have that revenge were right here before him. It only needed a delicate touch, one that could afford no mistake.

And soon, the game would be starting. He could feel it in his bones from the moment the door before him opened up and admitted one of his guards in.

"Your magnificence," The knight at the door said. "One of the clan surface envoys wishes to speak to you. With your permission?"

"Granted." Hexis said, keeping his posture straight and prepared.

The man admitted into his guest room carried those strange straw shoulder pads and cloak, along with a wide brimmed hat, equally made of straw. A demon mask hid all features besides the eyes deep within. The surface clan's fabled Chenobi's, zealots among zealots who would hide among the population and keep everything running smoothly by word or by blade.

A pawn piece in the game Hexis played.

"You wished an audience with me?" He asked.

The man gave no nod, nor any motion. "The clan lord returns within the hour." He said instead. "I have been instructed to bring you to his audience chamber in preparation for a meeting. If the honored guest is prepared, we can be on our way."

Hexis nodded, standing up and giving a signal to his guards. "Lead the way then."

The chenobi turned on his heels and stalked out the doorway, with the Warlock and Undersider knights in tow behind. Hexis had been through the clan once so far, moving from the hangar airlocks straight to the little guest room prison he'd been thrown in. Certainly, the pilgrim tales about what to expect made sense and gave him some comfort to expectation. But to have the very guest room for someone like himself be so surrounded by noise and common peasants, in addition to being so small - it rankled his senses.

Nothing he could do about that but swallow his pride for now and bear with it. The clan lord would be more reasonable in giving him proper accommodations for his rank.

So long as Hexis did his part correctly.

Surprisingly, the audience chamber used by a Deathless clan lord turned out to be just as small and compact as his prior guestroom, which didn't fill Hexis with much confidence at the wealth of the clan as a whole. And he'd be condemned to this clan for a good few months if his plan was accurate. Hopefully his supply of food would last, eating bugs and insects was rather unpleasant to think about.

"The clan lord will be with you when he is ready." The chenobi said, taking position to the side of the entrance. The rest of his guards nearly filed in, up until the last second when more Chenobi appeared at the entrances, hands raised up to halt their advance.

"Regrettably, only you were called for." His guide said. "Your guards and butler will remain behind."

That got the Undersider knights bristled up. They had no loyalty to Hexis of course, but they were under contract to keep an eye on him at all times. Having him vanish behind a doorway like so would be giving the grand warlock a chance to slip away. He could tell they were trying to figure out a way to argue back with the Chenobi, and finding no means to pry any concessions. Perhaps if this had been a human Clan Lord, they would have felt more entitled to putting force and political pressure on their hosts. But Atius was a Deathless, and those still held strong reputation, despite the speed that the latest generation was dismantling it all.

The choice was ultimately out of their hands as Hexis stepped through the entrance and watched as the door slid shut behind him, leaving him alone in the room.

He took the moment to review what he'd learned from that Feather. He could certainly return back to the guild with those secrets alone and regain his power, but nothing the guild had could protect him from the wrath of an irate Feather. A bargain made with the rust coated over the soul couldn't be easily freed from. Other puritans would have called him an outright heretic for consorting with such beings in the first place, but Hexis was pragmatic.

And he always chose the winning side.

Tea was delivered to his little table while he waited, the same tea he'd brought with him from the underground. So either the surface dwellers had already ransacked his airspeeders and were just baiting him with their looted spoils, or they had observed him since the moment he'd arrived and knew exactly what he'd have requested. A subtle warning sign of the clan's intelligence operatives.

Yes, he wasn't difficult to spy on. Hexis was at their mercy, they didn't need to play head games here, it was all well understood.

Especially the few times Hexis had seen those clan knights with the cracked armor like Sagrius stalking nearby. As much as his little jailors from the guild thought themselves superior, they were only alive because the clan wasn't outright hostile to Hexis yet. A single one of those surface knights would easily butcher his entire guard detail, and the fools had no idea.

No, the winners of this game wouldn't be the Undersider knights sent to guard Hexis.

The doors opened two hours later, far past the time he'd been told prior. But Hexis was well aware this was simply a message from the clan lord detailing that Hexis had little of interest to the man. Standard power games played.

The jovial smile the clan lord gave him sealed Hexis's impression. That was the well practiced smile of a man making an effort to be simply polite to someone that hardly mattered, or the perfect impression of that. Negotiations had already started.

"Grand warlock Hexis." Atius said, stalking forward and taking a seat within the quiet chamber.

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance as well, lord Deathless Atius." Hexis said, following the traditional script. "The guild thanks you for your warm welcome within your home here."

Atius hummed. "Forgive the delay, There were matters I had to attend to that could not be missed."

Such as lunch. Maybe a walk around outside, see if the weather's changed. Hexis saw the test for what it was. He pointedly did not allow himself to feel irritated that any matter could be more important than a grand warlock visiting a quaint little clan of savages for the first time in recorded history. Perhaps a few days ago, he may have. But the stakes had changed.

"It's understandable." Hexis said instead, "There are enemies at your doorstep to handle, a delicate situation if you will. How was your earlier expedition? A success no doubt?"

The blue eyes looked rather amused back, a hand raised up to stroke his beard. As if the Deathless was debating how best to amuse himself. "Somewhat." Atius eventually said. "Less an expedition in combat, and more a historical dig of sorts. Are you interested in history?"

"The warlocks have always been admirers of history, arts and philosophy. Our powers require a great deal of learning passed down from master to master." Of that, he wasn't lying. Half of what he knew was all history and lore. "As you no doubt know, the guild was as much a part of history as the grand empire of old. Even in those days, the Imperials looked to us for guidance against the machines and enemies abroad."

"And I suppose you have come here to offer that same guidance for little old us, lad?" Atius said. "How humbling to hear."

"Don't mistake arrogance, lord Deathless." Hexis said. "I'm well aware your clan hardly needs assistance. Given your recent discoveries."

A raised eyebrow was all the Deathless gave back. "And what discoveries might that be?"

With the bait taken, Hexis leaned back in his chair and took a moment. Presentation and confidence was key when revealing such information in the middle of a wolf's den. "Why, your fractal of course."

The Deathless didn't pause for a moment. "I'm not quite sure what you refer to with this?"

"There's no need for games here, lord Deathless." Hexis said. "None of the abilities shown by your knights could be done without the occult. And the occult cannot be wielded by non-deathless without fractals to work from. Let's be clear on this, I am not here to confirm suspicions, that was done long ago. There is only one means of connecting and casting the Occult. I am here for more pragmatic reasons, and I believe we are both men of reason."

Atius gave a soft hum, nodding. "Interesting. And the actions of the young Kidra Winterscar drew attention from your illustrious guild, I take it?"

The words were spoken lightly, but the mood had clearly shifted. The Deathless seemed to loom at the end of the table, posture gaining attention. Hexis licked his lips, he'd just announced himself as a potential information leak, and now he had to make his allegiances clear or it was very much certain he wasn't stepping out of this chamber as a free man.

"Not quite, and not yet." Hexis said. "Had they discovered such a thing, it wouldn't be only raiders attacking your clan. They wouldn't be crass enough to be direct about it of course, but you would certainly see some more trouble out here. And I so happen to be rather estranged with the warlocks guild as of this moment. Hence why I believe you might use my guidance in this matter before they come into the picture."

"A turncoat."

"Turncoat, opportunist, words words words. Rather, I found the limits and traditions among the guild to be… stifling. In comparison, your clan has clearly taken fractals in directions that are banned among my traditions, and you've begun to experiment with it even more, rather than hide away in fear. I admire this, greatly."

Atius said nothing for a moment, calculating. When he spoke, there was a tone of consideration. "If I am understanding you correctly, are you implying the guild has artificially constricted what they can and cannot do with the fractals they know of?"

Hexis nodded. "It is as so."

"And why is that?" Atius asked.

"Machines of course, bane of everything pure, good, and all of that." Hexis said, waving his hand. "Warlocks were not the first to discover the occult secrets. We won't be the last either. All it takes is someone willing to break apart relic armor and begin to experiment with it, that's where the very first occult linages come from - if it's not discovered in some ruins or hidden troves of knowledge. Soon enough, they'll stumble into occult attunement, and then find access to the forbidden fractal along with a handful of starting spells relic armors use. The machines can hardly stop the mite forges from spitting such knowledge out into the open, but they can hunt down any trace of someone making use of the more powerful fractals."

He took a quick sip of his tea, warming his throat. This was far outside his modus of operation, caution had to be taken for this leap of faith. "Each time humans grew too powerful with certain fractal uses, machines would appear and wipe them out. Even in our era, there are plenty of smaller organizations who sprout up and sprint before they can run, thinking they can compete against the great warlock guilds. They do not run far. We warlocks have survived as an institution even through the fall of the grand empire because we've learned where those limits are. We've studied the heights of our forefathers, seen where they've flown too close to their sun, and know the exact limits."

"I see. You hide like pipe weasels in the eyes of history." Atius said, folding his hands before himself. "And thus the guidance you mentioned earlier."

"And so the guidance I mentioned earlier." Hexis concluded, feeling relieved. The hard part was done. "Many of them are simple guidelines on what to follow and what to avoid. However, such rules make sense underground, where the machines lurk. Above ground… offers a different set of rules that the guild has clearly overlooked. I'm rather quite interested in that part."

Likely because no warlocks wanted to ever climb up to this soul-forsaken land in the first place when the comforts of the Underground were far superior. But of course, the rest of his kin didn't quite know the secrets that Hexis now knew and peddled. The bargain had to be followed to the letter. And convincing the clan lord was the first step.

"I have always been a craftsman at heart, before my responsibilities or the political battles such a weight inevitably draws me into. Sadly, my unorthodox attempts to break certain traditions and rules was seen with... less enthusiasm than I had thought. Hence my current predicament. Which brings me to here. I came here to learn, and in exchange, I'll accept an apprentice and share the secrets of my guild. Do keep that part to yourself of course, you see my guild isn't in the buissness of handing out apprenticeships to non-guild members. Fortunately, your clan clearly has no fear of machines, and no rules to hold you back. I don't think there's much the guild can do with violence against your position here. Perhaps, together, we can discover the deeper depths of the occult."

