12 Miles Below

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

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