12 Miles Below

Every single Winterscar To’Wrathh had met in her life, she’d underestimated. And every single time it had cost her. Once this was all over, the Feather swore she would hardwire an alarm. Have it blare in her system anytime she even so much as heard their name. Remind her not to let any of them slip under her skin.

“Do you always run in terror like this?” Kidra taunted from the ground. “The clan lord made it seem like your kind were opponents from myth. What a disappointment.”

Down To’Wrathh dove, weapons out, snarling, all previous thoughts forgotten.

Her dual long swords collided against Kidra’s own blades, the ancient relic armor straining against the full might of a feather. Creaking backwards, just an inch, before To’Wrathh aborted, leaping backwards, back onto solid ground.

The moment she landed, Kidra was already lunging out for a counter-strike of her own, knives flashing out in a whirlwind of motion. To’Wrathh crouched, then rocketed forward herself, meeting the charge headfirst. They wove a mural of pale blue sparks in the air as their blades collided again and again, fractions of seconds in between, moving faster and faster.

In her stolen memories, Tenisent had never lost to his daughter. Not even once. And he had nowhere near the speed To'Wrathh could tap into. And this time To’Wrathh was sure she had access to the well. Instinct and all. And yet, the girl was matching both her speed and skill.

How has the girl improved so much in the past few weeks? Impossible.

Kidra seemed to almost sense her attacks, as if smelling a scent in the air, like a dog chasing after hiding prey. Even Tenisent’s methodical and precise style of combat wasn’t enough against someone who simply knew what was coming and where all the traps lay.

It was too uncanny.

To’Wrathh shunted off a thread and dedicated it to hunt down answers as she kept pace. Combat subroutines confirmed it in moments, returning raw data that made little sense. From the moment To’Wrathh planned her attack or counter, the girl seemed to predict it with a hundred percent accuracy. No deviation. On average, between one hundred twenty milliseconds to one hundred ninety, already executing the counter move before To’Wrathh had even begun any physical motions, let alone before a possible physical tell. Kidra was in her head somehow.

Something was wrong. Humans were never this consistently accurate when guessing.

The girl was slowly pushing To’Wrathh back. Four minutes into the frantic fight, a pair of knives expertly weaved past her guard, striking her fingers and continuing across her arms, and finally breaking down her shields.

A review over the combat logs showed no errors in To’Wrathh’s choice of action. Every move had been optimal. Despite that, the girl was now only a single well-placed slice away from victory. And the Feather was nowhere near close to breaking the human’s shields. At this rate, her subroutines predicted total defeat within the next thirty three seconds, plus or minus seven seconds.

To’Wrathh needed to be faster. Tenisent’s skills weren’t enough. She draw herself out of danger, but her shields were gone in the exchange.

Kirda allowed it, letting the Feather pull back far out of range, taking the moment to catch her own breath and recenter herself. She could feel that something had changed, after the feather dove down from the sky. The girl had pushed it aside in the heat of the fight, not letting the shock paralyze her from the realization: That the machine fought in a way that she recognized. In a way she'd trained against for half a lifetime.

“What are you? Who taught you?” She called out, the sense of shock carried through her words. “How do you know all these techniques?”

“You know exactly who taught me.” The feather taunted back. “No one else fights the same way.”

While the words sank into Kidra’s mind, To’Wrathh was busy reaching for parts of her own mind that she hadn’t needed before. Down into her core, she unlocked safety parameters and overclocked her system. Increased memory read and write speeds. Increased voltage. Split a few hundred parallel threads and gave orders to each.

New combat subroutines, dedicated to prediction and analytics booted up and began to pour over the past few minutes, crunching data in a massive torrent. She connected her wings into the combat subroutines, merging the systems together. Letting the combat systems calculate faster turns, quicker lunges, and more controlled dodges for her. Time began to slow as the overclock took effect, combat solutions and alternate movesets flowed across her senses by the dozens. Heat built up, but held within tolerance. For now.

Ready, she struck forward like a spear, diving straight for her stunned opponent.

Kidra’s blades rose up once more to hold off her advance.