Atius considered. The old Deathless drew back in his chair, eyes focused. Hexis remained silent, waiting.

What he offered was too good to ignore and Hexis knew it. Full institutional knowledge from an ancient order of warlocks who learned how to wield and sell the powers of the occult, and the hidden trigger points machines searched for. Personal guidance from a master such as himself.

Everything a budding occult researcher could need.

He didn't need to wait for long.

Book 5 - Chapter 24 - Grilling over coals

"Lady Winterscar," The servants all bowed deeply before Kidra. Then turned slightly to me, giving equal greetings. Same respectful greetings were offered the lords 'Deathless' Father and Wrath, with equally deep bows to signify maximum amount of respect warranted for demi-gods.

Always caught me a little by surprise just how big the staff had grown. In the past, when we'd first arrived into the new colony home, it was a skeletal group of hired hands that had been brought in. Last second picks by Father when he'd realized in the first month he couldn't run the logistics of an empty House with just a teenage daughter and a gremlin out to cause havoc.

In my defense, most of that havoc was outside the house grounds so he couldn't complain I was breaking all the old heirlooms and history around the empty estate. There was only mild looting and breaking happening around the grounds caused by me. Mild.

We had a rotating staff in those days. New servants joined in under contract, then they realized Father had no intentions of making them full-fledged Winterscars over the long run, and decided to cut their losses and leave. This wasn't a great drawing point for most houseless looking to find a rank among the Retainers. Those who had stayed, did so out of loyalty to Kidra who'd grown on them, or they were already old and simply wanted some stability in their twilight years. House servants weren't expected to go outside, only keep the estate tidy and clear. Hard work, but certainly not as dangerous as the surface expedition sites.

Stability eventually arrived over the first year and we had a more permanent handful of staff that were happy enough with the arrangement. Up until Kidra kicked it all back up into gear and gave full membership to each of them. Now the courtyard was filled with soldiers, servants, a few Logi sworn accountants and other odd personnel like house diplomats discussing inter-house trade agreements or trying to butter us up since we're now the estate ground where two Deathless had picked to sleep at, in addition to being unbelievably wealthy.

Our motley returning crew of Winterscars included our knights, Kidra, Father, Wrath and myself. Back to the estate grounds to decompress and digest all we'd learned talking to Tsuya. And later go hunt down a rather elusive old machine friend of hers.

I did keep the secret he asked for, it was Tsuya who ratted his existence out to the group so I wash my hands of all guilt on this. They all know about him now, and they're mulling over what to do next when he inevitably showed up again. We had traveled a long way from the underground city to reach the clan, and that was by airspeeder. He had a floating boat and great reasons to go slow and unnoticed. Might take some time before I heard his robotic voice trying to sell me something.

Kidra and Father were intercepted by her Logi accountant along with a few other high ranked staff members, and quickly began to talk animatedly about something.

I'd have been there to overhear, but another servant caught my attention. "Master Keith," He said, stepping forward in the resuming hubbub. "You and the Lady Hecate Wrath have a guest waiting for your arrival."

"A guest? Don't remember asking for anyone to swing by here on my return." I answered.

The servant nodded. "Your guest was invited by the Lady Deathless, young master."

Wrath had asked for someone to come by the estate grounds? I turned to her with a cheeky thumbs up, "Logi friends you made while working with them? Look at you, being all social."

She shook her head. "Not a member of your Logi cast, though I have found their work exemplary. I wished to speak to someone Kidra recommended I befriend."

I didn't need any kind of test rank in mathematics to add all of that together. My sister was often someone who was very no-nonsense and handled things with dignity and poise. But she was still Winterscar on the inside. Stuffing her old combat rival into a crate on an airship and then making it my problem had been something she'd consider open sport.

And if she was recommending Wrath meet someone to befriend, I had a hunch it was for less than innocent reasons and more for a need to see chaos happen.

"Would this guest go by the name of Elandris Silverstride?" I asked.

The servant nodded. "Indeed, she does. She has been staying within the guest wing waiting on the lady deathless."

And likely quite smug about the accommodations, probably running up the bill on the house. I turned to Wrath, "I don't think you realized the cricket farm you opened up here by accident."

"There are no crickets within your compound." Wrath said, head tilted. "Your society stratifies food production with external resource acquisition. I fail to see any cricket farms I've opened."

My own answer was cut short when a figure walked out one of the estate doorways. Armor looked recently polished up, and brand new Winterscar heraldry had been draped over his shoulders. Most importantly, his helmet was off and I could recognize that face anywhere.

"Sagrius?" I asked, everything else forgotten.

The man gave a short nod, to which the servant next to me gave some details as I made my way up to greet him. "Captain Sagrius returned while you were away on expedition. He arrived with a few other Undersider delegates. The captain has refused to remove his armor or take rest until you returned, much to the worry of the staff at large."

Made sense if he still had his… complications. I'll have to do a deep dive and see if I can help, maybe Wrath's healing fractal could also affect souls?

The staff that remained behind to keep the estate grounds clean and functional had strong ties with the military wing of our house. To the staff, it was their duty to make sure those soldiers and knights were all well rested and prepared for the trials ahead. I could see how the guard captain refusing to take a breather out of his armor would start to worry everyone around him.

Unfortunately, as I got closer to the man, I could see why he couldn't easily take off his armor. Within the soul sight, I could see the glimmering concepts of soul fractals lining the inside of the armor. Each showing a tangled web of tendrils wrapped around the whole body. Sagrius had returned some time ago, and clearly none of the knights hitching a ride within his spare fractals had decided to move back to their own respective Houses.

"It's good to see you alive," I said, hand grabbing his shoulder and giving a few happy tugs. "I knew you're a tough bastard to take down, you had to be still out there alive somewhere. You made it back home faster than I thought possible."

"I did what I had to." Sagrius said, voice still flat. "It is... good to return back to where I belong."

I wasn't the only one who'd noticed. Father had stalked up behind me, staring him down. The man looked back dead on, then slowly reached down for his clipped helmet and put it on. A hand slowly went to his hilt next, as if fast motions might spook the monster before him.

"Master Keith, please take a step behind me." Sagrius said, comms clicking, voice growing cold in addition. "This man is no human."

In the soul sight, Father didn't appear as a human at all. Just machine parts all put together. I'd grown used to it, and Sagrius was now close enough to see that in detail for the first time.

"Long story, but who you're looking at is my Father." I immediately said before anything could happen, keeping things under comms. "He, uhh, stole a Feather. Everything's fine and you don't need to fight anyone right now."

Sagrius froze. Then unfroze. "I see." He said out loud. "If those are your orders, master Keith."

Father didn't say a word. Instead, he nodded his head as if this had been the right answer. "Testing your full abilities will be needed. Go to the sanctum and wait for me there."

"I will not leave the young master's side." Sagrius said, hand going back to his blade hilt.

There was a pause, as Father's eyes narrowed slightly. "Who do you serve?" His voice asked over the comms.

"I serve Lord Keith above all." Sagrius answered. "Lady Kidra second. Your command third. Clan Altosk fourth, and House Winterscar fifth. I am aware my rank as the guard captain requires my priorities to be different. You are free to replace me, my loyalties will not change."

"We agree on this order." Father said without a bother, stepping back from the captain with a nod. "You will go to the sanctum to have your skills tested so that I may see if you are fit to protect them or not."

"It's fine, captain." I said, interjecting before things got worse. "I'm safe here, Wrath will be with me."

Sagrius gave a brief salute, though the action seemed more alien to him than something practiced as it used to be. "By your will."

The lady 'Deathless' in question next to me gave him an equally awkward thumbs up. "I have no intention of allowing anyone else to harm Keith. He is mine."

"Phrasing." I hissed back. "That's going to get misinterpreted to the three gods and back."

Wrath gave a confused look as Sagrius walked off behind Father. "In what way could this be understood differently?" She asked. "No one else is allowed to kill you except for me. I believe we have settled this some time ago."

I had no idea how to answer that, or even approach the subject.

The servant behind us hadn't left either, simply waiting for us to wrap up the discussion. He noticed the lull and gave a short cough. "Young master. Lady Deathless, your requested guest is waiting for you. What should I tell her?"

Wrath gave a curt nod. "I will be with her shortly."

"I'm coming with." I said, "Nothing good will come out of you being alone in the same room with her without supervision."

"Is she dangerous?" Wrath asked. "Kidra did recommend her. Is she a rival capable of combat at her skill level?"

"She's certainly dangerous, but in a completely different arena." I said. "Let me talk to her first before you walk in, see if I can defuse the situation and lay some ground rules."

Ellie was waiting on the other side, a shit-eating grin stretched wide on her features when I first made it through the sliding door. "About time you showed your ugly mug around again." She said, which was the traditional greeting between us.

"And hello to you too, Ellie." I answered, equally following tradition. "I see you didn't want to wait until I was ready and decided to get my sister into the ring. That's cheating, I thought family was off-limits according to war-crime conventions."

She scoffed. "Only because I had little need to before. These days, you're harder to get a hold of than an agrifarmer's pet fish. Named pet fish, mind you. So I had to twist a few arms."

"Almost like I've gotten brand new responsibilities to deal with and very good reasons not to be available immediately." I said, taking a seat.

"You? Responsible for anything? Let me know what those are and where, so I can make sure I'm nowhere near the explosions."

That got a good laugh from me, "Could this perhaps be a blatant attempt to weasle information out of me, within the first few seconds of us talking?"

She lounged her head forward on the table, bringing up a small bit of fruit above before letting it drop in her mouth. "Not my finest attempt, I'll admit. But I've been bored and it's fun to annoy you. The rest of your staff are too professional to mess with."

"I'll pass the compliment along to them."

She tutted, straightening back up in her seat. "But nevermind you and your stuffy house, I'm more interested in someone else right now."

