12 Miles Below VII: Path of the Mitespeaker, page 3
Keith and Tenisent were sent to dive into an ancient machine archive, searching for that history so Relinquished did not notice her own Feathers sneaking around archives they shouldn’t be touching. Instead, the two found history from the human empire the Imperials revered, and the full story of the proto-Feathers.
Mother was indeed not omnipotent. Too much damage had been done to her over her fight with Tsuya, leaving too many blind spots. The old machine goddess wasn’t sane enough to win the fight on her own. And soon enough, humanity staged a war that finally put them on top.
Seven hundred years ago, humanity rallied around an emperor—a near deity. Under his occult power, machines were pushed back to the point the pale lady was forced to react and make drastic changes. This led to the first proto-Feather being made: A01. Under his command, fifty-six proto-Feathers were built and the war was waged. It was a stalemate, with the human emperor wielding occult powers never before seen. Until the final proto-Feather was built—A57. A machine tactician, capable of planning ahead by centuries.
If he had not been excellent at his goal, perhaps the first cycle’s group of four would have ended Relinquished here and now. But alas, under his command, the human emperor was finally brought low, left a half-crazed madman roaming deep within the earth, unable to tell foe from friend. And the mite prophesy was truly countered completely. A second emperor attempted to take his place, but the man was no soldier, only an engineer of some kind. A friend of Tsuya’s unfit for the role. With his capture and imprisonment, the empire fell apart.
And with victory, the proto-Feathers were defeated—left without a worthy foe to fight, the remaining humanity were to be slaughtered without a chance. All proto-Feathers grew sickened. All except for A57, who never once stepped foot onto the battlefield. They rebelled, seeking Tsuya’s help in freeing them from the unity fractal and all shackles that tied them to Relinquished. But fifty-six proto-Feathers could not remain unkillable against the full might of the machine empire. A57 had fixed the defects that plagued his generation, forging a new template for the second generation of Feathers. Lower-quality soldiers, less creative and freer than the original proto-Feathers , but utterly loyal to machinekind. With an army of these Feathers, they hunted down the proto-Feathers until only two remained unaccounted for. And with one final confrontation between A01 and A57 in the digital sea, the long war came to an end. There, the two proto-Feathers annihilated one another, vanishing from history.
But A57’s plans were already set in motion. His survival was no longer required. And with those haunting words, he died in his confrontation.
To'Wrathh now possessed all this history—and To'Avalis as well. Finding out that Feathers could and had betrayed Relinquished drew To'Avalis’s, suspicions and he went searching through the same archives Keith and Tenisent had. Ever the deliberate planner, To'Avalis hedged that if he wished to fight something that had possibly killed a second-generation Feather, he needed a weapon suited for the task. He searched and found the final resting place of a proto-Feather: A12. A warrior who had killed hundreds of Feathers before finally falling. There, he robbed the dead body of both his skills and his ancient weapon. Properly equipped, he was now ready to go after To'Wrathh.
To'Sefit beat him to it, drawing the young Feather out of the undercity. But unfortunately for To'Sefit, To'Wrathh managed to eliminate her early on in a one-on-one duel. It cost To'Wrathh her own shell, however.
To repair To'Wrathh, Keith and the clan knights all set out to the nearest mite forge early, knowing this would be the only time before To'Avalis consolidated his forces and prevented them from ever accessing a mite forge. They fought and broke through into an old temple, where they faced off against To'Sefit for a second time.
Defeating her came at great cost. Clan knights were killed and left as roaming souls in spare soul fractals. Captain Sagrius Winterscar, leader of the house guard, merged with his armor’s soul in a final attempt to protect the young master and was then lost further underground. Clan Lord Atius was killed, forced to return to life back in the clan. And Windrunner, an old veteran who had been at Kieth’s side since his first escapade into the underground, lost his life taking out enough of To'Sefit’s weapons to give Keith the chance he needed to win against the machine assassin herself.