The duel changed. Two combat experts, both able to predict the opponent’s movements ahead of time to a high degree of certainty. They twirled and jumped around each other, aborting dozens of attacks all within seconds, each motion living only short half-lives, never fully complete.

Both reacting not to what was before them, but to the ever changing future they each predicted. Whole minutes passed without so much a single clash of blades as both tried to wrestle for range and position. The duel becoming an utterly mental struggle for superiority.

To’Wrathh didn’t know what Kidra had done in order to put her in this league of skill, but she’d overwhelm the human one way or another. Her advantages were mechanical, flawless and consistent. Kidra would falter at some point, make a mistake, predict incorrectly. She was only human after all.

But somehow, Kidra kept up, despite the odds.

Combat simulations within To’Wrathh self-corrected, predicting her opponent’s expected downfall - and constantly failed to get it right. Each prediction became more and more uncertain, the error deviation growing exponentially as the statistical anomaly grew. Until they could generate no meaningful answer from any known mathematical model and promptly shut down as wasted resources.

Something was wrong.

To’Wrathh increased her core clock speed again and shunted more power flow. Faster. She needed to be faster. Her swings accelerated, inertia and material structure now becoming significant factors. Programs had to take into calculations the strains on her superstructure. Red warning signs appeared across her body, small micro-splinters in the metallic bones caused by the rapid change of motion.

Heat continued to pound away at To’Wrathh’s systems. Yellow warning messages appeared on the side of her vision, suggesting non-critical systems to be terminated and giving warning that continued overdraw was unsustainable at the current rate.

Darwinian learning algorithms crunched her stolen skills, calculating hundreds of permutations, pitting them against one another, leaving only the most optimal solutions. She implemented them - and yet somehow the girl seemed to know what was coming, regardless.

To’Wrathh doubled the inflow again, moving the scale from hundreds to thousands. The trickiest moves, the most unpredictable responses, all still guessed at with one hundred percent accuracy. It made no sense. How was this human outperforming her at full power? A data leak? Was her system being hacked - by a human? How was that even possible?

She interjected her own neuromorphic mind into the combat algorithms in desperation, watching as the digital strings expanded out like origami, mutating the results. The solutions grew wild, out of touch, unhinged. Movesets became munged together. She picked the ones that felt right to her, and discarded the rest, no matter how optimal the math claimed it to be.

The fight collapsed half into the physical realm again, the occasional movements now fully living into a true attack. And with horrible consequences. To'Wrathh let parts of her body be stabbed, trading the hits on non vital systems in exchange for her opponent’s shields. She wasn’t human. Physical damage wasn’t an issue.

Danger sailed by her again and again, the whole fight being on a knife edge from complete destruction. If she made even one wrong gamble, one wrong move for a fraction of a moment, Kidra’s knives would sink into her throat and cut the life out of her. Those blades got close, but not close enough. The feather's body became riddled with cuts, exposing the metal circuitry under the false skin. Entire patches were shredded, down to the core.

But what she gained in exchange was worth it.

A dizzying array of strikes, plans and wing movements all blended together into a tapestry that was slowly overcoming the surface knight. Ground was lost, chip damage began to accumulate. Kidra was being pushed back, finally.

Her ability to predict To’Wrathh was rapidly fading away as not even the Feather knew what her next move was anymore, or if it even had a name. She was inventing things wholesale out of the aether, taking Tenisent's skills and elevating it past the theoretical limit. Movements stopped having any sense of organized style.

The fight fully collapsed all at once back into a true physical one, filled again with occult sparks flashing for half lived moments with each blade collision. A hundred small flashes of pale blue light, like a swarm of fireflies flowing between both fighters, following them without fail no matter where they leaped and moved to.

To’Wrathh was somewhere else. Too much of her systems had been shut down in order to maximize her combat. News feed about her army had been cut. The stable and warm connection to her mother was gone. She hadn’t realized how many connections she’d had to the outside world beyond her body. And now, with everything quiet, there was nothing but To’Wrathh herself, Kidra, and the duel between them.

It was…. exhilaration.