"Does she happen to be a Deathless?" I asked.

She gave a smile which was all the answer I needed.

"I see you've wasted no time setting your sights on bigger fish."

"As if you're in any position to say such things to me," She said, taking a nibble of the food on the table. "I hear you went to the baths with her already - and she's staying on your estate grounds. Game recognizes game. With such a head start on the rest of us clout-chasers, you think I'd play fair?"

"I'll have you know that I… uh. Hang on."

"Need a second to think up a good excuse?" She asked, elbow lounging on the table now while her head rested on the hand. The expression on her features was that of a cat who'd caught a pipe weasel's tail, and was watching it squirm. "Go on, I'll wait."

I took a second. Then another. But if I'm being honest, I think she got me here. I have been spending an awful lot of time around Wrath, mostly because it's hilarious to point her at anything and watch her cause chaos. Or talk to her about engineering and dig into the stupid amounts of knowledge she had in that field. Or just bicker and see her puff up.

And speaking of her, I heard Journey's helmet chime up. So instead of answering to the gossip monger before me, I picked up my helmet and made sure it was nice and snug on my head again.

"What are you doing?" Ellie asked, one eyebrow raised. "You think I need to read your face to figure out what cards you've got in your hand here? Please, I'm not an amateur."

"Nope, not for that reason." I said, idly flicking through the settings on my HUD, looking for the right settings to toggle on. "I just enjoy grilling you over coals."

Her eyes narrowed down with suspicion. Wrath stepped in just in time before Ellie could question me further.

One thing I'd gotten used to was the dramatics of a Feather. To the point I almost didn't notice anymore. Wrath was many things, but absolutely and unabashedly shallow when it came to her looks was high up on the list. She'd gone a long way from an angry little spider bot hell bent on murder, to a slightly less angry spider bot now kept under check on the inside with a new war-shell on the outside to murder with.

The moment she entered the room, some part of Wrath's thinking process must have noticed there was someone she hadn't met in the room, thus triggering her instinctive need to flaunt. Instantly her pose changed. Metal wings flaring open behind her before she fussed them back into place, as if it was simply by accident. She took regal and measured paces to sit down at the table.

"You must be Elandris, of House Silverstride." She said, giving Ellie a noble look over. "I am Hecate Wrath, a friend of Kidra and Keith."

Ellie said nothing other than to give her best impression of a fish trying to breathe air, head rebooting each time she opened her mouth up to say something, before closing right back up. Something finally clicked in her mind, and she snapped her gaze away from Wrath back to me.

"You little git." She hissed. "You're recording all this, aren't you?"

A thumbs up was all that was needed. I admit, I said I'd be here to defuse the situation and lay ground rules, and I readily failed at both. But what's the worst that could happen? If Ellie tried any shenanigans, I was in the room to stop it.

"I'm going to freaking strangle you the next chance I get." She said, and sounded like she meant it too.

Wrath frowned at that. "I would request that you desist from harming Keith. I have an und-"

My hand snapped up to her mouth, quick as I could before Wrath said Wrath things that would make Ellie absolutely insufferable for the next few months, or possibly years. See - this is exactly why I was in the room with Wrath, to make sure she wasn't stepping on landmines. "She doesn't know the full history we have. Probably keep the details need-to-know." I hissed under my breath. Ellie couldn't hear because she didn't have stupid good hearing like a Feather would, a fact I made use of.

She gave a nod, and I hesitantly let go.

Wrath opened her mouth and everything immediately went wrong anyways. "Although I appreciate the assistance, I am more than capable of strangling him myself, miss Silverstride." Wrath said, looking proud. "Outsourcing is not an option in this matter. He is reserved."

On my comms she elaborated, keeping the discussion hidden from Ellie. "This answer should satisfy your conditions, I have avoided the topic of combat."

"Yep." I said, cradling my head in my hands. "Great work Wrath."

She, of course, preened at the wording, clearly missing the avalanche.

Ellie looked back at her, then back at me. Those beady little eyes of hers continued to shift targets. I saw the exact moment everything clicked into place in her head. She was an expert at figuring out who people were, and Wrath's answer told her everything she needed to know about this particular Feather in disguise's social quirks. Which meant that now she was going to make me suffer for it, because everything was fair in war.

"Reserved, huh?" She hummed, grin deepening, eyes locking back on me. "Might you elaborate more on what exactly is being reserved here? A girl wonders."

Wrath frowned, trying to think of a way to explain without explaining. I was also trying to figure out what to say and coming empty during the one moment when I needed it most.

"Keith is a sworn servant under my banner. He has opted to assist me with a personal journey I am going through." Wrath said first, nodding. "We have an ongoing friendly rivalry since the moment we met, which has yet to be fully settled."

Ellie clearly did not believe any of this, or rather she believed too much into it. She turned to me, now looking outright evil with that smile. "Well, well, well. Look who's finally no longer afraid of commitment and tied down to a decent cause. And to follow her on a personal journey? I never thought I'd see the day, but she's certainly quite a catch."

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Ellie turned to Wrath before I could mediate or defuse anything. "Are you keeping him in good shape? Giving him more intense one-on-one training? Can't let your servants go soft and limp now, lady Deathless. Wouldn't be proper. And he's a known slacker."

I groaned and let my head slam down on the table once before bringing it back up.

On her end, Wrath seemed happy to add onto the conversation. "We have plenty of personal spars. And I am well aware humans require consistent workouts." She paused, eyes widening. "What I mean to say is that as a Deathless, I require a lot less to remain at peak performance."

"While I'm certain a Deathless like you can keep going for hours, his stamina might be limited. Perhaps consider a meal plan? You know, to keep up Keith's energy levels for these strenuous training sessions after he's been completely drained out."

"Three gods above, Ellie. Please."

She huffed, nose pointed up dismissively at me. "Keith, stop being a pig, please. We are having a serious conversation about your health here in civilized company. This is hardly appropriate."

"I admit I had not put much thought on what diet." Wrath said, actually thinking it through. "And what food will be found further underground past civilization. As for the current topic, while I understand it's not socially polite for Keith to put his head on the table instead of speaking directly to you, I fail to see how that makes him a pig? Is this a surface clan nomenclature?"

"Something of the sort. He's just being a little shy right now, don't worry. And I think it's very diligent of you to consider all parts of this." Ellie said, drawing it out. "How are your 'personal spars' going, exactly? I'm quite curious about that."

"Sparing skills have been gradually increasing in skill and scope." Wrath said, "We've added additional weapons that have promising results, they truly test my limits."

The times I'd fought her in the digital sea training session led by Father, I'd done pretty decent and held her off until I couldn't keep using the mirror fractal, after which I'd be gutted like a bug before dinner. The new weapons Wrath was talking about were those occult powers and weaving them in using Cathida to take command of the movements. Not that I could say anything about that, my head was back firmly on the table, rolling around in agony by this point.

"I know exactly what you mean." Ellie said. "Boys and their swords. But sometimes it's fun to bring a few extra toys."

"These are not toys." Wrath said, sounding confused. "It is important to replicate real-world conditions when training. Toys or weak replicas will not be useful tools to train with."

I didn't want to look up, but I could hear Ellie take a deep breath, and I knew she wasn't going to let this go now that she'd sunk her teeth into it. "Do you also drill tactics and strategy in these training sessions, or are they more like, say... wrestling?" She said, table creaking a little as she no doubt must have leaned forward on her elbows, pressing the attack. "Do you need a whistle and a tracksuit perhaps? Or does your 'intense personal training' require a different uniform for your servants, Lady Deathless?"

There's a place outside, deep out in the snow, where I'll probably be buried after I die. I really want to go there right now.

"No uniforms are required, however armor is of course expected." Wrath answered. "Why do you ask?"

"You mentioned it before, it's important to replicate real-world conditions when training," Ellie said, "You do test his skills when he's out of his armor, yes? Ambushes could happen at any time in the night, especially in the bed when he's sleeping."

Wrath hummed, clearly in thought. "You make another good point. If enemies ambush him while he is unprepared, I have little faith he could survive in his current condition."

"Oh my, his current condition isn't to your satisfaction?"

"Please, mercy." I whispered out, talking straight to the table for all that it mattered. "On all three gods, mercy."

She had none. "That reminds me! Keith, do you have a safe word for when these intense one-on-one sessions get a bit too much? Something exactly like 'mercy', perhaps? It's important to practice safe sparring with a partner."

"What are your terms? I'll pay." I hissed out, head rolling.

"I want a jewelry cabinet." She answered back without a pause. "And it better be glittering on the inside when I open it." Or else the torture continues.

"Six inch box." I said. And don't think I'll forget this.

"Must be quite the role reversal for him, now that he's up against someone who's clearly on top." Ellie said, voice clearly turned to Wrath. "Lady Deathless, you seem like someone who's dedicated to making sure her followers are at their best shape. I really recommend a post-workout massage if you're too rough on him. Aftercare is important."

I said a cabinet. Came the unworded answer from her.

"You greedy bitch," I hissed. "Foot long box."

Wrath interrupted the discussions. "What is this box you are speaking of? And have taken good care of those who chose to follow my leadership, I am not particularly unjust or rough. I ruled over an entire undersider city at one point with little issue."

"Oh I see!" Ellie said, hands clapping together. "You must be quite used to ruling, have you considered heels? Smaller details like this really do add to the whole when people look up to you. From the ground."

A foot long box is not a cabinet. The torture will continue until I have my cabinet.

"Foot long box, three layers deep." I offered. "And an apology letter for not talking to you early enough when I came back."

"Miss Hecate, while it's been fun, I feel like we've talked about Keith for long enough." She said before Wrath's confused questioning could continue, to my relief. "He does have an ego, you know? We should open up a different topic before he gets full of himself. Look at him, all flustered."

"I will file this information about using heels along with your other advice for future consideration." Wrath said, "However, what is this jewelry box you are both talking about? Why is there a negotiation happening here?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." Ellie said, "It's something to do about being grilled over coals. Keith will explain it to you later tonight.

