12 Miles Below

“What’s the damages?” Zaang barked out, walking into the gatehouse hub.

The scout master in charge looked as nervous as the rest of the ops team, all of them still scanning the horizon from the gatehouse’s windows, since the instruments were currently used by the rest of the officer team. “It’s clan Altosk’s colors and heraldry, sir.” He said. “We’re counting about two dozen knights, nearly half of Atlosk’s last known number of relic knights.”

“Wonderful, so they’ve been busy in the meantime, I see.” Zaang said, recalling the prior reports he’d read about the Undercity’s closest surface clan. It was important enough information considering the imperial population within the city was sizable enough, and pilgrims had to travel at least once to give prayer to the sun. It paid to know the neighbors on top, and what they could bring to bear.

“Hostilities?” Zaang asked, cautiously.

“None yet. They’re jogging with standard speed, nothing to make it seem like they’re attacking. Hardly past the widow peak right now. We’ll lose sight of them for a few seconds given their current pace once they pass by the trailhead, and then we’ll see them by Demarim highway.”

By which point they’ll be on top of the gatehouse in minutes. Relic armor squadrons moved far faster than trader caravans, since every member could sprint for hours without pause. Normally a caravan spotted at Demarim would be a good quarter hour from arrival.

“Close the gates, now.” The General ordered. "And get me a megaphone. Now." Comms had all kinds of frequencies, and the knights coming to bang on his doorsteps down below might not hear any call, or reject it outright. The most reliable way to make sure he'd get heard was the old fashioned method.

“Sir?” The gate officer asked, clearly not getting the memo.

“Can’t let them into the city without them trashing the place up." Zaang said, considering options, "We need to stall them at the gate.” He turned to his comms officer. “Call up HQ, get them to find the sword saint and bring her here right now. She’s the only one that’ll be able to broker any kind of deal. Also, go talk to her little brother, see if he can make it here too, just in case we can’t find the sword saint fast enough.”

Maybe the threat of their clan lord rampaging around the city would be enough to draw the recluse out of his little workshop. Goddess willing. Although Zaang was almost positive dragging that youth out would cause some kind of new trouble, somehow.

The surface knights disappeared from view, the mountain trail leading to the main roadway obscuring where they’d gone by.

Moments later, they reappeared, still jogging at a leisure pace. Now going straight for the gatehouse, with one figure at the lead.

Then they drew occult blades all at once and turned the jog into a full blown assault sprint. Zaang cursed under his breath. The gate closing wouldn’t have been enough to make them start sprinting, any city would seal shut first when a small army of mercenary knights were spotted on approach. So the knights must have spotted something else. Possibly battle damage, or machines lurking around watching the events happen.

The scout master looked even more nervous. “Orders, sir? Should we send out an intercept squad to stall them?”

“The consuls would strangle me if I fed the surface clans free armor. No, absolutely no away teams to intercept that bomb.” The general said. Surface savages absolutely would lay claim to any knight’s armor they defeated in combat, even if it would all be explained away as a misunderstanding later on. Part of their traditions. “The gates should be good enough to hold them off for now.”

The knights continued to sprint across the distance, though intel showed they’d be at least half a minute too late. By that time, the gates would seal off. Their armors must have surely already informed them of the futility. And yet they continued the sprint forward instead of taking better positions for a siege.

Which meant they had some kind of plan.

Zaang was in full fire-fighting mode now, debating his best how to stop this group from getting past the gates long enough for Keith or Kidra to show up and talk things down.

“Cut the new plating loose, the ones on top of the gatehouse.” He ordered, staking around looking for a megaphone next. The top damages were under repairs, a lot of armored wall plates still loose or unmoored.

Not a moment after, what Zaang had thought would happen, happened.

“Sir! Gate controls show a jam in the system!” An operator shouted, watching as red started to take over the console before him.

Outside, in the distance, the general could see the glow of the occult coalescing around the lead knight, who had one hand outstretched. The Deathless must be doing something to hold off the gate.

Massive metal plates falling from above obstructed his view a moment later. His earlier command had been executed, the soldiers breaking down all the half-done repairs and letting the heavy plates pile up at the bottom, neatly serving as an improvised barrier.

Zaang chuckled darkly. "Not today, you cheating bastard." He muttered, stroking his beard.

“The knights have halted their sprint and scattered, they’re taking cover and preparing rifles!” The master scout reported getting info from his team. “The Deathless is still taking the lead, looks to be char-”

Zaang saw a flash of occult blue light up the room from the open windows, and heard the sound of metal getting ripped apart a moment later.

"What the hell was that?" He called out, demanding a damage report. He didn't need to wait. Giving a glance down through the window, he could see the damages just under them. Another arc of occult energy flashed forward from the Deathless and slammed out against the broken plates, ripping more apart and throwing them out of the way.

