12 Miles Below

We walked reverently up to the fallen relic knight. My limp couldn’t stop me from getting a closer look. The armor had gold ornaments and designs that mirrored a stylized sun. I recognized that sigil. “An Imperial crusader.” I whispered out, Father confirming it quietly behind me.

There wasn’t an actual empire of course. Imperials were a religion that claimed some empire had existed once, and that they were the proud remnants of that empire. These must have been pilgrims, trying to reach the surface to offer alms to their sun goddess. They must have been separated from the usual convoys.

I knelt before the dead crusader. The skull bowed slightly down, it’s final transient prayer now fixed eternally. I wasn’t worthy of wielding relic armor and doubly condemned by scavenging from a gods-blessed crusader’s corpse. Even we scavengers had some limits we wouldn’t cross. Taking anything from imperial pilgrims felt like sacrilege. But relic armor was on a different level. And the crusader hadn't been poor either - an occult longblade leaned at the side, along with what looked to be the hilt of a knife by the boot.

Something had led us to this armor for a reason. Survival trumped all.

The skull clattered onto the ground when I reached out to touch the armor. A heavy layer of dust was disturbed by the events, floating into the air and lit up by our headlights.

Quiet prayers asking forgiveness fell from my mouth in stutters as I carefully removed the plates one at a time. Piece by piece I extracted the ancient gear while Father remained on the lookout.

“Father,” I asked something in the back of my mind. “Is the armor... sentient? More than just a program?”

I heard the metal clinking of his armor as he shrugged behind me.

“They all have the same basic AI, so in a manner of speaking they are.”

“It’s limited, you won’t find them to be good conversational partners. Winterscar’s said nothing more than status reports for as long as I’ve known the armor. It was built to assist the user and for no other purpose.”

“What, it spent years without talking to you unless you talked to it?”

“They don’t form bonds with people. My armor will not care about where I’ve gone once Kidra inherits it. I will only be another name on a long text file.”

I guess I’d find out soon enough myself. There was a feeling in my gut that convinced me that this armor had been the one behind the yellow light, searching for a new wielder. I took out a power cell and jettisoned the long dead one still held by the base of its belt.

This was the critical part.

Relic armor was said to be indestructible and could endure any test of time. So long as the spirit remained cohesive enough, the armor would always repair itself.

But the armor had remained without power for centuries here. With its spirit dormant. Damage could have accumulated over time and broken down the delicate soul while it was helpless to regenerate. I prayed in my mind and slotted the power cell with a click. If destiny saw me in this armor, then it would light up.

Nothing happened, but I could see the power cell draining out into the systems. I held my breath.

It awakened. Lights flicker into life on the inside, the armor alive again despite its long sleep in this tomb.

Relief hammered through me, almost making me whoop in joy - the armor was still functional!

Of course it would be, in hindsight. People have been finding relic armor for generations now, usually abandoned, and each time they worked.

I stripped off my environmental suit as quickly as I could, wincing as the glued parts peeled off my skin. The cold assaulted me immediately of course, but my movements were efficient and it couldn’t break the excitement burning inside me. There were still some parts that the glue were stopping me. I had a high tech solution to that problem however: “Mind if I use your knife, Father? I need to cut my way out.”

He nodded and handed it off, hilt first with the usual spin. He hadn’t said a word yet, still processing the ramifications of this moment, his arm moving on auto-pilot.

There was no point in being delicate with the suit. It was broken, cut in places already, and the heating system had long since been stripped off. There was no use for any part of this. The dead crusader’s relic armor would be my new home from here on out.

In moments, the suit lay in cut strips and my skin was exposed into the cold air.

I donned the armor, plate by plate, starting with the powered up chest. Each piece that connected with the chest hummed quietly with power as I slowly brought the armor back to full working condition.

It was slightly taller than I was, with a more spacious chest plate. Motes of dust streamed off the powered plates, warping and consuming sections to expand others. I saw it stream down to the fragments of my old environmental suit, disintegrating parts of that as well. Using the extra fuel to assist in reforming into a more form fitting version.

That screamed intelligence to me. Or at least aware enough to know I had no more use for the ruined environmental suit and that it had no need to ask.

With each armor piece, the cold vanished, unable to penetrate past the ancient metal. It felt odd, like a light gust blowing over my skin, under the armor. I could feel the hairs on my arms tingle for a moment before settling back down to normal. Felt oddly refreshed too, like the sweat and grime that’d been accumulating were suddenly gone the moment the plate fixed itself over me.

The first parts to fully connect were the gauntlets and arms. I moved them around with dexterity, watching as the plates clinked against one another, moving with both grace and power.

They could rip things apart with the hidden strength inside and yet they seemed so precise. My hands and arm felt light as a feather, almost as if the armor itself was weightless. There wasn’t any empty space, some sort of cushion inflating into the armor’s sides and holding it snug against my skin.

From the moment I’d hooked enough of the leg pieces I could tell that moving around was a completely different experience. Even my calf wound stopped holding me back.

Mostly armored now, I reached down and plucked the occult longsword, staring at it. A simple double sided blade, with an ornate hilt. A few experimental swings in the air reinforced the feeling that something was different in how this armor moved compared to my environmental suit.

I realized why after a few more test swings.

The armor was moving my legs and arms for me. It followed my actions, like a second set of muscles. Power coursed through and it made sense now how relic wielders could move so swiftly. Or rip apart metal with their hands: They weren’t the ones moving the armor - the armor moved them.

I felt like I had hundreds of questions, but most I could figure out on my own. There was a single one that I couldn't quite guess at.

“How does…" I asked a little timidly, "How does the waste work?” There hadn’t been a waste removal system like the environmental suits had, as far as I’d seen.