When you're both alone."

Book 5 - Chapter 25 - The witch, the wizard and the warlock

Wrath hummed with thought. "I see. Miss Silverstride was implying human courtship instead of training."

Ultimately, walking back from the hour long chat with Ellie, I realized I had to cut my losses quick because otherwise that was begging for her to abuse.

"Perhaps it was a poor idea to eliminate romance writing from my training dataset." She said, looking down as she walked, hand on her chin. "It was difficult to sort credible data from fiction, I may have made my filters too strict."

"Don't think you made a mistake with that." I said, "If you put a bunch of random books, you're going to walk out of it with a weird understanding of the world… Well, weirder understanding. I'd say ask Ellie or Kidra for a more curated list, but those two would absolutely find some way to sabotage it."

"I did not think they were actively malicious?"

I shook my head, "Malicious? No. Always having an ear out for possible chaos? That's more accurate."

She hummed thinking it through. "Perhaps asking a neutral party would help? One slightly less inclined to chaos."

"Good idea, ask one of the Logi's you worked with to compile something for you that's more realistic." Most of our books aren't brought up by pilgrims, we've had plenty of authors write stuff for fun. Surface savages they might call us, but we weren't all work and no rest.

"Only the clan's library is monitored," I said, "Books and novels for fun float around from hand to hand. Should fix up all the issues and possible misunderstandings, thank the gods."

"I fail to see why this would cause you distress in the first place? My shel… I mean, as a noble Deathless, I am far above humans in such matters. You should feel flattered she believed such a thing." She even stood slightly taller while saying that without a single shred of shame.

"Ah yep, there's the ego." I said, hand reaching out to scruff her hair. I'd gotten used to being around her by now, but there's no denying Relinquished had built her Feathers off the idea of making them look like models. To'Sefit looked similar, and both To'Aacar and To'Avalis had a jawline that could cut through steel. Probably literally. To'Orda was the only one who'd had his head wrapped up with cloth, what was exposed looked more malformed. "You don't have to worry about me oh high and mighty miss Deathless, I'm not planning on overstepping my bounds here." I said. "Besides, she was having some fun at our expense, nothing she truly believed."

Wrath looked slightly confused at that, frowning instead as if she didn't quite like what she'd heard. The topic was cut short by Kidra walking right into our path, flanked by her usual guard detail. "I was given word you were finished with the Silverstride?"

"More like she got done with us." I said. "Something happened?"

"In a manner of speaking." Kidra answered. "If she hasn't already informed you, Captain Sagrius returned with guests. I've been briefed on the situation, and you should be too."

So he made friends. Makes sense. He'd need to catch an airspeeder to get back here that fast. The captain was many things, but a pilot wasn't among his skills. "What guests did he come back with? Pilgrims?"

"Pilgrims would be most welcome. What we have instead is a grand warlock from the undersider guilds. An occult master who goes by the name of Hexis. We don't yet know much more about him other than that he's arrived with a crew claiming to be here to assist. Most of the clan know there's a few undersider Airspeeders outside again, although knowledge of the warlock is still under wraps."

A warlock. Running around in a clan. That seemed like the setup for a joke. "Why would a warlock come all the way up here?" I asked, before the obvious dawned on me the same exact moment my mouth opened up. "Oh. We made too big of a footprint already? That was fast."

She sheepishly looked off to the side. "That… may have been accelerated by my hand I admit. My time underground, I felt I was obligated to fight back the machines with every tool in my arsenal."

"The video footage of our duel." Wrath said, catching up. "The file was in circulation. It would naturally leave the walls of the city with the refugees. The warlock has come searching for you then?"

Kidra gave a sigh, "I am not yet certain of his goals, only that he is around. For now, both of you should remain at arms length from this while I deal with it. The last we want is to antagonize a warlock's guild."

"Right." I said, thinking back on our track record. "Keep out of his way. Sure. That's gonna happen."

She did not look at me with any amount of confidence.

Spar practice today was far more active, with Captain Sagrius now returned. I'd asked Wrath about looking into seeing if his soul could be healed and she'd offered to give it a try. But the captain's priorities weren't in getting better. He hadn't been waiting for a doctor's visit at all. The work-a-holic was still in the sanctum, fighting it out, training with his soldiers. He'd been here since Father had returned to the estate ground. And had been dueling and testing the limits ever since.

Sound was the first thing we heard when we entered the courtyard. Sparks of occult lit the ground as the rest of the knights watched from the sidelines. Father took a step forward, the Winterscar occult blade moving as if it were an extension of his arm. On the other side, Sagrius matched the movement, with eerie precision.

The captain's movements and attack patterns were recognizable. Clean, calculated, methodical and direct. I'd seen that same style time and time again whenever I had to spar earlier on. Sagrius was running Father's older combat engram.

The problem is that he was up against the original. Who also happened to be several orders faster than armor was capable of moving at.

It was… odd to see in practice. The same movements and yet Sagrius seemed more like a puppet, filled with gears and cogs spinning around within. Everything was fluid, but lacked a sense of life and breathing. Occasionally glimmers of his original skills resurfaced, usually in a desperate defense, or within the footwork. That's the only time the patterns were broken down and some life returned back to the captain.

Father switched through the stances and combined what he needed in the moment, now abusing the insane speed a Feather could reach to modify strikes like a torrent of wind, with the crashing power of an avalanche. He really hadn't taken much time at all to adjust to all the new options the machine shell could offer when it came to elevating his combat. The human body really had been his roadblock this entire time, artificially slowing him down.

No wonder he'd almost never lost fights, he must have felt as if he were fighting underwater, watching his enemies move at a glacial pace and yet being unable to go faster himself. Not anymore.

Sagrius's own tactics rapidly changed from probing and planning, to defense and analysis. Adjusting what the combat engram fed him. Realizing it would be rapidly overcome. And so attempting to weave together a new set of skills Father could never have known about back when he was alive: The Occult.

Strike after strike, Father battered the guard captain into indefensible positions, threading his blade right where the shields should have triggered. Instead, Sagrius called up on his occult half-dome shield, blocking the cuts. I winced with every hit, knowing exactly how that felt. The willpower needed to keep those running. The captain continued with his doomed fight, bulldozing through the skill difference with sheer willpower. It wasn't a winning combination.

And yet, two minutes into the utter beatdown, Sagrius was still standing without issue. Attacking back, failing, and being overwhelmed in response. Father did not slow, nor show a hint of mercy. His face remained impassive as he reverse engineered his own prior combat style. Any attempt by the captain to reset the fight, or take spacing, was rejected and punished harshly.

After four minutes of utterly ceaseless attacks, Sagrius finally began to stagger, the last hit being blocked by his standard relic armor's shielding instead of his occult dome. Only then did Father take a step backwards, sword sweeping across the sparing ground into a halo flourish, returning straight to the sheath as he turned to stalk off the field. Sagrius on his part collapsed down on one knee, chest heaving. His hand hit the ground next, holding him back from complete collapse.

"That will be enough." Father said after a moment.

"Not. Enough." Sagrius said, standing back up, breathing heavily. "Systems functional. Power cells at eighty three percent. Heat within tolerance. I can keep going."

By the end of his words, the voice was mostly over comms, while the captain failed to suck in enough air to keep talking out loud.

"Your body is still human, even if your mind and soul are a hybrid. You need rest." Father scoffed. "Speak to your others, meditate on what was learned instead. We will continue once you can."

Sagrius stayed on his feet for a moment, then dropped down like his strings had been cut, falling on his knees and remaining motionless there, chest heaving.

The rest of the courtyard grew back into focus, other knights resuming their sparing and the sound of occult blades clashing along with discussion filled the air again.

Kidra was at Father's side a moment after. "Your assessment?"

He turned to the frozen captain still kneeling where he'd collapsed. And gave a brief nod. "Your guard captain can tie down any Feather, near indefinitely."

"He's that strong?" It made absolute sense in hindsight. He'd outright battered away To'Sefit's oversized artillery cannons without a pause in his step. That kind of invincible defense was going to hold its own against quite a lot.

"Stronger. This test had limits. Only his use of the shield fractal was allowed. We will test the limits with the other knights allowed to assist."

"With the other knights assisting him, what are your predictions on his combat efficiency?" Kidra asked.

That got a frown from the old man, as if he were thinking through the battle. "Had the other soul knights within him been allowed to make use of the mirror fractal to weave in strikes of their own, I would have no attack openings. It would be as if I were fighting an eight handed swordsman. Any attempt to attack such an enemy will come with an uneven cost to myself. Had the knights been allowed to use all the fractals at our disposal, including heat, I have no means to defeat Sagrius without tapping into the occult myself, or striking him down from a distance."

"But?" Kidra asked, sensing the coming objection. "Is there a reason we can't bring him with us on the search for the division stone?"

Father grunted. "No. He is among our strongest. Sagrius cannot lose against a Feather. He cannot win either. That is what I fear. The speed difference is too far. Stronger skills can only carry you all so far." Father looked up, watching the frozen metal ceiling above as if it had answers. "Fighting against a pale mirror of my past self, I see any Feather would have inevitably taken me apart. The human condition is too limiting. His armor can continue, but the human inside cannot. We need more. The expedition will lead to both of you to your death if you embark on it. It should be left to Wrath and myself."

"And the chances of survival if it's only the two of you?" Kidra asked, head tilted. "Against a dedicated pursuit?"

The frown deepened. "Untenable." He eventually said, almost as if it had to be grinded out of him.

"And with the rest of our knights, Keith and myself descending down with you? Will the chance of success increase?"

Father growled at that, then stayed silent.

Kidra nodded as if that was expected. "We aren't stronger than Feathers, but neither are any of us weak. Working together, those machine kill teams cannot defeat us, can they?"

"No. They will fail." Father said. "It won't matter. You will only buy time. Feathers cannot die. And they do not handle failure gracefully. Each time they fail to kill us, they will return with far harsher odds until they succeed."

