12 Miles Below

“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 Knightkiller 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 two weeks of work to create a single one. 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 a single chain. 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 just for the prototype. 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, all through the weeks.

When I realized that the first batch of chains came back as eighty, 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

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