12 Miles Below

They both tumbled into the rock and ruins, her oversized hat falling off into the water.

A relic powered elbow slammed into her head, knocking her back down as she tried to stand up. A knee into her stomach folded her up, and Windrunner snaked around with a practiced grapple. He wasn’t sure if a chokehold would have any traditional effect on a Feather, but he didn't have the time to come up with something new and untested. The position still gave him leverage and that's all he needed. His blades were in an awkward pose, unusable. Too late to fix it now. He had other options available.

“You dare?” To’Sefit hissed, “Who do you think you are?”

A foot slammed into the back of her leg, directly on the joint, forcing her down on a knee. He went right to work, pulling against her neck, aiming to rip it clean off. Against a human, it would have been like snapping thin ice. Against another knight, it would have taken a few seconds for the helmet seals to fail against two arms prying it off. Against a Feather, the armor strained, mechanical whirling sounding across the chest and arms. Synthetic muscles began snapping away internally, sounding like deep clicks rattling within his armor.

White elastic skin started to stretch across To'Sefit's neck, growing taunt, but the internal spine refused to break or buckle under the force. Windrunner tried harder, putting his full body to work. Red warnings began to flash on his HUD, showing cascading damage.

To’Sefit gave a snarl, eyes widening, realizing what the human was doing. She dropped her staff and gripped his arms with both her white porcelain hands. The slender digits clenched and his armor dented under each finger.

That… that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The red warning messages continued to populate his HUD, more and more parts of his armor breaking down against the might of a Feather. She pried, slowly peeling off his wrapped arms from their chokehold. Tension left her neck.

This wasn’t working. New plan.

He twisted on himself, taking her off her feet with him, slamming the Feather into the ground. It did next to nothing against the monster. He put his full knee on her back and strained with his armor, pulling against her neck with everything he had, but those hands of hers still held off his arms and took the entire force his armor could generate.

The right arm buckled, failing outright, power going out as the dented metal cut into the remaining fibers. Instantly he triggered the emergency release, letting the isolated arm plating collapse into smaller pieces with micro explosions across the chassis, freeing his actual arm. With that, his true hand dove for the spare dagger at his chest. The cold hilt hummed in his hands as the weapon lit to life. Without wasting a moment, he flipped the dagger into a reverse grip and sunk it directly into To’Sefit’s stomach. Her personal shields lit up at the last moment, blocking the blow.

He dug against it regardless, trying to get past the wall he’d run into, grinding his teeth together with effort. Shields couldn’t last long against an occult edge, seconds at most. He just needed to keep going. Just a little bit more.

A soft hand wrapped around his own and squeezed.

Having stepped out of the soul trance in order to move his arm, Windrunner felt the pain of his bones and fingers break, squashed against the hilt of the blade, pulverized into shards. He gave a muffled scream, gritting his teeth through the pain. Blood and cartilage was squeezed out in between her fingers, staining To’Sefit’s robes with scarlet splatter, dripping down the occult dagger, leaving the mangled remains of his hand a mess of crushed muscle.

She rose on her feet, lifting him up with her. Her other hand still prying apart the last of his hold. Inevitable. To’Sefit calmly levered the weapon off her stomach, overpowering him as if he were nothing more than a child against an adult.

He didn’t let himself panic. His right arm might be caught in her vice grip, but he still had the other one. He needed to get free first. “Windrunner, break her hold. Leave me the sword.” He ordered the armor, trying to keep his voice level against the waves of pain coming from the hand. The armor complied, breaking apart the sections caught by To’Sefit’s other hand. She was left holding nothing but dented plates, as the armor shrugged off the modular parts, shutting down power to the armored hand.

The hand was heavy. Extremely heavy, but Windrunner didn’t have a choice. The longsword rose and dove straight down, cutting his right hand free from the dagger and To’Sefit’s grip. She seemed almost surprised.

He twisted on himself, and slashing forward with the longsword, hoping the momentum of his twist made his movement fast enough.

It hadn’t. She slapped the flat of the blade out of the way, and jabbed her hand forward directly at his chestplate. The remnants of his armor’s shields flared up and took the blunt of the force as he took a step back to keep his footing.

To’Sefit didn’t stop. She stabbed again and again with nothing more than her bare hands. Windrunner swung his blade down like a sledgehammer, only to find the attack halted.

She’d grabbed his wrist.

A cruel smile curled on her lips. She began to pummel his armor, throwing crushing punch after punch that the armor desperately repelled with its shield. One chop on his exposed arm had broken the bones there, making the whole thing go limp. A final attack had her hand spear through his legplate, the shield finally collapsing against the raw power. Her hand broke through metal, skin, muscle and bone as if everything was nothing more than paper. He fumbled onto his knee, the armor’s power no longer working on that leg and the pain shocking him even through the adrenaline.