The sound of Occult edges striking each other in a beautiful choreography of desperation and intention, all intermixed with the whoosh of swift bodies constantly moving through the air without pause. An unending dance with no name, being made on the spot. The cloud of occult sparks far too close to the dancers, lighting the stage.

Like a duel out of the stories and plays humans had written, something grander than life. Was this why To’Aacar hounded after Atius, even after centuries? Was he chasing after this one moment of serendipity? She’d never experienced this before. Never had to truly squeeze out every last byte of her abilities just to hold her ground against an opponent.

It was beautiful. Unique. Personal.

Red warning signs began to appear in her vision, choking out the comfortable yellow she’d grown used to. Errors. Heat buildup. Decohersion. Combat subroutines were spitting out occasional garbage data at an increasing rate, tainted by melting transistors and failing capacitors. The CMOS system was breaking apart, heat sinks overwhelmed, and many backup parts physically disconnected or outright destroyed by the early damage she'd willingly taken.

A small part of her knew if she continued at this rate, her body would fail her. Safety systems would yank control away from her, as if she were a child that had gotten too close to a stovetop and couldn’t be trusted anymore.

She was winning the fight, but losing it at the same time.

To’Wrathh was so close. Kidra’s shields were hovering around ten percent. At this point, the difference between shields and no shields was four hundred forty-three milliseconds of prolonged contact. A blink of an eye and the fight would end.

Dozens of weaving strikes flew from her each second. To’Wrathh only needed one of her hits to land. Just a single one. But the human battered her back somehow again and again. Worse, she could tell from her proximity alerts that four signatures were rapidly approaching.

She didn’t have time to pay more attention. A final error message obscured all others, remaining front and center in her vision. All other error messages being minimized.

Ten seconds until total system shutdown.

The end of the line. No - no, no no! She just needed more time! The human was exhausted. Movement and motion was slowing down, combat logs all pointed it out as fact, a graph showing a steady and predictable decline within plus or minus three percent deviation. She'd stopped being able to retaliate, forced to defend against the Feather just to simply survive. Kidra had a mental limit and To’Wrathh knew they must be rapidly approaching it.

Five seconds until her opponent’s speed was estimated to drop below the threshold she needed to overpower and kill the girl. So close. To’Wrathh only needed to hold on.

Seven seconds until total system shutdown.

Terror and panic began to creep into her mind as she saw the prediction slope start to even out - and then flatline. The next series of twenty strikes and counters passed but the human was holding the graph line steady at five seconds, the line weavering, but refusing to drop under that number, subsystems constantly being forced to recalculate a new ETA.

Somehow, the human was powering through her exhaustion.

To’Wrathh was so close to victory. Hate, fury, wrath - she fed it all into her combat systems. She screamed, desperate now to batter past her opponent’s mental resilience.

A dozen sword strikes came crashing out, all expertly weaved together in under two seconds, every single one lethal. And still Kidra held on. Pure single minded focus spent on holding off the Feather. A wall of blades that let nothing past her, the graph stubbornly remaining just above five seconds.

Five seconds until total system shutdown.

She'd crossed the threshold. To'Wrathh knew that as a machine - she physically could not surpass hardcoded limits. Once her internal damage sensors crossed the shut off point, it would shut off everything. The human was overcoming her own limits, while To'Wrathh had reached her own. Impossible.

For a horrifying moment, she felt utterly inferior to a human. It seared her mind, shook her foundations, broke her pride.

There’d been a last trade of blades as both of them had passed by one another. To’Wrathh curled down, twisted on herself, and sprang out to catch her opponent’s retreating back.

The fight needed to end now.

Two second until total system shutdown.

She lunged forward, one sword held underhand, wings stretched out wide, her body sailing through the air, slowly suspended by time and inertia. Ahead, Kidra had also committed to a duck, turn, and lunge. An all-or-nothing.

They’d both chosen the same move at the same time. One final move from both of them to end it all.

One second until total system shutdown.