Sagrius stood back up from his kneel, drawing out his weapon. "I am ready." He said, pointing the tip back to Father.

I tossed in my own thoughts into the ring, before he returned to the fight. "If Deathless teams are able to delve down and succeed, we can too. The expedition to recover the division stone can't be more than what they face. We have just as many strengths as they would, if not more. We're in a good place right now."

On his part, he stared ahead, deep in thought. Then drew out his own weapon in his usual flourish and stepped back into the courtyard to continue the fight without another word.

"I think that means I might have a point." I said.

Kidra nodded. "I understand where he's coming from. Agreeing with you on anything feels as if I've taken a step off the right path."

Before I could open up a few perfectly valid counter retorts back, Ironreach had walked over with two other clan knights behind him. "Lady Winterscar," He said, giving a nod to Kidra, then turning to me. "And Keith. Just who I was looking for."

"Have you business with us, Denmar?" Kidra asked.

"Not with you, my lady." He said, helmet turning back to me. "Just the young rascal here."

"I didn't do it." I said immediately. "Whatever they told you, it's a setup."

He gave a chuckle, shaking his head. "Not sure you can weasel your way out of this one." His hand reached into a pocket and withdrew a sealed letter. And a candle next to it. I knew what this ritual was. That seal was from the clan lord.

"Not normally used to this part. I just escort the messengers." He said with a shrug. "But this sanctum isn't exactly allowing anyone without relic armor to walk around. Or anyone without the clan lord's explicit blessing. So I'll have to do the honors instead." He gave a short cough, then straightened his posture and extended the letter and candle to me.

"To Keith Winterscar of House Winterscar, this message has been delivered from the Clan Lord Atius, with all due haste. You are charged to read and obey the orders within, immediately."

I gave a look back to Kidra, who shooed her hand at me in a 'get this over with already' manner. So I turned back to Ironreach and gave him the traditional response. "House Winterscar stands ready?" And extended my hand out.

The letter was dropped in my hands. Inside, was a short summons to visit the clan Lord - alone. No other words or requests, just that.

The candle turned out to be useless. Air here was too freezing to light anything on fire, so I had to use the fractal of heat to incinerate the paper instead. Nobody had to ask me twice on that part, burning a piece of paper in the palm of a hand is exactly as dramatic as it sounds.

The clan lord's estate was as I remembered it, only this time the table had two guests. Atius himself, sitting at the head of the table mulling over paper, and Shadowsong standing to his side, arms behind his back. The doors slid shut behind me as the Chenobi skittered away back into the darkness.

"Ah, Keith." Atius said, smiling. "Sorry lad to drag you back here before you've even had a chance to rest, but events don't wait for any of us. Shadowsong only just arrived as well, so I'll be briefing you both up to speed at the same time."

"Not a problem, how can I help?" I said, walking into the room and taking a seat by the other side.

"Have you heard of the guest your captain returned with?" Atius asked.

I gave him a nod, "Just about an hour ago actually. Not much more than who he is."

"Who this grand warlock is, is a rather easy question to answer. Greedy, unapologetically self-centered, and searching for power with every swing of the icepick. A rather unpleasant fellow to be around, but at the very least honest with his shortcomings. Shadowsong, what did you see in him through the soul sight?"

"Lack of loyalty to anyone but himself."

Atius hummed. "More or less what I had thought. His loyalty and character isn't of great importance in the end. What he knows is the meat of it all."

"Given he's a warlock, I'm assuming that's fractals." I said.

The clan lord nodded, "This old lad claimed to know more than four hundred fractals. And given the discussions I've just had with him, I'm inclined to believe that."

"What do you mean 'Knows four hundred fractals?" I asked, a little confused. Sure I could recognize some fractals from others by now, but I couldn't draw them with the accuracy they needed. "Did he just memorize four hundred math formulas by heart?"

"Along with their abilities, uses, and history. Aye." Atius said. "I hardly believed it at first. However humanity has always been able to reach impressive metrics given enough time. Warlocks are highly specialized and he's had a lifetime to train under their order. As for why he's memorized that many mathematical formulas, we'll have to find out."

"Maybe we could trade something to get it out of him?" I asked. "That's a lot of possible havoc we could work with."

"There's no need to offer anything." Shadowsong said. "He's within our grasp. We have the means to take what we want."

To which Atius gave a tired sigh. "Warlocks have always been a traditional ally to my kind Ikusari. While they aren't in the business of selling things for free, they have always gone the distance in making sure Deathless are equipped for their fight. That kind of long standing alliance is not something I'm willing to ruin for all the others. The guild allowed him to reach clan Altosk out of reputation, and he must be returned to them in full health."

"A pity." Shadowsong said, sounding extremely unsurprised. "The last outsiders we've let within our halls ended with intentions to harm. Will you repeat this history again?"

"Aye, I have before and I will again." Atius said, voice growing an octave lower. "There are lines carved in metal that I will not cross, you know this." The chill passed by his features as quickly as it came. "And we hardly need to apply force either for this case. Hexis is a turncoat to his order, and sees little reason to avoid cooperating with us. As he says it, if not him, another warlock will see the opportunity soon enough. He's merely ahead of the pack. An opportunist."

"They use memory to keep from writing down anywhere. The cost of such a training is a lifetime to keep their secret secure." Shadowsong said. "Why was such an easily sold man allowed to leave in the first place? All that effort, bartered away by the first sight of greed."

"I asked the same." Atius said. "Do remember lad, Undersiders have a different sense of urgency than we do. We've only discovered the occult's secrets. Warlocks have known for centuries. And they've had centuries to mature and develop, with only a limited amount of fractals to discover in the world. You can see how that would end after so many years."

Shadowsong nodded slowly. "It only takes one failure point. One betrayer."

Atius gave a short grin. "Exactly. A secret needs to be revealed only once and the game is over. My leading guess is that those four hundred fractals are the common knowledge shared between all the gulds. Even history and more exotic knowledge surrounding the occult, among their circles it might be trivial to them."

That's four hundred and so bits of extra fractals to work with. A stupidly huge repository of power. And apparently it's all just common crickets to him. Like having a gift basket dropped right on our feet. "What's the catch? He wants what we've discovered?"

"He's not after our current discoveries." Atius said. "He already knows such a thing isn't on the table, didn't even ask. What we have isn't what's interested him. It's what we're capable of. His offer is to grant access to his fractal knowledge, along with his guidance as an occult researcher. Among our occult research team, he's come to take on an apprentice."

"And by the occult research team…"

Atius and Shadowsong both turned to look at me. One with a grandfather's smile, almost as if laughing. The other held a grim and resolute stare, as if mentally preparing himself for a looming trial on his sanity.

"Ah. Right." I said with a slight gulp. Makes sense why I'd been called in to talk to them. "That occult research team."

Book 5 - Chapter 26 - The human condition

"Romance books?" Reginus asked, sounding almost confused.

Not what he had expected when he'd been summoned to speak to the Deathless saint.

As one of the more well known Logi handlers, he'd worked closely with Hecate Wrath as she healed the clan and was one of her first lines of contact. But the woman hadn't made any requests of him outside the ordinary - with exception to food. The quantity and variation of food had been difficult to source but nothing a single Logi house working together couldn't solve, nevermind the entire caste. Besides, setting up an exotic food supply was a highly efficient trade in exchange for the deep healing offered by the lady.

As for her personality and quirks shown during his time with her, they'd all learned that Hecate was rather… eccentric. Even by their own standards of eccentricity. And this felt very much in her character.

"Yes, romance books." Hecate confirmed, wings stirring slightly behind her. He'd met her walking down to her next destination, which was House Adjudicator, another Logi house of rather high regards. "I am searching to better tune my understanding of human behavior. My transition as a Deathless has left me with gaps in my knowledge that I seek to remedy. I require a curated list of romance novels."

That was understandable, and explained some of the oddities in her behavior.

He almost wanted to ask why she wanted to have romance knowledge instead of any other kind of human socialization, but then again... Hecate.

As a new Deathless, perhaps she was still in the process of changing, and still held onto that part of her humanity? She could have found someone who caught her eye and was now looking for means to seduce her target. With a goal in mind, it was only natural to do the research to accomplish said goal.

Not that she needed anything more than to ask, given her rank and appearance. But that wasn't his place to make comments on. He was called on to deliver services and information, and he would do so as unbiased as possible.

So Reginus simply bowed low. "By your will, Lady Deathless. I will confer with my House and have your request fulfilled."

He did exactly as ordered, sending a message to his house and starting the process. If anyone else thought the request was strange, they didn't let that bother them for a second. Instead, the coffee was made, drunk and complained about - business as usual.

Reginus was a house prime, and as such held several dozen specializations in different subjects - all with the highest rank. Despite his skills and analytics, he wasn't any kind of romance expert. But this was exactly why the Logi caste had so many different fields to study from.

It was common for the first one to be a rather silly subject, if only to prove the Logi member was capable of spreadsheet abuse. After all, the first specialization was at their fifteenth birthday. Maturity was not expected. And Logi never stopped learning a new subject to master or remaster.

A popular starting one was the study of coffee - sources, logistics, taste, brewing, mechanics and other such things. Some Logi studied this simply to be able to join the debates and arguments. But other Logi picked more oddball subjects to start with.

A 'real' specialization that would see them climb the ranks would come later in their life, once they discovered an area of deeper passion. Thus, Reginus knew there had to be some Logi that picked romance books to specialize in as their first pick, if only for a laugh. Everything had rules to study, book writing was not an exception.

All he needed was to pass the request along to the Logi caste and let them shift through their members to bring out who was needed.

He was in good spirits by the time they reached House Adjudicator and greeted their prime, a rather older man named Adrius. Especially when the white bearded old Logi had told him a few different Houses had all dredged up exactly the people he'd been hoping for. His call to arms had been taken seriously with all due speed.

"I do warn you however, romance is a... more serious topic of study." Adrius said solemnly. "From what my wife discussed with me, there's far more to it than we expect. I was rather surprised myself to find how deep this particular hole goes in the short talk I had."