She finally let go of his hand, letting it flop down to his side.

He looked back up, just in time to see her backhanded slap land on his chest. As if she were swatting away a fly. Dazed, he found himself crashed into a wall on the far end of the chamber.

“My, my, that was rather exciting. I haven’t had that happen before. No Deathless was ever bold enough.” To’Sefit said, brushing her hand free of dirt and contamination, flicking her white hair back over her shoulders. “To’Avalis was right in a way, you humans really are something different. Is it your diet, or did they put something in your water source?”

Windrunner considered his options. His right arm was missing a hand, the clean occult slice now pooling his blood out into the river, plus most of the bone were broken and the muscles pulverized. The leg was also bleeding out, but that part was being tended to by his armor’s medical foam. The hand to be handled first. HUD gave him a few more seconds before the loss of blood pressure would cause him to fall unconscious. He raised a trembling left hand. Stripped of most plates, the raw synthetic muscle fibers showed all across the forearm. Most were frayed, unresponsive. The few that did work weren’t doing much of anything to help him move.

That was fine. The fractals on his palm were still there, and that’s all he needed. He tapped into the fractal of heat, the very same one Master Keith had shown off as a demonstration all that time ago. With that, he lowered his missing hand into the flame, letting the skin burn and cauterize. It would buy him some time.

“And what exactly did you plan to do next, I wonder?” To’Sefit asked, reaching down for her discarded staff. Kicking his bloody cut off hand along the way, the dagger spinning out of the crushed grip. “You should have let yourself bleed out, less painful to die unconscious I hear.”

Windrunner turned to check in on Kidra. The girl was still neck to neck against To’Avalis, the Feather fighting her off carefully, as if handling a wild beast. The young Winterscar was a brilliant fighter, but Windrunner could tell she wasn’t going to win. Machines were now starting to pile out of the ruins, surrounding the pair.

None of the machines made a move to attack, likely waiting for the right moment. To’Avalis continued his probing strikes, meticulously studying the human girl for easy wins.

At least she was in better shape than he was for now, three gods granting small blessings.

Rifle shots sounded further up, where Atius was positioned. Windrunner could see from the camera feed that machines were coming from the tunnels out for the clan lord. The rifle would keep them off him for only so long.

And the last two Winterscar’s camera feeds were black, a red NO SIGNAL flashing on each. One likely stranded on the second strata if he'd survived the fall in the first place, and the other dealing with a massive metal bird.

It wasn’t looking good.

To’Sefit’s staff once more raised up. The plates around her fully repaired. “Last words human?” She asked.

Windrunner’s hand rose up, and he did his best to show her a finger.

“I suppose you earned that one.” She chuckled. “It was a good fight, and you've left me quite cross about losing my hat. Goodbye human.”

Three things happened in quick succession. First, he heard a metallic scream of pain and the tower shook, rock breaking apart again, collapsing. Something big had hit the side. To’Sefit turned, eyes widening and then narrowing down in outright hate. “Ohhhh, that nasty human. I’ll tear him limb from limb for this.” She hissed.

Windrunner started to laugh, watching two video feeds reconnect. The gods really did provide.

But it was the third feed he was really paying attention to. An armored hand rose up in the video, occult crackling around the plate, gaining in strength with each second until even the picture began to fuzz out and turn pitch black.

Distant occult pulsed out, strong enough even Windrunner could feel it from here, and he'd never been gifted when it came to the Occult secrets. The sense of something twisting, reality bending in ways it shouldn’t. Powerful occult.

It seemed to descend like an invisible veil around To’Sefit, crackling pale blue lighting, forming around her like a thick mist, choking everything. Even water was pushed aside in a circle around her feet. “What is this?” She asked, the charged occult distorting her voice. She looked up and glared at him. “What are you doing?”

Windrunner continued laughing. “Not me.” He said, voice hoarse.

Twelve half formed wraiths of the clan lord rose from the mist, like the dead returned for vengeance, surrounding the Feather in every direction. Faceless helmets snapping up to gaze at their enemy.

Blades flickered to life in the hands of each.

They dove for her at the same time, leaping like demons from the old songs. She drew her staff up to defend herself.

That was a mistake. The wraiths were never after her in the first place.

Atius didn’t order his army to fight the Feather. Experience had shown that tactic to be ineffective. And Windrunner could see the way the wraiths moved, Atius wasn’t all there either. He’d tapped the well too deep, the wraiths didn’t carry any of the fluidity he’d seen used before. This was the very last scraps of whatever power he had left.

To’Sefit had too much shields still available, even if she somehow failed to dodge every strike sent. But the plates floating around her weren’t as quick, nor as defended.

