12 Miles Below

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. Heat index showed a heavy reverasl down to stability as the heavier systems in her mind ground to a stop.

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 rocketed backwards, 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 did so, 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 were already overloading, growing red as the internal stress and power began to melt the blades. She drew out more power to them, pushing them past the point of no return.

Trajectory changed from yellow, snapping to green with warning signs.

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. The weight easily cut her legs. 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 bright red.

Her wing systems reported complete destruction, only a few parts remained attached in spirit. She 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.

In one swoop, To’Aacar had cut her down to the knees. His head rose on top of the rock as he walked 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, the spear 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.

An ancient Feather, 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.

And To’Wrathh, legs useless. Wing parts sprayed out under her, some still twitching, attempting to lift from the ground while other blades simply lay still and dead. Her right hand crushed under the weight of To’Aacar’s foot, the arm no longer responding, the hilt of her last weapon equally crushed, the delicate fractal within broken.

To’Aacar’s ruined features stared her down, the remaining violet eye holding no emotion. “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. “Why did you have to betray Mother so early? Could you not have waited until you grew stronger?” The spear pushed down ever so slowly. “What a waste. What a disgusting waste. The pale lady 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.”

“All kingdoms fall. I won’t be the last to make the attempt. 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.” She told the ghost at her side. “We nearly made it. But it’s time for you to truly go now.”

“You can escape with me.” The ghost said. “Feathers are immortal.”

“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 should trust my son more.” Tenisent 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 dimention, my neighboor, 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 sent. 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 stone hangar sized slab. He had to use it all. Otherwise it wouldn’t have cut the slab as it did. 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 into him, occult pulsed, 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 passing by my skin.

The sword divided the physical fractal that held To’Accar. That dimmed out immediately, the artificial soul now homeless, the world around it already hostile and attacking.

It had no time to escape - the rest of the blade cut deeper, 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 his soul like paper, cutting it into two fragments. The very concept of his identity was irreparably divided, rapidly fading away into nothing. There was no return from this.

One moment, he was.

Then, he was not.

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