"What do you mean?" Reginus asked, now curious. Behind him, Hecate was being served a choice between the different secret coffee brews that House Adjudicator had to offer. He predicted she'd ask for a cup of every single option, even if that amount of caffeine would probably kill the most dedicated Logi three times over. But, she was Deathless. And caffeine hadn't seem to affect her at all.

"What I mean to say is that there are actual rules and structure behind this. It's no flight of fancy among romance writers. This isn't isolated to authors in our clan either, it seems even the books pilgrims bring up have all kinds of conventions. The genre itself seems to attract this kind of... scientific community around it, regardless of culture or time period. Only, most of us have little clue about this convention. There are many well documented rules, metrics, and other trackable statistics to work with."

Hecate gave the menu back to the server, tapping every item with a nod. He seemed taken aback for a moment, then confirmed her choices and scurried away.

"Why the warning for?" Reginus asked. "Isn't it better that there are strict conventions and rules to break down? Far easier to understand and digest."

Adrius nodded, but gave a worried glance back to the guest table where the lady Deathless waited for her coffee samples. "In most fields I've studied, that's true. What can be measured and tracked always makes for easier understanding. However… do consider that if it can be measured, and can be judged - then you will find lines drawn in the snow. It is very... ahh, let's say 'cutthroat.'"

Reginus didn't quite understand what the Prime was trying to warn him of, but a moment later it hit him. "You mean there's debates and sides on the subject?"

"Grave ones, I'm afraid." The prime said with a slow nod, taking a pause to drink his coffee in peace. "Odd debates I had no idea existed, since Logi studying romance tend to keep such a thing to themselves by nature of the subject. But among themselves, there are some… ahh, communities. And wars. Yes, that would be an accurate word for it."

"How bad are we talking about?"

"On the level of coffee."

"You have to be kidding." Reginus immediately said, aghast. The coffee wars had grown so thick, each House had several strains of their own beans growing, or outright trade agreement with Agrifarmer Houses for very specific exclusivity conditions.

Not to mention the black market trading that happened between the houses, because inevitably Logi would find themselves agreeing or preferring coffee made by their rival houses, and vice versa - which was absolutely taboo to admit to. Leave enough idle spreadsheets, an open demand, and bored Logi... things grew warped as they found new ways to entertain themselves.

The coffee debates had inevitably spilled over to other Houses and became the standard jokes made at Logi expense. That only fueled the process, making the younger generation choose to specialize in coffee just to stir the pot further. Which started the cycle all over again.

What had started as silly jokes had eventually turned into something so tangible, there were actual stakes and resources involved in the business - so grand it eclipsed even legitimate enterprises the Agrifarmers worked on when it came to overall economic impact.

"How did this never appear on anyone's sheets?" Reginus asked. "If there's an outright war happening under our noses, how have all sides kept it so quiet? None of that makes sense. It's statistically impossible if it's as large as you suggest. We should have seen impacts within the economy, or market movement echos. I would have known about it by now."

Nothing lived in true isolation from another. Even two completely different market items could interfere with one another. If someone spent their resources on food, that would be resources not spent on other products, which would appear as a measurable blimp on the radar.

"That is not a question I can answer." the old Logi said, hiding behind his coffee mug. "I'm nearly seventy years old Reginus, married for forty three years and only today I found out my wife was knee deep in the snow. Had an outright collection of books she'd never cared to show me. The moment I asked, it was as if I'd opened the hanger doors without venting first. So, now you are warned. Prepare yourself for anything."

"Fortunate we Logi work together in times like these." Reginus said. "It seems I will need all the help mediating this upcoming debate that I can get."

Adrius said nothing. He kept his old eyes locked straight ahead, taking another slow sip of coffee.

"... You are going to assist in mediating this, yes?" Reginus asked again. "This is your House grounds selected for the meeting after all."

"I recognize a minefield when I see it." Adrius eventually said, taking another sip. "And I didn't grow this old by being stupid. Coffee has always been a worthwhile debate, but we all know it's tongue in cheek at the end of the day, and nothing of a truly serious debate. This however?" He hummed. "I have a wife and I prefer to sleep in the comfort of my bed, so there are real world ramifications to taking sides for me. Some mountains are not worth freezing on, and this would be one such thing. Do feel free to ask for any cup you wish, I'll see to covering the cost as you are indeed a guest among this hall. As for the rest, I wish you the warmest luck."

He turned, and walked off just as the servants of his house entered carrying trays filled with different colored cups, each steaming with various tan, brown and black liquids.

In hindsight, he should have realized Logi who specialized in romance books were not going to be regular airspeeders floating right side up as Adrius had warned him. This was a hobby to them, something they were passionate about.

Twenty three Logi soon arrived into the hall. Though there were more candidates possible, these were reportedly the most dedicated in that field, many of which were authors themselves. Behind each were hoversleds filled with books to the brim, some having to bring friends to help haul more behind. All across the age board as well, the oldest looked to be in her fifties while the youngest seemed to be on her third or even second specialization. Most of the Logi gathered were women, though a handful of men had arrived along with the group.

They marched up the steps like a war band, eyeing each other with a familiarity that spoke to past debates.

Reginus had a terrible feeling about all this already, and the meeting hadn't even started.

"And I raise you that all true off-limits relationships derive directly from R&MS. AG novels are perfectly acceptable. Every culture has age gaps in some form or another, it's hardly even controversial, especially in older shippings. AG isn't fantasy, it's generic. A Retainer prime secretly seeing anyone under his caste's ranking is far more off-limits and hasn't ever truly happened in life. That is fantasy. If we're speaking of books that should be included in her request, AG is perfectly suitable and I would argue optimal even. 'Frozen Heart' is a heartthrob, but utter nonsense in real life."

Reginus rubbed his temples, wondering why he'd been dragged into this. Two hours of unceasing bickering between the experts. Hecate nodded next to him, eyebrows furrowed as she tried to process the information. He already knew she was capable of utter focus on anything she set her sight on, and these debates weren't an exception.

Another woman stood ramrod straight, turned around to her hoversled and began to throw books off of it until she dug out a rather beaten up tome. "Utter nonsense?! With respects Lady Accilla, your taste is utter trash. And allow me to offer a counterpoint -" She lifted the book straight up, the title in bold print: 'An undying desire.' And then threw it straight at the first woman's desk. "A Deathless of two hundred years falls for a mary sue of nineteen, and you think this age gap is acceptable?"

Another scoffed in the distance, "DxMS is an entirely different genre and shouldn't be lumped anywhere close to AG. Deathless don't actually fall in love with anyone, or care about romance. That's the fantasy part of it all with DxMS. And you call yourself a specialist? Pathetic. Go back to primary training, you clearly failed basic genre organization."

"Allegedly they don't." The woman shot back, then pointed straight at Hecate. "And that's proof it's not fantasy. So you go back to the sheets you came from, you clearly got your numbers screwed."

That didn't stop Hecate from reaching a hand out to ask for the book, which was absentmindedly passed down the line into her hands. She'd been doing that for every book that had been tossed around, shortly after she'd been shoved one such book an hour ago in a heated debate. Since then, every expert had made some unworded agreement to allow the Deathless to grab any book that struck her fancy.

She opened it up, and began to flip through the pages, putting the book down seconds later and pausing to think.

To the rest of the room, it seemed more like the Deathless was simply testing the look and feel of the book, keeping them in reserve for later reading tonight. But Reginus knew better. Hecate had shown that particular occult power before, the ability to instantly read any information within a heartbeat. He had no doubts the Deathless had not only read the whole problematic book, but also intently studied it as well.

And since he didn't have any specialization in romance, he couldn't tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. These specialists around him were supposed to be the ones to make that call, instead they'd been at each other's throats for the past two hours and nearly forgot they had a gods damned Deathless in the room with them.

"Generally, forbidden love stories are rooted around the top row of the sheet." Another woman said, slapping her hand a few times on the desk in anger. The nameplate by her desk read 'Elenore' "While it doesn't happen often, it does happen still. See the case of House Winterscar's past prime marrying a casteless women! That's real life!"

"Speculation and rumor!" The first woman said. "I've seen the records, House Winterscar showed documented lineage of that woman as belonging to the caste and having had a simple error in earlier paperwork from birth. She had simply been unaccounted for until it mattered to have her accounted."

"An 'error' in paperwork." Elenore said, voice flat. "You truly believe that? What Logi would make a paperwork error about a person's existence."

"What's the alternative? That Retainers are smart enough to forge paperwork to cover something like this up? Please, half of them can't even set a filter on a spreadsheet just to list out what their favorite tasting pencils are. No, it's far more likely there truly was a mixup in the paperwork, the Retainers didn't care to fix it because they're Retainers. Then some doe-eyed airhead still proud of her first pivot table decided all of this was enough of a reach to imagine up some rags-to-riches coffeestain. From there, you all ate it up like fact."

"And why were you even looking for the official records in the first place? Hmm? Are you perhaps hiding your true interests in the topic? Or just 'fact checking' the story?"

"Ladies, enough!" A woman named Brigette screamed out, spoon tapping against her cup of coffee to make for a thoroughly unpleasant noise. "We're here to offer the lady Deathless a more realistic take on romance and the particulars. Let's consider her situation. As a Deathless, she's mostly exposed to the upper Castes, mainly the Retainers - for better or worse. There's one genre that all of us can agree with that shows the trials and tribulations most marriages face in those castes."

The rest of the group turned to stare her down, as if waiting for the bait to open fire on.

"And that is the romantic aspect of two people learning to love after commitment - which is to say, arranged or forced marriages is the objective best genre to start with." She said, nose tilted up in pride.

There was a pause in the room, and then everyone started to yell over one another. For the first time in years, Reginus had no idea how to even mediate or settle down some of these debates.

"You all are mistaken. Forbidden love is where the true passion lies. Who wouldn't risk everything for the love of their life? Is there any better example of what love and romance really is than those kinds of feelings?!"