A knife blurred towards To’Wrathh’s face, feinting past her underhanded long sword. The feather’s other long sword was already committed to parrying the second knife and unavailable. Her body was suspended in midair, there would be nowhere to dodge. A thousand possible counters sprang to mind and she was drawn only to one by instinct. It felt right.

One of her legs touched the ground. She didn’t use it to dodge, instead pushed forward, continuing the sprint.

Kidra mimicked the motion, also committing to the last strike, knife making final adjustments.

The feather tilted her head to the side, calculating she’d be able to move just fast enough to avoid critical systems from being damaged, using her wings to help move her a few inches faster, time crawling around her. Slowly, the command went through, sent across gold wires deep within her superstructure, her neck straining against the physical forces that rippled around her.

The ancient winterscar knife sunk into the side of her cheek, the occult edge cutting a deep wound effortlessly. And then it exited past, just under her ear, cutting through nothing critical.

She’d done it. Moved just in time out of Kidra’s killing blow.

Her own white and violet blade completed the rotation on her open palm, her mechanical fingers wrapped around the hilt again and let the inertia of their charge carry the relic armor into range.

The blade edge connected.

Blue relic shields flared as the heirloom armor was overloaded and its shields broke in slow motion. To’Wrathh’s blade continued forward unimpeded, carving directly into the relic armor helmet.

The tip sank a sliver of an inch, metal vanishing as the Occult’s destructive edge met reality and shredded it apart. It cut through systems and circuits, breaking the helmet.

Only not quite deep enough to break the fragile human protected inside.

Kidra had twisted her head, human reaction speed now catching up, the sword racking a massive gash across the entire helmet side instead of sinking further.

The Feather saw all of this, time still slowed to her senses. She only needed to correct the direction of her blade. Twist her wrist a little further, and the inertia would drive the whole thing right through metal, skin, blood, skull, flesh and soul. The girl could not move fast enough to escape.

She would die here. To’Wrathh could cut her head off the limp body and send it to the surface in a decorative box as she’d intended.

She had won.

And…

And yet…

Her wrist didn’t move.

How strange. To’Wrathh thought, watching the wrist remain frozen, surprised at her choice. The blade held still, the destructive edge passing by, leaving a faint trace of fading blue on the relic armor helmet. In a half second, her window of chance would vanish forever.

The wrist remained, unmoving.

How... strange... that I…

The two opponents flew past each other, both killing blows missing their mark. Both watching the other sail by, wind and turbulent ash trailing behind each.

How strange that I don't want this to end.

System shutdown initiated.

A hundred subsystems all crashed, closing unexpectedly. Overclocks halted, programs unsafely terminated leaving endpoints barren of data, everything crashing through her system like heavy slabs of falling metal snapped loose from strained wires with destructive whiplash.

The Feather stood frozen in her final strike, blade still lifted up in position as her system rebooted, bits of dust kicked free and blowing away as her halted legs slid on the ground to a stop.

A beat passed.

Which was all the time Kidra needed to continue her steps, far into safe distance, a hand already yanking off her damaged helmet so she could see clearly again. Twisting around to see the Feather recover from her frozen pose. Violet glowing eyes locked upon piercing blue ones.

The human looked exactly as Tenisent’s memory had shown her. All except for a thin red line of blood, leaking from her forehead, down past her right eye, and all the way to the side of her cheek. Sweat dotted her brow, free now from the relic helmets cleaning. Mixing with the blood and doing little to dilute the color.

“What… are you?” Kidra asked again, a breath between each word, exhaustion clear. “You fight like… like him. How?”

The Feather smiled widely. The horrible cut through her own cheek made the entire expression look unhinged, the metal underneath clearly visible. “Of course I fight like him. He taught me all I know.”

Systems still rebooting. Diagnostics showed hundreds of subsystems listed as permanently destroyed, the hardware melted through too many redundancy points. Damage reports continued endlessly in her vision. She needed a new body. Her shell had been crippled.

“Never. He would… never help… a machine. A lie. You lie.” Kidra said, hands and chest shivering, as if the armor itself was struggling to stay upright. Adrenaline was likely crashing through her system, taking its toll. The mental strain of the duel had been outright debilitating for To’Wrathh - and she was a machine. She couldn’t understand how a human could still be standing after such an ordeal.