The wraiths flowed around her, occult blades slashing out, wordlessly cutting her plates in half. The slices taking out whatever it was that kept them up in the air. They fell into the rushing water, swept down to the whirlpool at the center.

Gone for good, falling off the edge into the second strata.

Atius got to seventeen plates before To’Sefit swatted the last of the images, destroying each in quick succession with her staff tip. She screamed in rage the entire time her weapons were cut apart by the malformed wraiths.

None of the images remained alive after her slaughter, the occult mist fading away around her. But seven plates remained functioning when everything settled. The Feather turned her gaze up to the tunnel where the Deathless remained motionless, rifle at his lap.

He raised a hand, slowly taking his helmet off, letting it slip down into the water around him, carried away to the waterfall, flowing to the ever present whirlpool center.

Hair matted down in sweat, eyes dilated, breathing heavy. There was no fight left in the old Deathless. He didn’t even have it in him to stand up. Still, he turned to face her with supreme effort, and gave one final blood filled grin.

Her staff lifted up, pointed directly at him. Blinding blue light struck. The walls and stonework crumbled apart, collapsing down. To’Sefit gave a deranged scream, and opened fire three more times, eliminating everything in her path.

On Windrunner’s HUD, he saw Lord Atius’s name wink out into gray. All that remained behind was melted rock, still glowing red.

Windrunner hissed with pain, head rolling backwards, watching the sky, looking for where he knew the video feed was coming from.

His eyes focused on the tower ceiling. The dead remains of a massive metal bird had crashed into it. And jumping off the back was none other than the Winterscar brat himself, a small red and silver figure, leaping from rock to rock. Sneaking by, looking for the right angle, before jumping directly into the air. A knightbreaker launcher in hand, aimed down as he fell.

Directly at To’Sefit.

She didn’t know yet. No one had noticed him. She'd been too furious, too focused on the clan lord's final moments.

Windrunner turned back to To’Sefit, watching three of her seven plates begin to glow, staff raising up directly at him again. There was no hint of mercy on her face, only blind rage.

He watched the other plates that floated behind. Four had been used to kill the clan lord. Those were on cooldown, or she’d be using them right now. Three were glowing, readying to fire.

If he could survive three shots, she’d have no plates left when Keith landed. The kid would have a chance.

He wouldn’t be able to survive three blasts. He hardly was able to take on a single one. But he needed those three plates out of the fight somehow.

“I’m going to erase you off the face of existence,” she hissed. “Not even a scrap of your armor will be left behind.”

“You can try.” He croaked out.

He couldn’t move himself or wield his blade anymore. But he didn’t need his body to do damage. The clan lord had showed him the way. His hands wrapped around the hilt of his old blade. The mirror fractal deep within his armor lit up. A mirror image appeared, unmoving within his body. He had to keep it hidden, she couldn't know until it was too late for her.

Come on, get your hand up. He thought to himself. One more run. You are a Knight Retainer. Honor that vow, you stupid bastard. Get your hand up. Time is ticking.

The hand lifted up, palm pointing at the Feather before him. Occult pulsed across the hand, a dome appearing at the end, aimed opposite of To’Sefit’s staff.

It seemed so small and fragile, up against a crushing might.

Windrunner braced himself. When sacrifice calls.

To’Sefit fired.

I shall gods damn answer it.

The beam struck against his occult shield, and he felt the mountain weigh down on him with all its terrible weight. He held on, pain surging through his body and soul alike. At the same moment, his hidden occult image leapt to the side and sprinted forward.

It wouldn't last more than three seconds, but neither would To'Sefit's beam. He'd need to make do.

A half second passed, the wraith raced forward at the side of the beam, taking leaping bounds forward. To’Sefit watched it, unable to move her staff without breaking her own protections against the shockwaves. Unable to fight off the approaching ghost. Violet eyes widening with the realization.

The edges of his mind frayed apart, pain was all he knew as the weight bored down on him. The hand he held in front of him was nothing but fire and agony, skin peeling away in his mind until nothing but ash remained. The fractal glowing within burning at his very soul.

The first glowing plate was sliced apart by his wraith. To’Sefit screamed in anger, or so he thought. He wasn’t sure anymore. All he heard was pain. Cracks appeared in the dome before him, spreading out like a spiderweb.

The wraith turned its blade, and leaped for the second plate.

Another second. The cracks spread, power seeping through. The fractal within consuming far more than the beam was. The cracks spread further, bouncing off each other, multiplying.

Windrunner grinned. Sorry, kid. Give her hell for me.

The occult image's blade rose up to strike, then vanished before the blade could connect. Fading away into the air.

To’Sefit’s beam burned through the wall unhindered, carving a hole of melted rock, and finally came to an end.

And with it, so had the relic knight.

Next chapter - The belltower and the Feather

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