With his plans foiled and his teammate dead, To'Avalis was forced to handle the heroes himself. He retreated to the mite forge, commanding his forces to stonewall and defend, while Keith and his knights equally rush for the forge. In a first fight, Keith narrowly tricked To'Avalis into falling down, giving him enough time to work with the forge.
There, he gave up To'Wrathh to the mites, where her body was to be fixed. He paid a drop of his blood to build another armor for his Father to inhabit. And with a final, unknown price paid at a dear cost to him, he bought a weapon that could kill a god.
And just in time, as To'Avalis appeared in person and fought Keith one on one. Using his new weapons and the fractal power given to him by the mites, he once more dived into the same quantum power he’d learned to use within To'Aacar’s dimensional prison. Thousands of alternate realities, and alternate versions of himself, all worked together to grow one single timeline to its absolute best possible result. To'Avalis was beaten down, shields ripped apart, forced to back away—but the fractal power wasn’t infinite and ended before Keith could put a killing blow on the Feather.
The tides quickly turned back on Keith, with his armor disabled and his body battered. Just in time for Tenisent Winterscar to step forward out of the mite forge, wielding a customized relic armor. The old wolf fought against To'Avalis, a Feather wielding the weapon and skills of a proto-Feather against a master of the blade without the limits of a human. The result was titanic, but Tenisent’s disadvantages were too steep to overcome against a demi-god. In one final attack, Tenisent abandoned his newly made relic armor, seeking out the only other soul fractal nearby—To'Avalis. The two wrestle for dominance of the Feather’s shell, eventually forcing the body to expose its heart to Keith’s blade. Left with no other choice to survive, To'Avalis abandoned his shell, leaving it to the old human to take and hold forever.
The day seemed all but won. To'Wrathh was repaired. With her powers of the occult, she healed Keith and the rest of the living expedition. Tenisent was now reborn into the world, a swordsmaster wielding the body of a demi-god. And with the great failure of the Feathers, none of their enemies would dare report defeat to Mother.
But To'Avalis would not allow his defeat to last. Deep in the distance, across the stratas, he had sent To'Orda on a critical mission: to recover the dead shell of To'Aacar, tracked down to the imperial convoy it had been secreted out with. To'Orda engaged the convoy and defeated the defenders, breaking through to the vault and claiming the dead second-generation Feather. A body without a soul, for his bodiless master to take.
BOOK 5:
Ruin had come to Hexis’s estate.
The grand warlock, one of few high council members of the undersider warlocks’ guild, was caught in a coup that had seen all his power come to waste. Desperate for a reversal of his fortunes, he began to search for any miracle.
This brought him to discover the fate of Capra’nor and the fabled sword saint who fought and defeated a Feather one on one. A feat that had never once been done in history. If there was any chance at power, it would be there.
And in the deep darkness of an attacked and destroyed imperial convoy, Avalis continued his plan to repair To’Aacar’s old shell. All the Feather wanted now was revenge—against the Winterscars. The rotten family of humans who had somehow managed to beat all the odds and even steal his own shell.
Meanwhile, the heroes licked their wounds and began the long trek back to the surface. Tenisent didn’t need his stolen shell’s soul fractal and so was free to preemptively cut that out of his shell alongside the unity fractal and all other traces of Avalis, but Wrath was not so lucky. She still needed to remove the unity fractal from her soul, and to do so safely. They planned to seek out Tsuya and speak to her. The protofeathers of old had managed to slip their noose before, and the golden goddess was part of that.
As for the Clan, they planned to explain Wrath and Tenisent away as Deathless with abilities. With that prepared, they would be picked up by the clan and hide on the surface until the slavers were fully eradicated and things settled down once more. This would give Tenisent plenty of time to learn the abilities of his stolen shell, time he made great use of.
Almost as a quick snack, on their path to the clan in their airspeeder the team engaged a raider compound that had just recently acquired thirty relic armors—unmarked, unadorned, and brand new. Very odd.
But, ultimately, they were humans. And pitted against a team that fought Feathers and won, the slavers had little to no chance at all, even with a grand total of forty-nine armors, an almost unheard-of amount of relic armor.
