12 Miles Below

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 she 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 acasual 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. Wounded pride. That’s what this was.

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 acasual 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 anymore and your myopic hobbies. 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 acasual 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.

They seemed to wait. As if curious about what a Feather of Relinquished could care about so strongly, that she’d risked a true death.

“Please.” Her hand reached out, stretching into the void. “Please, anyone, help me…”

From that void, a god reached back.

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