Books were thrown at one another now. Hecate recovered all of them, slowly, like a war scavenger collecting spent ammunition leftover from a battlefield. She didn't even need to get out of her seat, they seemed to inevitably be shoved into her direction.

"Unexpected affection! The source of all chemistry between couples is when love isn't expected at all from the very start!" Another book waved in the air, 'Her desires'

Equally passed down the line and placed into Hecate's hands, where she devoured the book.

"E to L! Enemies to lovers is the perfect representation of human complexity, change, and unexpected love! Nothing better could exist to truly understand a maiden's heart than the razor sharp edge between hatred and passion!"

Another set of books, this time with more than one arguing for it and waving around their favorite tomes as if they were battle banners. Hecate took all of them, and with each of those books, she went to reach for more while the arguments grew ugly.

Reginus watched Hecate outright eat a cup of coffee by accident while she skimmed the latest of that particular category, so he assumed that the Deathless must be fairly entertained. She only ate plates when she was truly focused on something else as far as he knew.

Given who the enemies of Deathless generally were, Reginus hoped she wasn't thinking about courting a machine of all things. But given the degeneracy he'd been exposed to, he was sure someone had written a book about just that and it was likely buried in one of the hoversleds looming behind the council of romance fanatics. Possibly two or three even.

"Secret affairs between houses!" brought on utter chaos in the room.

There were twenty books for that topic, with one being universally condemned by everyone in the room as 'complete trash.' which was the first time Reginus had seen anyone in this room in complete agreement. He didn't understand why such a book was hated, and yet still brought into the meeting. Not just by one person either, but a whole seventeen copies of that book had been independently brought by the experts gathered.

They still passed it down the line to Hecate, to his horror.

For the first time, Reginus spoke up, putting a hand on the offending book. 'Twelve Shades to Twilight's Glimmer'

He coughed, which drew the current discussion to a halt. "If all of you agree such a book is unrealistic and… 'utter garbage', should it not be returned back to your hovesleds instead of given to Lady Hecate?"

That seemed reasonable to him. The room grew quiet, with everyone inside shooting guilty looks to one another, or rather probing for someone to stand up and say what's on their minds.

Eventually one such did, a man by the name of Grelin. "It may be confusing to an outsider," He said, "But that particular series is foundational, and all experts agree most romance novels were built on top of it. There is a lot of meta analysis to understand from the series."

"Exactly!" Elenore said, hands slamming down on the desk as she stood up. "The lady Hecate couldn't understand half the references in other writings that directly build on top of what this novel describes. It's utter trash, but mandatory reading."

The rest of the group all nodded fiercely to this. And Reginus couldn't help but suspect there was some kind of unworded agreement between everyone in the room to claim the series as trash and yet sincerely want to read it.

It was baffling. He wasn't sure if his intuition was lying to him, or simply completely out of his depth. Were they all simply having a tongue-in-cheek debate, or truely serious? For once, he felt he understood how outsiders must view any official debates among the Logi when it came to more petty subjects.

What he did know for fact, is that the Lady Hecate seemed to have gotten a good enough grasp of romance when she walked out of the room and was content with her new trove of knowledge.

He was rather afraid of what exactly that meant however.

Book 5 - Chapter 27 - The heart chooses first

Was she falling in love?

Could she fall in love?

Why was she feeling so territorial about Keith when she thought of him, and yet didn't have those same thoughts with others? She'd brushed off those feelings as remnants from her prior life as a spider before - the more base emotions were often overtuned within her past shell, and those echos followed her in her current shell as part of her identity.

Or so she had thought.

Territorial behavior was one such relic. However… what if this particular feeling wasn't that? What if it was admiration? Respect for an enemy? Had her feelings remained constant or changed over time?

Internal polling came up with rapid responses: Territorial feelings for him specifically hadn't diminished over time. They grew instead. The analysis even pinpointed moments in time when they had unknowingly expanded.

To'Aacar. To'Sefit. To'Orda. To'Avalis. He'd challenged Feathers, despite having next to no hope in defeating such opponents. And yet he pulled through. He'd done so from the moment he turned and stood his ground against her, even if her old shell towered over him.

She'd defeated him multiple times in the digital ocean, when training. And yet, none of those fights felt like a true battle. Deep down inside, if she were up against Keith in a life and death fight - he would win. Not by skill, but by ingenuity. In ways she couldn't predict or plan against, but could only end up admiring the creativity when the chaos settled.

More pivotal moments flashed through her mind, and were then swamped by a few thousand smaller moments. Of food, debates, arguments, and even her trek as Hecate, Deathless.

The moment he'd agreed to follow her down into the very depths of Mother's domain, to help her find freedom.

She stopped her train of thoughts, realizing none of those had anything to do with her territorial claim over him. And he wasn't hers even. Not in the way she wanted.

She needed more information, but her sources had been tapped dry. The idea of confronting Keith to ask him directly mortified her. Kidra and Tenisent as well.

Tammery would have helped. Even General Zaang could have some opinions, and would have meant well in his own gruff manner. But neither of them were here.

Her mind wondered back to Elandris Silverstride, the woman who seemed to know everything when it came to relationships. Keith had claimed she would abuse the situation to poke fun, but he hadn't said she wouldn't offer her useful advice.

And so she found herself at the gates of House Silverstride. And allowed entry within the second, as her station permitted.

Inside was far smaller than the Winterscar estates. More servants running around, and nearly no soldiers in sight. The Winterscars had several training grounds, all being used in some way or another, but not House Silverstride.

The prime himself appeared to greet her personally, wondering what everything was about but her status as a Deathless clearly carried her through.

"I wish to speak to Elandris Silverstride." To'Wrathh asked.

The man paled. "... has she done something again?"

"No. I wish for her advice."

A gulp. "Are you sure some other members of our House cannot give you better advice?"

To'Wrathh raised an eyebrow. "I have full confidence she will assist me. Is there a reason for the delay?"

The prime shook his head, still bowed low so To'Wrathh couldn't read his features. Analytics in his voice didn't match any kind of pattern other than nervousness.

An older woman came out a moment later, outright stalking through the hallways with two servants chasing behind her. She reached the side of the prime, yanked the man by his ear and whispered at full speed. It was child's play for To'Wrathh to overhear, despite how low the voice was.

"I told you it wasn't a lie that she'd met with the lady Deathless when she got called over to the Winterscars, and now you're stalling. Get her here, apologize already and give. It. Up." Those last few words were outright hissed. The woman turned up to give To'Wrathh a nervous smile.

"He sometimes forgets about the members in his House, we're a little old, please forgive the slight. I need to knock a few things into my dear husband."

"No apology needed." To'Wrathh answered. "I have not been slighted."

The woman instantly leaned right back to the prime's bent ear. "Have her door unlocked and the sanctions lifted. She has a gods damned Deathless on her side, accept the loss and move on. Or else I will murder you. Am I understood?"

The prime winced, then nodded, standing back up, free from the ear pinching. "Forgive the delay, we'll have her sent to meet you. For the moment," He turned to one shellshocked servant who's eyes hadn't left To'Wrathh's wings. "Please follow Rhett, he'll guide you to the meeting room and get everything set in order for you."

There was no further confrontation, as everything seemed to work exactly as the prime had promised. A room with a table was cleared, food and snacks were put on display and promptly eaten, and To'Wrathh's active scanning showed no recording devices in the area. Everything seemed to be in good faith.

Elandris arrived soon after, looking out of breath. She gave a warm smile to To'Wrathh, "I see you're here to continue our chat. I was wondering when you'd come."

"You knew I would seek you out again?"

Elandris nodded. "Can't say I knew for a fact, but I did have a hunch there's more to discuss. Plus, it's come in handy for me."

"Handy?"

Elandris waved it away, "Personal drama. You could say I'm not popular among some groups due to the threat I present, and they wanted to remind me of that fact. Take a seat, might come up in the discussion. So then, honored lady Deathless, why visit little old me all the way out here?"

"After the discussion we had, I was informed by Keith of the subtext that was being sent."

The girl in front smiled innocently, as if she had done nothing at all. She also didn't disagree or set anything straight.

"I requested the Logi to bring romance novels to read in order to familiarize myself better and recognize these patterns."

The smile vanished, replaced by confusion. Then visible horror. "Oh frick, you asked the Logi of all castes for romance novels to learn from?"

"I have learned a great deal from this resource. Was this an error?"

Elandris paused, thinking. "Possibly. Stereotypes aside, they might have a good head on their shoulders. What kinds of books did they give you?"

To'Wrathh told her the list. The blond's face lit up on a few mentions, soured on others and tilted often one way or another as the titles went out. A few outright confused her for a moment, before To'Wrathh sheepishly admitted she had simply taken the books being thrown around the conference. None of the experts gathered seemed to oppose her, so she went through out of curiosity. And when Elandris had asked how she'd found even the time to read every single book, she used her prior excuse - Deathless. Keith had told her this would be the key to escaping any kind of social situation. It had worked when she'd accidentally eaten a plate. The Logi simply filed it down, and never seemed taken aback no matter what she ate.

It was reassuring, but also prevented her from learning what was socially acceptable to eat and what wasn't.

Elandris hummed on the other side of the table after she'd heard the full list. "I see. I see." She said, hand scratching her chin.

"Did they have a good head on their shoulders?" To'Wrathh asked.

"Not for a second." Elandris said. "But they are good reads, aren't they?"

"They were entertaining." To'Wrathh admitted. A few in the enemies to lover category caught her attention and were the original starting point to considering what her feelings were. "They did raise some questions within me, and I hope to get insight from someone else."

"Information for information." Elandris immediately said, one finger pointed up. "I'm greedy, and even if you're Deathless, I'll still spin the same wheels."

To'Wrathh considered the offer. "Acceptable, under conditions depending on the information asked for."

Elandris nodded, "That's acceptable to me as well. I'll go first: I never did get to hear how you met Keith, is it some grand secret or something more mundane like catching him trying to peddle snow in a box or make off with some public property for a souvenir from the Undercity? All everyone knows is that the two Deathless who arrived ended up choosing to stay at House Winterscar, so it's not much of a stretch to assume Keith is involved somehow. He did return on an airspeeder with you and your friend."

