12 Miles Below

Descending down the last flight of stairs was a somber affair for the four of us left. The other two had split ways, passing across the catwalk to sneak through another tower with a better overall height. I could see their progress on the side of my HUD, still connected through comms. The list showed seven names on my side, six green and one gray. Sagrius wasn’t found anywhere yet, and we couldn’t exactly broadcast a full search ping, not while trying to sneak around. Wherever he'd fallen, he was out of range for now.

As far as the armor could sense, this last staircase was correctly designed. Sturdy enough to hold our weight, without any dead ends. The glass wall gave us a full view of where the mite forge had fallen. And more details of the skyscraper makeshift bridge. It had ripped through the glass and structure of the neighbor, cleaving through the whole thing - until the rooftop struck against a black obsidian cube of some kind that had been wedged into the other tower, like a heart of some kind. Whatever the massive cube was made of, it was clearly more sturdy than the tower falling into it. Golden lines glowed dimly, visible even at this distance.

The weird mite made cube was tilted, one of the corners exposed, while the rest of the flat plane angled down. The tower resting on top had come to an equilibrium of some kind, hiding the other endpoint under it.

Know what that is? I prodded Wrath, pointing. Whatever it was, it didn’t fit the rest of the scenery. Neither the colors of the skyscraper interiors, nor some kind of seed for the rest of the vines growing like trunks around the zone. It looked more cut off from everything, as if here only by chance.

A mite containment cube. Wrath answered. Inside would be waste material or hazards that the mites could not destroy but had to seal away instead.

What’s it doing here?

I suspect the mites built around it, and as the skyscraper rose up, it carried the cube up with it.

… is there any kind of loot we could get inside?

She scoffed. Spent chemicals that will only decay long after the sun dies. Gravity singularities that cannot be dispelled, only contained until they run their course. Old battlefields so filled with contamination that the entire land was sealed away instead of cleared.

If she could roll her eyes, I think she would have. There isn’t even a doorway included in those, you dumb loot-crazed human. And they are made of the same material mite blast doors are, impervious.

Have you actually seen what’s inside of those things then?

… No. Wrath admitted, no doubt pouting inside her fractal. I am only basing my information on what is generally known among machines.

Far as I’ve seen, machines don’t know everything.

She stayed quiet at that, now genuinely pondering if those cubes were worth digging into someday. We might agitate the mites in opening one of those seals. Whatever colony came through here, they didn’t break down the cube, only built around it. If mites don’t destroy something in their path, it must be significant enough.

She did have a point about that. I’m always happy to piss off machines, but mites seemed like playground adults watching over from a distance. An authority level above the kids running around the hangar fighting it out. But not quite allowed to walk into the game unless someone broke the rules and piled snow down someone’s tunic.

Our group continued the descent down the flight of stairs, seeking to reach the bridge point. The path went fully across the entire side of the tower, turning down to repeat the process the other way again and again. The wall of pure windows that never seemed to end made me a little nervous. While it gave our group a full view of the zone and our target, it also felt like everyone else outside could see inside.

“Approaching the same level as the bridge soon.” One of the knights at our front called out. “We should rot-”

The building shook. The massive glass window before us instantly turned into a spiderweb of cracks as something rattled the tower from the base.

And then the staircase started to collapse on itself. No, not the staircase. It was the entire tower that was falling down, taking the staircase down with it. And us for the ride.

Oh, he’d set the towers to collapse. Can’t fault the efficiency there.

“Brace!” Kidra called out, hand grabbing a railing.

“No, we’ve gotta delta out!” I shot back. Right now, everything looked intact, but the moment the skyscraper hit the ground or another tower, the whole thing would fold up and crush everything inside. Including us. I wasn’t sure armor could survive weight like that.

Our team turned, only to have the wall behind break. Not from the collapsing buildings but from a far more familiar enemy. A dozen white armored hands cut through, howls coming out in earnest as they ripped apart chunks of cracked concrete. Screamers.

And if they were here, that meant Avalis knew where we were. Gods damn it, he spotted us sneaking in. Probably had these very minions start setting explosives around the tower base.

Father shouted over the comms moment later, “Keith, block!”

A pulse of occult occurred to my right and I got a glimpse of what came with it. Right through the wall, at full speed, the Feather himself leaped through, an intangible ghost.

Kidra screamed out my name, trying to leap up to my level, only to be blocked by two machines lunging for her. By the time she’d dealt with the fodder, it was too late for me.

He materialized a moment later, soaring across the railings of the staircase, straight for my head. A longsword lit up in his hand, a single precise swing, amplified by whatever running jump he’d taken. I saw where it would connect - Wrath’s throat.

I cursed, bringing my armguard up and behind my neck. Father’s early warning and my own reaction speed was just enough to keep her safe from Avalis.

Avalis changed his plans quickly, turning immaterial again, soaring straight through me like a specter. The moment he passed by, it felt… odd. For a second the concept of his very soul seemed to connect to mine as he faded through. The fractal that housed his soul was as immaterial as he was, but the soul itself went untouched by the occult spell.