Father tilted his head slightly. “Out of everything you could ask, this is what you wish to know first? Scholars have rotted your brain, boy. The armor’s spirit consumes organic matter. Add it together.”

“Ah. So that means…”

“If you have to go, you go. It will keep you clean. Sweat, blood and even tears are consumed by the armor.”

I nodded and turned back to the last bit of armor left to don. The ornate faceless visor started back, held in my new armored gauntlets. Waiting for me to equip it. I let the hilt of the sword go, leaving the occult weapon on the side of the rock it had spent centuries on. Both hands free now, I brought up the relic armor helmet.

I’d never thought I’d wear one of these in my entire life. And now, there will be a relic armor who’s legacy in the clan would start with me.

House Winterscar was a knight retainer caste, but I'd never really identified with that title. Frankly, if I could find a way to disown the Winterscar name, I would have done so a long time ago. Instead, I felt like I'd be the first engineer to don one of these armored suits.

The helmet rose up and settled down snuggly over my head. The interior was dark at first, but turned fully transparent not even a second after, letting me see a view of everything around. As if no helmet existed at all. My vision was filled with orange lines and text that the armor displayed another half second after, layering the world in details. This must be the heads up display.

There was a pressurized hiss as the chest neck piece connected with the helmet, and the last of the cold was chased out. The suit was sealed, supplying me with air through some other means. Something puffy inflated and I felt padding lock around my face and cheeks, same as it had been everywhere else on my body. The helmet was now completely snug, no gap of air anywhere except for my face. That tingle of air swept past my cheeks and nose, ridding me of the grime on my skin. I saw a haze of grey on the sides of my vision as the sub-armor wind passed by. Thinking it through, that must be the armor’s spirit, keeping me clean.

“New user detected. Identify.” An ethereal voice sounded in my ears.

This… this must be the armor.

Despite being forewarned, the voice still caught me by surprise. It sounded so… eloquent.

“I am Keith Winterscar, uh, pleased to meet you?” I responded back into my helmet, hoping I was doing this right.

“Registering new user: Winterscar, Keith. Combat suit integrity nominal.”

Looks like I’d done the right steps so far. “What’s your name, armor?”

“Last registered designation: Journey.”

A very imperial name. They always named things after goals or titles. Victory, divinity, endurance, sanctity - etcetera etcetera. Grand sounding labels like that. In comparison, we Exodites had a simpler tradition on naming. Thankfully I didn’t need to rename this armor after my family house name, since Father’s armor was the prime relic armor.

All other armors brought in after into the house, well that was up to the new owner’s decision. Not that I planned to rename it - I certainly wasn’t going to bring that bad luck on myself. Nope, its last owner had been an imperial crusader. I certainly wasn’t going to dishonor the previous owner’s choice in name. Pilfering from an imperial already lent to an uneasy feeling.

“All right, Journey it is. Please keep me safe in these dangerous times.”

“Acknowledged.” The suit answered back emotionlessly.

Even with its indifferent answers, there was still a thrill in knowing this suit of armor was now mine - and I was talking to it. My old environmental suit’s backpack easily fit over my shoulders and I was awed at how light it felt now. Or its lack of weight.

“Don’t get overconfident.” Father said, his voice already synced into my helmet’s speaker. “New knights always feel they can defeat the world. I’ve never seen any of them be right.”

My survival chances had shot up through the roof, but I could still find myself buried in the snow if I wasn’t cautious. I nodded at him, and he continued.

“Knights need to go through extensive training to make use of an armor’s full capabilities. Weeks, or months if need be.” He said. “We don’t have that time to spare. I’ll teach you the basics and that will have to do for now.”

“What’s the first step?”

“The user interface. You can select things by looking at them and blinking twice. Or just call up the name with your voice.”

I responded affirmatively, and then tried it out. The heads up display was filled with different bits of information. One of them caught my eye. The word ‘Biometrics’ floating off to the far left. Looking directly at it, I blinked twice.

A full three dimensional hologram of my body appeared projected onto the helmet, it rotated around, highlighting in red my wounded calf. Statistics and details appeared on the side when I glanced at each, showing exactly what was wrong.

Apparently that calf wound was going to be a problem unless I got treatment for it, according to the warnings the armor was shoving into my face. It wasn’t fatal, but it could be crippling if not properly cared for.

Once I looked away and blinked, the page was closed automatically. I started exploring the other options from the interface, making a shallow check of all the possible items I could work with.

There were other stats, including historical data. And a realization that the last wearer had been a woman named Cathida, not a man like I’d originally thought. Given the pose they had all died in, it seemed like they hadn’t died in a fight, but rather lack of resources or exposure. Death must have been anticipated. A few logs also remained of her final days from what the armor showed, and as much as I wanted to dive into the history behind this relic armor and find out what they were doing here, I was on a time limit.

Those logs weren’t going anywhere, but the rescue party certainly was.

The helmet color-corrected everything I looked at in the cavern, making it easier to identify items or see items in the distance. Those orange lines and highlights pointed out things I had missed, such as equipment the other two skeleton pilgrims had, outlined on the bodies. One of which was marked as ‘Priority one’

Well, that was ominous.

“Has the armor told you it’s name?” Father asked, breaking my focus.

“The relic armor’s name is Journey.”

“A good name for an old crusader’s armor. We’ll run a set of exercises to get you up to speed and then we need to continue forward. I would celebrate for a day straight, were these different times.”

But I hadn’t been listening. Instead my gaze was fixed on what I’d just seen a moment ago. Journey had synced with Father’s armor, Winterscar.

And the family armor had sent back a biometric report of Father’s current status. His full skeleton, bones and all, were outlined and superimposed over his biometrics. I saw all the fractures, the broken mismatched seams. And more importantly, what wasn't there.

His arm hadn’t been broken.

It was completely missing.

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