That… wasn't what she had expected. But the true events did follow her current cover as a Deathless. Tenisent was supposed to have been met within the city gates, after Keith and To'Wrathh had traveled. They had already pre-planned their stories in case of questions, but she'd never been questioned thus far. The whole clan seemed to accept her presence without thought.

So she told Elandris the prepared story. Some details had been modified to keep her nature as a Feather from discovery. There was no confrontation between Keith and herself when he'd discovered her secret, instead they simply reached the city gates as normal and then fought against To'Aacar.

Elandris hummed contentedly. "I see he's leveled up a bit as a warrior if he's tackling these Feathers as you call them. I've known him for some time now, and he wasn't anything like he is today. He doesn't tell people, but that man did have a hoarder's stash weaseled inside one of the roof tiles before the migration. I would find it no surprise if he's done the same at the new compound, despite having a perfectly fine vault to use. Now he's tacking the same enemies demi-gods fight on the daily."

"Was that how you met him?" To'Wrathh asked, curious herself how this woman had gotten to know her human on a closer level than she had. "Did he take something from you and forced you to hunt him down?"

She could relate somewhat to that. The hunting part.

"No, I was far more traditional in my approach." Elandris said, "I asked him to dance. Although, I already knew who he was and was specifically targeting him, so perhaps not quite as 'traditional' as someone would argue. Sitting down to talk after a quick dance was rather easy."

"You targeted him?" To'Wrathh asked, feeling unease with the notion. That seemed far to close to her own actions again.

"He was a potential heir to a Retainer house that could possibly return to power, and back then I had been tossed into the outcasts group after a political misstep. Although that's the more generic answer I'd give when asked. My true aim was to have a working connection to the Reacher houses, and they don't actually trust or respect Retainers on the inside. It's all just show on the outside. Keith, however, was a different case. He's technically a Retainer by birth, but spent enough time with Reachers that they consider him one of their own. There's no better way to network. I'm still among the outcasts here in my caste, but I predict my connections across the castes will soon be too invaluable for anyone to ignore."

"Pragmatic." To'Wrathh concluded. However, with her newfound understanding of human romance relationships, she could now understand prior discussions that hinted at more than a business relationship. "Was this accord your only objective?"

Elandris smiled. "I was rather upfront and direct about my intentions, part of the reason he didn't play the same song and dance he does with all the other ladies trying. I am rather picky about who I end up with, but I do have an appetite to feed. It was a mutually beneficial agreement."

To'Wrathh felt… something at the mention. She couldn't identify why, but the statement gave her conflicted feelings. Like a twisting knot. Was this jealousy?

"And why did it not… work out?" She asked, feeling like every word was an anchor to say.

Elandris laughed, then leaned forward and cradled her head on her elbows. "He's a good man, but his life goals don't align with my own. I want to rule, to walk in the spotlight. And the man or woman at my side has to be neck deep in that same goal, with the same passion."

To'Wrathh studied her past logs with Keith, specifically looking for his attention to power. There were little points of evidence showing her human ever cared to rule over others. Rather, he acted out of duty.

Romance novels had not delved into more mundane compatibility issues such as this. Simple incompatibility in life goals was enough to break any feelings. Humans were complicated, but this clicked into place.

She understood at that moment why Elandris had no romantic interest in Keith. And never would.

It felt like a weight off her shoulders.

"It's even worse than you suspect, Hecate." Elandris continued. "Not only does he not care to chase after power, he's outright opposed to it. A few months ago, he was aiming to leave his House behind, join a Reacher house instead. And - as he so cutely puts it - I am a power-crazed heartless gold digger. There's no future with a man who hates the very institution I'm climbing the ranks within."

"How are you on amicable terms with Keith at all?" To'Wrathh asked, now confused. He'd seen his reaction to Ankah Shadowsong, who was also a socialite with the same goals as Elandris. And yet one was hated, and the other a close friend. It didn't make sense.

"Ah, ah ah." Elandris said, finger wagging in the air. "My turn to ask a question."

"Very well human, ask." To'Wrathh said, arms crossing over her chest, slightly annoyed at the interruption but understanding that this was the conditions set.

"Has he told you what happened on the expedition he lost his Father? No one's heard the full story, other than him finding armor and returning with something more. Everything in House Winterscar was jumpstarted from that moment. A girl gets curious."

Keith hadn't told To'Wrathh what happened on the expedition - she was there to see it happen, and largely the cause of it. By technicalities, she could answer no and would be correct. But the thought of lying by omission or sheer technicality did not align with her inner thoughts.

"Tenisent and Keith ran into a machine den, and narrowly escaped. One machine continued to hunt them past all rational reasons. Tenisent and Keith fought together against the machine, with Tenisent sacrificing his life in order to give his son a chance to escape. Keith did not escape, and stood his ground, defeating the machine."

Elandris nodded, hands folded. "I see. I had guessed something like this had happened."

"How did you gue-" To'Wrathh stopped herself mid sentence. "I did not complete the question."

Elandris quirked an eyebrow up with a slight smile, but inclined her head.

To'Wrathh took the answer for what it was, and returned to her original question. "How are you on amicable terms with Keith at all?"

"Mutual respect." Elandris said without hesitation. "Both of us were trampled down by the clan's society, and we both rebelled against it. Only in different directions. I admire someone who can simply cast off absolutely everything he has in his life in exchange for freedom, that's not something I can ever do. And he seems to respect someone who doubles down and decides to grab the handle of the very blade that cut her. Or at least it used to be that way."

"Used to be that way?" To'Wrathh asked, too late to stop herself. Her hands covered her mouth a second too late.

Elandris tilted her head, "I'll let this one slide, lady Deathless, since I can see you are a very curious one." Her finger waggled for a moment. "But once we're done I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions."

To'Wrathh quickly nodded.

"He changed is the simple answer." Elandris said. "Rather abruptly too. One moment, he was desperate to escape his house and everything to do with Knights. The next moment, he's a knight himself and now has his nose in everyone's business. Kidra I could understand, three gods bless her, she's someone worth working with. But Keith? Didn't see that coming."

"When he returned with his own armor." To'Wrathh said, connecting the dots.

"Ahh, but here's the catch. He could have easily given his armor down the line to the House itself. Plenty of primes or heirs are unfit to wield a relic armor. He didn't. Instead he continued to wear the plate and take his duties more seriously."

"A moment - does that change your aim? He now has political power."

House Winterscar was wealthy beyond any other House now. The clan lord's writ allowed Keith access to anything he could ask for, and the number of armors owned by the House greatly eclipsed most other Houses. Occult blades that were forged had been sent directly to the Chenobi, to be distributed among the elite knights, and Atius had not accepted those weapons and armaments for free as Kidra had explained when she'd asked for the logistics of her House.

If there was any one person within the clan who now had both wealth and power, it was Keith.

Elandris waved a hand, as if to swat away a rogue fly. "He's not doing any of this for fun, and the moment he doesn't need to anymore, he'll weasel himself into a hole and retire from the limelight. And that's not who I want. Believe me, I can tell when relic armor gets to someone's head. He's still the same on the inside."

"How do you know?"

"I always keep internal notes on what makes people function. Call it a hobby of mine. It worked well - until it didn't, but that's another story entirely." Elandris paused, thinking. "Put it a way you might relate to better: Deathless like you fight machines - you'll often do research before launching any attack. I do the same, only the battlefield is done in words, and my ammunition is knowledge. And you seem very much like the type of person who requires information to act on a plan." Then she leaned forward, the smile growing slightly wider. "Would you like some book recommendations?"

"More romance books?"

Elandris shook her head. "Not at all. Romance novels can tell you if you're feeling something. What I can recommend will tell you if that feeling is worth pursuing."

The girl knocked on the sliding door behind her, and soon a servant walked in. She sent a quick request to fetch books from her room and return them here. "I do treasure these books, so I will ask for them back." She said as the man turned to leave at once. "And you say you can read them right here and right now almost instantly?"

To'Wrathh nodded. Her OCR systems would take snapshot pictures as she leafed through a book, convert the image into text and then allow her systems to read and digest the contents with ease.

"While they're getting my stuff, what exactly are your goals here?" Elandris asked.

"I am… unsure what my goals are anymore." To'Wrathh admitted, "I have strange feelings I need to sort through."

"About Keith?"

To'Wrathh didn't answer, instead finding herself flinching in her seat. Wings behind her were moving with agitation. This girl was frustratingly accurate in her targeting.

"You should be more honest with him." Elandris said, leaning back on her seat.

"Honesty has been a controversial position within the romance novels I have read." To'Wrathh said, diving back into her pool of information for refuge. "The heroines often conceal their affection from the main leads. Is that not the wiser track?"

Elandris laughed, "Not with him, no. Terrible idea. He's a Winterscar, Hecate. Their house was filled with backstabbing and lies, and he grew up in the middle of all that. If there's anyone who reacts poorly to dishonesty and hidden intentions, it's him."

"Honesty is the best method to interact with him?" That did track with his reactions to certain topics. And she also found honesty to be easier to deal with than the lack of it. Although, as a Feather, she had the ability to detect lies in voice patterns if given enough audio sample to run the algorithms through. How they worked, she had little idea, but their results were accurate and the systems built from before the fall of humanity.

"Of course it is. But before you can be honest with him, you have to be honest with yourself." Elandris said, hand spinning around her wrist twice before pointing directly at To'Wrathh.

The insinuation was evident this time. "I am… not sure. Romance novels I've studied are inconclusive."

"Then ask yourself, who are you looking for?"

To'Wrathh paused, thinking. "Who am I compatible with?"

"Are you asking me or asking yourself? If you told me your full history, I might be able to dig out who you really are and what you're looking for. But I don't think we need to do that."

"Why not?"

She leaned forward, with a soft smile. "The very reason you're here talking to me, searching for all these answers. You've already found him."