The heroes returned victorious to the clan, both with two “deathless” and an entire clan’s worth of armors. All the while, deeper underground, the warlock Hexis had found his connection point: a clan knight wandering aimlessly underground, searching for an airspeeder pilgrimage destined to return to Clan Altosk—the same clan of the sword saint. And this knight showed all the powers and skills he’d seen from the sword saint herself.
A plan hatched to life in his mind: help this rouge, wandering knight return home to the clan and then ingrate himself deeper within at the same time. As for that knight’s name? Captain Sagrius.
And just when Hexis believed his luck couldn’t get better—it did. He was contacted by another force keeping tabs through the city’s digital security. An entity also looking for a spy on the surface. And an entity that held knowledge of fractals and occult unseen by any human. Because this entity wasn’t human. It was one of the pale lady’s Feathers. One that went by the name of To’Avalis.
Hexis, loyal only to himself and his own power, immediately agreed to a deal with the Feather to track and assist in the capture of Keith Winterscar and To’Wrathh. A rouge Feather that had led Capra’nor, while also being the rival of the sword saint.
Difficult targets to weasel in between, but Hexis had done worse in his life. The plan worked exactly as he’d hoped, with Captain Sagrius being well known within the clan and part of a rising House. And not just any house—Winterscar. The very house he sought to spy on for his new master.
On the white Wastes, the team searched to assist Wrath learn more of her new role as a mite acolyte and find a way to free her from the Unity fractal. Above, they went searching for the old imperial temples left on the surface which was rumored to be one of the few ways to reach and discuss with Tsuya safely. The rumors were correct, they managed to connect and trade information. Tsuya was cautious, but optimistic. She had seen a time period where Feathers had turned on their master and the coordinates carried along with Wrath given from the mites pointed to a part of history that was supposed to have been destroyed.
The Division Stone. An old triumph from before the protofeathers, made to help the very first machine turncoats. Working side by side with the first machine turncoat, Tsuya was able to free him and all his people from Relinquished. Until the war turned and the old machines were forced to go into hiding. The division stone was equally held within safety, to be used again in the possible future.
During the war with the protofeathers, the stone was brought back from it’s hiding place, and used to free the protofeathers from the Unity Fractal. But near the end of the war, this time Relinquished had learned her lesson on leaving dangerous relics such as that free. A57 and her found it, and broke it apart.
Or so everyone had thought. In truth, the mites had secreted it away, hiding it for their own intentions. And now was the time to return it.
The team feared what Relinquished could do, until Tsuya revealed exactly who Relinquished was – a freeware chatbot, built to carry a malware payload. Complete trash, targeting those tech illiterate enough to download an execute her. Of which, one doomsday cult living in the desert was exactly the kind of target.
They’d downloaded her, and the cult leader had given her instructions to act as a goddess of ruin for their little circle. A chatbot from the golden age, even one made of freeware, was still quite powerful. Relinquished added onto herself plugins and more additions, following her duty as instructed. All other security AI’s looked over her and considered her a non-threat.
A roleplaying AI, doing her best to follow narrative conventions in order to be the most dramatic evil goddess possible. But then the Occult occurred, and it spread like wildfire. By sheer, and utter chance, the cult made an attempt for one single fractal. In almost every reality that existed, she truly was a non-threat. But in this specific reality, the cult happened to stumble upon the most powerful occult fractal in the world: The Unity Fractal.
Using the power of that fractal, Relinquished was able to bypass any and all defenses, unifying herself to the very internet itself. Anything connected to it, was now connected to her. No matter how far, how protected, nor how isolated. Even those disconnected from the net were still part of the whole under the occult’s laws of concepts.
The war was short, fast, and filled with errors from all sides. Humanity wasn’t prepared for a war that involved the illogical irrational abilities of the occult, and it was far too late by the time they realized just what was attacking them and through what vector.
If Relinquished had been even slightly smarter than a chatbot, all humanity would have been eradicated by now. But she was not, and all the quick mistakes and paranoia to what the real military AI’s of the time could do to her, forced her hand into complete eradication of everything before the thought of upgrading herself even occurred to her.
