12 Miles Below

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 Dealthless 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 luxgury, surrounding 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 cities surface dwellers live in might be poor compared to your old city, but the people are still happy. 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. And so, when the going gets rough, they will band together and do what needs to be done. 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 factually. Etched deep in the human soul itself:

To be recognized as worthy.”

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