The clan lord was shoveling away the plates bit by bit until a path could be cleared. Zaang cursed, and cursed another time for good measure. "Where's that golden megaphone?!" He called out. Another occult arc hit the fortification, shaking the room slightly.

“Permission to open fire?!” Shouts began to round out around the control center. Rifles and cannons were loaded and pointed down at the Deathless, who remained grim-faced, powering a silver-white sword for another occult arc. The other hand was free, and lifted, as if carrying a shield at the fingertips.

“Denied, hold fire! Hold fire, damn you all!” Zaang shouted. Even undying, a Deathless wasn’t going to stand out in the open like this without already being bullet-proof in some way. And shooting the clan lord did not seem like a great idea for future diplomacy.

Fortunately, someone finally came back with the megaphone he'd asked for all this time ago. He snatched it from the officer's hand like a starving man would grab a ration bar.

Thus armed, Zaang went to the window and began a desperate attempt to placate a demi-god from ripping more holes into his city.

“Attention Deathless, this is General Zaang of the Undersider city, currently assigned on duty. I would like to negotiate that you stop ripping apart our walls for a few minutes, if you would so kindly oblige. Those are expensive, I’m told.”

The Deathless’s white sword held still in the air, occult still flowing around it. Mercifully, the Deathless didn’t swing down.

“Sir, comms request from the Deathless.” One of his officers said, to which Zaang waved approval.

Lord Atius’s voice reverberated around the tiny control room. “You lads are aware there are machines idling around inside the wall holes of your gates?” He asked.

“It’s not what it looks like.” Zaang said quickly, before immediately regretting the choice of words. “It’s a long story, and if you’ll just wait a few minutes for my men to fetch the sword saint Kidra or her little brother, everything will be explained.”

“Her little brother?” The Deathless asked, head tilted, sword hand slowly falling back down. Zaang could see that hit a nerve, since the rest of the normally well drilled and organized knights near him also all seemed to be taken aback.

Well, if he knew throwing around Keith’s name like this was an easy ticket out, he’d have done that from the very start. Too bad for the wall repairs, but strictly speaking that wasn’t part of his budget to worry about.

Keith

“He’s actually dead then, isn’t he?” Lord Atius muttered, watching the broken shell of his once ancient enemy hanging over the dungeon wall. Still wonderstruck, as if in a daze. Chains had been rigged up to the Feather’s arms, legs, and neck. And we’d put his dead body in a heavily fortified dungeon looked over by at least one of Kidra’s escorts at all times, just to make sure the locals didn’t get any ideas.

Though, if To’Aacar ever did start moving again, all those chains, walls and guards would be about on the same level as wet paper.

The Deathless clan lord took a few cautious steps closer, blue eyes locked onto the remaining violet one. It didn’t glow like it once had in life. No movements, no sneer, nothing. Just a dead broken shell hanging loose, with an occult sword skewered through the chest. The dead face didn’t even look upset, simply neutral.

“I confirm it myself, and so can Wrath.” I said. “She had a blackout going, so no way for him to digitally save himself. And the sword cut his soul to pieces before he could try to escape with that. I’ve got all the combat footage if you’d like to watch it.”

Lord Atius looked as if he’d aged a few more centuries, ancient eyes turning to me. There was hurt in them, sorrow, the pain of old memories flickering through his mind. “I would like that, lad. I would like that a lot. To see his final moments. He’s killed more people close to me than I can count.” He closed his eyes taking a deep breath. “It seems he was not as invincible as I had feared him to be all these centuries.”

His armored hand extended out, slowly wrapping around the hilt of his old longsword. A breath to steady himself, he slowly withdrew the weapon out of To’Aacar’s shell. It didn’t turn on to his touch, and he had to use his second hand to hold the dead Feather’s shell still while he extracted the nearly fused weapon.

“How did you know this would kill him? I have never heard of a Feather being truly killed for good.”

“I could see him vanish in the soul sight. I hit him with that soul strike but directly into the soul fractal that machines have. Ripped both the fractal and also his soul into two. Also broke the blade as well.” I said. “It won’t work unless I fix it. Problem is that I have no idea what fractal was used to make that kind of blade. Wrath would have, except… well, she’s not exactly looking forward to reconnecting with the machine community given her recent actions. I don’t think machine kind take all too well to treason.”

“Wrath.” Atius said, as if tasting the word. “A machine turncoat, Feather and mite touched. We really do live in interesting times it seems.”

“You’re not going to go after her, are you? Wrath I mean.” I asked, a little nervous. She was currently still recovering, using her own swarm of black mist to repair herself. Nanobots she called them. Going to a mite forge would draw too much attention.

If there was any time to assassinate Wrath, it was now. She was at her weakest.

Atius’s old eyes turned to me, looking at me as if I’d just claimed snow was hot. “No. No, lad, I will not. She’ll see no enmity from me, not unless she falls back to her original nature. You both worked together to kill a monster I had thought the world would never be rid of. If anything, I owe her the benefit of the doubt. And that would be the least of all things I could offer.”

