12 Miles Below

Not for the first time, my sense of planning and rationality shook hands with the petty thief inside in mutual agreement. Carrying around an orbital cannon the size of a small metal plate had a certain draw to it. Like explosions, and setting things that shouldn’t be on fire, on fire.

Unfortunately for me, the moment To’Sefit faded away, a safeguard of some kind triggered over her plates, causing the internals to melt. Including the one in hand I'd used to kill her with.

Maybe she manually triggered it herself in whatever purgatory Feathers go to when they die, out of sheer spite. What other reason would she have to rob me of a weapon that could obliterate anything in my way? No other reason than petty hatred, and a deep desire to not share her toys.

I’d need to kill To’Avalis the old fashioned way: Hitting him with another knightbreaker when he couldn’t wiggle out of the way. And since mine was spent, I’d need to get Kidra to nail him. The fight between the two had resumed the moment To'Sefit had given up the ghost. Avalis wasn't wasting a single second longer than he had to, and that was going to be a problem.

Kidra was one of the greatest melee fighters I knew, turning the entire thing into a calculated dance of optimal efficiency and chess. Against Avalis, she was barely holding on.

Not due to lack of skill. I could see her weaving complex attacks and feints, each perfectly suited to counter and press against his strange weapon. To’Avalis’s own motions were calm, collected and equally reactive.

The problem is that Avalis didn’t fight like a duelist. He fought like someone who would sell his own sister if it meant getting an extra five points in a match.

Kidra could pull off deadly moves time and time again, and Avalis would turn invulnerable, letting the swing float past through him, before rematerializing and delivering his own attacks. Which meant if I had to fight him, even with the occult, my own chances of winning got thrown off the speeder the moment I grew too mentally fatigued to keep the occult going.

I’d need to stack up more advantages. Two knights against one Feather and a small army of distractions was getting closer to an even fight, which wasn’t the House motto. Fortunately, I didn’t need to fight him two on one. When I’d dropped down from the ceiling, Kidra’s video feed wasn’t the only one that snapped back into view.

My boots took me directly to the whirlpool, following the flow of the water blindly in the white mist. The amount of metal sediment and flakes being churned through with the water still played havoc on the scanners, Journey taking extra time before the wireframes appeared and more detailed topology showed up. That was to our advantage, since if our scanners couldn’t see well through the water - neither could anyone else’s.

Glittering water flowed over the broken edge of the center, spinning wildly into a circle, the flood not quite falling down the way it should given there was nothing under but arid air all the way down to the desert strata under us. But on the side of the broken ground, just before the drop, I could see the hilt of a dagger submerged underwater, tilted down from the spinning throw that had embedded it inside.

The relic weapon had been expertly thrown, gouging a deep hole into the rock for a few seconds until the blade shut off. Normally, a straight throw to keep the blade on target was the trained method, but with enough practice, throwing it into a spin would let the occult edge gouge a full cut before the blade shut off.

And lodged right inside that cut was a familiar metal hook, trailing a taut rope, hidden under the rushing water. The line curling in an arc from the reduced gravity. Deeper in the vortex, a shadow was moving under it all, following the rope up, one arm at a time.

Captain Sagrius hadn’t let himself fall down all the way to the bottom strata. With Father’s combat engram running paired with the speed and reflex of a relic armor, even an inhumanly perfect throw with both dagger and hook could be done.

I kneeled down and grabbed the line, dragging it up, moving fast. I didn’t need to go much, my target had been steadily fighting off several hundred tons of rushing water on its own, foot by foot, over this entire time. That added up.

A helmet surfaced over the whirlpool, water parting around it, the colors and insignia of House Winterscar growing clear as the armor’s shoulders and chest came up.

It watched me silently, wordlessly pulling itself forward against the churn of the water while I did the same on the other side. Including the captain, it would be two elite knights and one occult spellcaster as support against Avalis. With those odds, we could make something happen.

Unfortunately, Avalis wasn’t an idiot.

“Behind!” Father called out from the necklace around Sagrius’s neck. He didn’t need to tell me twice, I saw the ghost outline of Avalis leaping straight for my position, sailing through the white mist. He'd disengaged from Kidra, leaving his minions to hold his spot while he ruined my plan.

I tried frantically pulling Sagrius faster, which of course wasn’t going to be anywhere near fast enough. So I did the next best thing and let my mouth have a stab at it. Might get the Feather to start talking instead of fighting. “Avalis, you rat bastard," I said. "We finally meet face to face to f-”

He landed with a splash behind me and wordlessly lifted a leg up for a savage kick. Which would toss Wrath and I straight into the vortex at this angle.

All right, note to self. Taunting Avalis is going to need some more creative thought than To'Sefit.

I abandoned the line and twisted around at the same moment, occult pulsing around me. My armgard shield lit up, the mirror image charging out of my position, shield raised directly where his kick would have connected - onto the occult edges glowing bright.

Avalis changed his movement instantly, turning his raised kick into a heel stomp directly through the image’s knee, right under the glowing occult edges on the armguard and breaking the image apart. From that, he followed with a full kicker’s swing, trying to punt me straight into the vortex again, no questions asked. Shields flared to life over my armor right before his kick landed.

Journey buckled against two unyielding forces. The first was his stupidly strong kick to my stomach. The second was my hasty grab for the hook embedded deep into the ground. The relic armor strained, my chest rocketing to the side as my left hand held the grip, before the force backlashed through me, slamming me back down into the water and stright into the brick floor instead of being tossed into the abyss. Bits of red splattered the interior of my HUD, and I realized that had come from me. Bit my cheek or tongue during that, probably. Don't know, didn't have time to check either.