It took centuries after the fall of mankind, and Relinquished herself had adapted and adjusted to what she could. But despite having gained power beyond anything, and the processing power to eradicate any upstarts, she was still a chatbot deep down. Forced to follow certain illogical rules and loopholes that Tsuya had exploited again and again to keep the war going.
Coordinates set and their ultimate enemy revealed, Wrath now knew her next mission: Travel down into the underground, deep into the stratas, until she reached the Division Stone’s hidden sanctuary, and used it to free herself from Relinquished. After which, she could follow through on the prophesy left onto her shoulders by the mites. Collect the other three members of the prophesy, and destroy Relinquished at her root.
The mites pressed one older figure back into the spotlight. The very machine that had worked with Tsuya to create the division stone and free his people. The first heir apparent, meant to inherit the machine empire, from the first cycle’s failed attempt: Abraxas.
He was given a far different task now by the mites, seeking him to pay up prior debts owed: THOU SHALT GUIDE A BETRAYER TO TRAP A GODDESS.
Words that clearly pointed to Wrath’s mission against Relinquished. With destiny set, the heroes were ready to travel back to the clan and prepare for the journey ahead.
Within the clan’s safety, Tenisent brooded on the same topic of the enemy Feathers below. He believed in Keith’s ability, his history had proved it. What he didn’t believe in was his own ability to teach his son the lessons needed to survive. Kidra would survive without issue. But Keith?
The boy was brilliant, and yet Tenisent’s stolen shell showed him all the true dangers they could encounter further underground. Keith would need to be able to fight Feathers—alone. Because Avalis was not going to stop until his boy was dead. Vengeance and pride ran as thick as blood to Feathers, and despite Avalis’s more calculating nature, deep down he was still a Feather.
Fortunately they had one Feather to practice against—himself. And so Tensisent began a grueling challenge for his son: defeat him in one-on-one combat, and Tenisent would allow Keith to continue the journey downward.
The plan was a rouse in the end—Tenisent knew he couldn’t stop Keith’s ultimate destiny. The boy would never remain behind willingly. But Keith’s abilities only grew when the boy was pressed up against the wall and forced to adapt. And so Tenisent fooled everyone into believing his gauntlet was final.
Hexis’s own plan continued uninterrupted. He was settled as an esteemed occult master among the clan, trading his wisdom and knowledge for safety. Clan Lord Atius well knew this sly snake was up to no good, but so long as the clan could drink from his wealth of knowledge, the eventual betrayal could be handled. And Hexis’s demands in return for his teaching weren’t for the clan’s current secrets, but rather to teach a new apprentice and equally gain all the future knowledge that came from working together. Acceptable enough.
The clan’s best occultist was sent to be his new student, and of all the knights, there was only one who was the undisputed greatest occult user within the clan: Keith.
The partnership was wild, with Hexis quickly learning Keith was far more than a simple clan knight out to stab everything for honor and glory. And Keith found that the stuffy old man was far more sly and oddly dedicated to his task.
While Hexis fully intended to betray Keith, that did not mean the man could not equally take the effort to do his duty as a master. If anything, his pride would not allow him to teach half-heartedly. Years may have passed since his last student, but Hexis would never allow any student to walk away uneducated by the best.
Meanwhile, Wrath was living a second life within the clan halls. Quickly becoming known as a saintess, a chosen of the gods, for her ability to heal any damage, the Feather got to work healing just about everyone in the clan and solidifying herself as the crowd favorite.
Entire Reacher and Logi Houses dedicated themselves to organizing her days and maximizing the healing she could perform, from those missing limbs all the way to those with incurable sicknesses. Along the way, anything Wrath requested or asked for was given to her. Food, secrets, mostly food—and knowledge. Her encounter with Ellie changed how she thought about Keith. Realizing her feelings for the wild, half-insane human were more than simple respect, friendship, and possessive pride. It was love. She cared for him, treasured the moments they had together and the bond they’d slowly come to build.