He looked down at the broken blade in his hand. This old sword that had followed him for centuries, racking up more stories and fights than I’d ever know about. He turned and offered the hilt of the golden sword back to me. “As for this, consider it yours to do as you will with now. It’s history ended with you as the final wielder. Only fitting that you take claim of it. To’Aacar himself left behind a newly forged one, specifically made to assassinate me. It’ll do well for me for now.”

Clan Lord Atius and his retinue had arrived to the city gates earlier this morning, with a group of haggard and morose Winterscar knights in tow. Apparently, the group had been sidetracked because Captain Sagrius had insisted on attempting to find my body, claiming he’d seen me swept up by a flying being of some kind.

The rest of the surface knights had thought he’d gone insane.

The Winterscars knights with him didn’t share that opinion and had doubled down behind their captain, ready to believe him if he said the sky had turned red. There were some… heated debates.

The regular elite knights of the clan were all loyal to Lord Atius, but more importantly to the clan itself. They knew of me, what I had brought into the clan - any of them would have traded their life to save mine and considered it fair. They also knew the clan was in danger and they had to recover Kidra and the other knights sent into the city, bring back as much help as they could, as quickly as possible if they were to make it back to the surface in time. To them, my death was greatly regrettable, but that same sense of honor and loyalty that would have had them step in front of a bullet for me also had them grit their teeth and continue forward to the city instead.

The Winterscars were different. Maybe my time with them had slowly changed them, or they saw something more important in me than the clan itself. To the other knights, they could smell the shift in loyalty and had their hackles up despite it having all been left unworded. As Lord Atius had explained, it really seemed like the Winterscars would break rank and leave to search for me instead of continuing to the city.

Which represented a loss of fighting power that was unprecedented among the clan’s history. The Winterscars were all skilled, and equipped with knightbreaker rounds still left unused. Those had ultimately been the deciding factor in the fight between To’Aacar and Atius. Once my knights had cleaned shop with the puppet knights, To’Aacar realized it was a matter of time until one of them got a good enough opportunity to take a shot at him - and hit. He’d tried to bait them into wasting their ammo, but the Winterscars never did, keeping the threat implicit at all times and forcing the Feather to fight extra carefully, and eventually retreat when no opening was showing up.

The clan knights had come down aiming to hunt and kill a demi-god, they were certainly not going to rush through that fight. If it took them hours to safely exhaust To’Aacar’s occult jumps, they would absolutely do it. They had forced him to retreat early or find himself with nothing left in the power cell to fight off Wrath.

All besides the point - a team of knights that could make a Feather like To’Aacar sweat, letting them go into the wild to search for a dead body over helping the clan was almost sacrilege to the rest of the group. And yet the Winterscars were stubborn and refused to simply roll over, no matter the sanctions they’d face on the return topside. Captain Sagrius swore on his soul he’d seen me taken by a winged valkyrie before I’d hit the ground, and he was determined to chase me down wherever I’d ended up at.

Lord Atius had brokered a compromise. They’d remain together as a group and search for me for a few days, after which they would need to turn back to the city. Captain Sagrius agreed and followed suit. They didn’t find my body of course. I’d flown the coop, in literal terms. Best they could scrounge up was my old discarded helmet at the bottom of the cliff.

They stumbled on one campsite Wrath and I had made on our journey with Fido and followed the trail from there. They ran out of all possible tracks the moment they reached the silver field of flowers, which was a problem. At that point, they had to call it quits, not knowing if these campsites were even me, or some other random pair of travelers in the area.

Which led the knights to the city gate where they’d noticed holes in the walls, machines idly watching from the top ramparts, and the closing gates. I hear Zaang got some more gray hairs to pay for it all, but everything ended up working out all right.

The Winterscar knights hadn’t left my side for a moment since we reunited. The captain was waiting right outside the bunker doors even now, while I spoke with Atius. Out of all the knights, they were the first to show indifference or outright acceptance of To’Wrathh, when the Feather was brought out. Saving my life and keeping me safe on the way to the city did pretty good as far as bribes went. The other knights among Atius’s elites were a different story, but they’d come around eventually.

The very next thing I’d done was show them all what happened to the foe they’d fought on top of the cliffs. His dead body gave them all the grim satisfaction, even if they hadn’t been there to see him die.

I’d come here first out of respect to Lord Atius of course, though I would admit I did have some side mission of my own here.

The new weapon I’d been building frantically over the past week was more or less complete. I say more-or-less because by its nature, I can keep on adding things to it. An Occult spell slinging platform of sorts, independent from my armor, and light enough I can carry it by my own power.

But to make the absolute most of it, I needed to train one specific spell that it abused. A spell whose only expert and possible teacher for me happened to be in the same city now.

And what did you know, he owed me a favor.

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