To’Avalis hadn’t waited for me to get back up either. His free hand was already reaching straight for Wrath’s exposed sack, her working eye staring down the approaching hand about to tear her head off.

Fortunately, occult sight let me see in every direction, even if I was currently faceplanted directly into water. I snarled, spitting the rest of the blood for Journey to handle, triggering the occult again.

Images flashed out, standing up far faster than I could, three swinging for him in every direction as I scrambled back on my feet. This close, caught in the middle of a bad position and with little room to maneuver, I knew I had the bastard dead to rights. He hissed, snatching his hand back before my images could cut it right off. More images blurred to life from the prior ones, forcing him to leap backwards out of range. My images chased after the bastard, relentless.

Avalis rapidly realized he couldn't just walk away from the images, they needed to be destroyed or I would never stop hounding after him. He twisted under the swing of one, a sharp elbow slamming the other side of the armguard, breaking the image's cohesion. All the while he kicked the shin of another causing it to vanish away from the impact, and caught the last one with his chain, scything right through the ribs. Avalis turned out to be a multi-tasker, given the chain not only ripped my last image apart, it swung directly at my position, unerringly zooming to my side just as I’d gotten back up.

I didn’t get the time to reach down a second time for the hook. I hardly had the time to curse before the mace end slammed dead-on into my hastily raised armgard.

My shield held. And then the mace end exploded in an occult blast, knocking up and off my feet. Shields triggered, dispersing most of the shock but not without rattling my insides as if I were in a full on speeder crash. Physics twirled Wrath and I around like a string toy, snapping the few remaining straps clean off as we tumbled through the air. She got flung further off to the walls, while I'd got sent way too close to the vortex edge.

My armor hit the ground hard, sliding through the water like the world's deadliest game of sliding ice with absolutely nothing just a meter off my right. The maw of the vortex watched, hungry, as I slipped parallel to it. Pleading that I’d bounce the wrong way and fall into its gullet.

It's wish got granted. My armor slammed into an upturned rock and bounced me straight to the void.

“Keith!” Kidra screamed out over comms, horrified. She was too far away, and too bogged down by Avalis’s minions.

In pure desperation, a frantic hand shot out by sheer reflex, right for the quickly approaching edge, scrambling for anything I could grip. Slick rock was the only thing under me, my hands uselessly gliding across as my feet, chest and hands crossed over the edge.

Fingers wrapped over the edge itself, and I squeezed. The armor instantly pitched straight down, the leftover force pushing me off mixing with the rushing weight of angry water pitted against unyielding relic armor holding onto the edge for my life. The armor won. Comms and video feeds began to fuzz as the water poured over my head, submerging me in the torrent.

“Close one, deary.” Cathida said, a nervous edge in her voice while the world had been cut off. “If the gravity wasn’t weakened here, that rock edge wouldn’t support your weight and inertia from that. Don’t let him get a second shot like this.”

The armor made pulling myself up easy, giving me a short jump up through the water, landing on the walkway edge with both feet. Cathida was right, I was quickly running out of luck. Few seconds with Avalis and I'd lost Wrath, then nearly got kicked into the vortex three times over. Rat bastard was going hard.

Said bastard now strolled at the edge, clearly feeling far more confident in his odds, letting hot air vent off near his halo. The chain swinging lazily around his main hand, coming closer and closer to Sagrius's hook and line. The Captain was nearly at the edge, frantically pulling against the rope, just about to reach solid ground. The chain made a quick twist, and scythed right through the rope as he passed by the hook. Avalis didn’t even bother to look, violet eyes fixed on me the whole time.

Fuck.

My options came down to one possible choice. I could try to throw my own hook and rope at Sagrius and hope he’d grab hold of it. But Avalis was here, and protecting a rope against a monster like him was impossible. Distracting him by throwing random scrapshit wasn’t going to work either, and neither trying to jump after the captain. He'd just take the opportunity to murder Wrath.

Saving the captain had turned into an impossible task.

In the soul trance, I could see the falling relic armor had also come to the same conclusion, knowing there was no possible way to return this time. But not the combat engram running deep inside the armor. His right hand snapped straight for the neckpiece and cleanly ripped it off its chain. A faceless helmet locked onto mine.

It was a perfect toss, and Journey’s gauntlet easily snatched the thrown necklace out of the air.

The falling armor finally relaxed, as if content with these last actions, letting itself be dragged off with the current, vanishing under the waves. Video feed turned into a pixelated mess before going dark, signal lost from the occlusion in the water. A moment later, he was gone from even the occult sight, falling too far out of my range.

To’Avalis watched from a distance, calculating the captain’s final choices. “A sentimental item?” He asked, fishing for information.

“As a matter of fact, it's the heart of my family.” I answered back, holding onto the little neckpiece in hand. “A sigil of the clan.”

Feathers could detect lies with enough information to work with, and Avalis wouldn’t have come here without that information. I had to lead him down the wrong conclusions.

“A weapon would have been more valuable to deliver. What could a cosmetic keepsake possibly do for you in this situation?”

I tossed the neckpiece into my shield hand, holding it tight. I took steady steps back to Wrath, drawing Atius’s machine blade with my main hand, pointing directly at him. He allowed it.

“Think I’ll sell it for a ration bar, killing Feathers really drives up a hunger you know?”

Avalis watched intently as I took a position between him and Wrath. I could tell from his gaze that whatever mechanical version of instinct he had, it was screaming there had to be a more important reason why the captain’s dying action had been to throw that instead of anything I could ‘use.’

What Avalis couldn’t have known yet is that the captain had thrown a weapon at me.

The greatest weapon he had.

Deep in the necklace, a soul fractal remained lit within, smoldering with fury.

Next Chapter - Combined arms

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