And in the same way I could sense him, he could do the same for me. There was a sense of shock as he passed through. Before I could find out what had caught him by surprise, he was already soaring out the other way, occult billowing behind the ghost.

He turned material the instant he’d cleared my armor, his free hand reaching out, directly for my chestplate.

Got a moment to utter a surprised half-abandoned word before I was yanked off my feet and dragged straight through the window alongside him.

We tumbled through the air. Avalis used his hold on my chest as leverage, pulling me closer, other hand swinging that blade again for Wrath’s head, utterly single minded in his goals.

She squeaked out across the soul connection, violet eye staring at the approaching blade diving straight for where her throat would be.

I sent a vicious kick against his stomach, forcing us to tumble further. His blade swiped above my head, missing Wrath. Occult pulsed between us, and three half-formed spectral arms lept from my armor, each swinging my armguard directly at him.

Avalis snarled, pushing off with his free hand, turning immaterial as my own wraiths struck through an instant later.

That’s about all we got midair before we reached the broken ground of the skyscraper bridge. He landed with all the grace of a Feather, rolling, hand flipping him up as he cartwheeled back on his feet. I crashed like a sack of bricks through one of the unbroken windows, shattering it and slamming into the floor-turned-wall chestfirst, the edge right under my armpits. Gravity tried to drag me right down the hole I’d caused, but reflex let me grab onto the ground before I slipped through. Groggily, I got a good view around me for once. The skyscraper behind me was slowly sinking down, no cloud of dust yet from the base. The rest of the skyscrapers around remained stoically towering over us, so Avalis must have had limited explosives to work with.

Wrath and Father both screamed out warnings, and I looked up just in time. That Feather was already sprinting my way, chain whip lit up bright blue and scything in an arc from my right, directly for my exposed head, a dark semi-circle of Death ending at my throat and wrapping around.

“Nope.” I said and let go of my hold, slipping straight down into the skyscraper ruins. The chain swept right above my helmet, an occult edge missing me by a few inches for a second time within the last minute. Not a great omen.

I fell through the ruins. It was slower than natural, the entire area still being under a lightened gravity, but a fall was a fall. The interior floor here looked the same as the ones we’d been trawling through earlier, only turned completely perpendicular. Floor became the wall I was sliding down against. Dozens of cubical walls had held together during the crash, piled up with chairs and other office supplies that hadn’t been bolted down.

A four hundred pound armor slamming through was a little too much for the old rotting things, even with the softened gravity. Most gave way and I crashed into them until I hit something more sturdy, my boot finding solid ground.

“Close one, deary. Are you all right?” Cathida asked.

“Gonna be one of those days.” I muttered, watching as the dust and debris of my slide started to settle around me, bits of brick and metal clanging off my armor as they hit helmet and shoulderpads, almost as if admonishing me for having ripped a hole this far down. Journey’s HUD showed video footage of the rest, Kidra and other knights still fighting off the machine ambush in the doomed skyscraper.

They were already several levels under us, still rapidly falling down, trapped in the breaking building. That was the last I saw of them, the signals growing pixilated before turning black. The other two were showing clear footage, sprinting through floors and stairways of another tower, climbing up with every bit of speed they could muster. Any Screamers or machines they ran into very quickly ceased to move, the two knights working in tandem to cut their way clear.

Far above, in the light, I heard footsteps walking over crushed glass.

Avalis strode into sight, looking down the hole I’d fallen through. “Soul fractals." He hissed. "I should have guessed.”

“No clue what you’re talking about, buddy. Nothing here but the voices in my head. And dust, rocks. Maybe a few office plants.”

“Please. I sensed your soul as I passed through your body earlier. I had thought you were using scraps, the limited fractals your current day Warlocks are known for. It seems I underestimated your knowledge base.”

I tapped my helmet a few times. “Sorry, not sure I understand. Not fluent in asshole. Can you repeat that slowly?”

“Where did you recover soul fractals? Relinquished has always been diligent in eradicating it anytime one of your kind unearth some variation.”

Green pings came from Kidra and the other two knights. “Keith! We escaped on one of the catwalks. We’ll try to reach you as fast as we can climb. Stay alive, we’ll be back up there soon!”

“I think… by the time you make it up here, I’ll either have won or died.” I said, honest for once. “Avalis doesn’t strike me as the type that likes to fight more than one person at a time.”

He clearly heard me, given the look on his face. Disdain, anger, annoyance. “You’re correct, Winterscar. If you think I’ll let you live long enough for your escorts to arrive, you are delusional.”

I lifted a hand up, and gave him my best finger. “Talking big there. How about you come down here and find out if you can?”

Avalis scoffed, rolling his eyes, then pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, as if getting ready for hard work. “Let it be known I offered you a chance for clemency once, and attempted my best to avoid bloodshed.”

He took a step forward and fell straight down for my head.

I, of course, took the only appropriate heroic action and bolted off deeper into the structure like a pipe weasel in its natural habitat.

Next chapter - The long way down

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