“I never said it was willingly taught.” To’Wrathh answered, all too happy to keep talking. She needed to buy more time for her systems to cool off and recalculate what could be done with what was left working. Time she wasn’t going to get as she noticed the field around her.

Her Chosen were dead, dying, or routed. The surface knights had eliminated her group of survivors. And now they were here, slowing down from their sprint to take their place behind their leader.

Kidra looked to her left, where a teal knight slowed to a walk. Helmet giving her a worried glance that the battered girl shrugged off.

“Take the feather alive.” Kidra ordered, breath rapidly catching up. “She has answers I want.”

Windrunner gave a salute, then stalked forward, blade drawn. Three other knights in red came from the sides, cutting her paths of escape.

There were no words. No taunts. None even questioned their orders to fight a near mythic enemy that anyone else would consider a suicide mission. The surface savages went to work instead, all as one. The blades came at her, quick as lightning, and she fought back with just as much rage.

These knights were noticeably slower than Kidra, but there were four of them, and To’Wrathh was exhausted, unable to overclock any part of her system, and greatly damaged. Still, she was a Feather. And she held the skill and power of Tenisent Winterscar. Four surface knights might be beyond her current abilities, but they couldn’t stop her either. She battered their weapons away in a spinning whirlwind of precise strikes, forcing a window open, letting her leap into the air, wings spreading out to make an escape.

Kidra had been waiting for just such a moment. Drawing on one last pool of willpower, leaping out herself, daggers flaring out one more time. Cutting the feather’s wings off in a midair twist, wrapping an elbow around To'Wrathh's chest in a lopsided hug, and forcing the enemy back into the ground with a heavy crash.

Swords bit down on the To’Wrathh’s unshielded arms, cutting them off while heavy armored boots stomped down on her legs, grinding down until the metal began to bend.

In moments, To’Wrathh’s shell was no longer functioning. Black oil leaking out of her many wounds, new error messages floating around her vision without stop, joining the still growing damage report list. How had it ended like this?

And the ghost of Tenisent staring down at her with disgust. He’d gotten out somehow, in the chaos.

That was worrying. She smiled back at him, despite it all.

“We should cut her down now while we have the chance. Take her swords and run.” The teal one said.

Kidra’s hand went up, the sign to halt. “No… No, she’s the one behind the siege on the city. If we kill her right now, she’ll simply return somewhere else. We need to capture and contain her somehow until we’ve dealt with the invasion.”

“You’re far too late for that, humans.” To'Wrathh said, pinned down as she was. “My army is already here. I’ve won.”

Indeed, her army had reached the gates and begun to climb the walls. The recaptured turrets had bought the humans time, but hadn’t bought them enough. Already Undersider knights at the ramparts were being cut to pieces, scattered into groups, or outright surrendering. The day was over.

“Shut it, machine.” One of the red knights said, kicking To’Wrathh’s head with a relic powered boot. To’Wrathh just laughed as one of her eyes lost signal from the damage. As if she finally understood a joke the world whispered in her ear.

How nostalgic, she thought. She had only one eye left working again. Her body, broken and battered, all her legs and arms cut. Standing at death’s door, watching her execution.

All caused by a Winterscar again. Her history, it seemed, loved to repeat itself.

“Least we have this creature.” Another red knight said, her voice filled with contempt. “We can extract information at a more opportune time.”

“And where will you hold me?” To’Wrathh continued laughing. Her voice was distorted. The vocal cords had been damaged from that kick. “There is no safety anywhere besides the city. The anti-machine barrier would shred what’s left of my shell the moment you cross the city limits. Anywhere you take me, my army will know. You can’t hide from them while I remain. Time flies by, humans. How long do you have until there is no escape left?”

The machines had passed the ramparts. Flooding into the barracks and garrisons. Service staff were surrendering by the dozens. Only a few pockets of resistance were left, taking shelter inside the tower, preparing for a final stand.

“Fuck.” Windrunner said. “The scraphead’s right. We need to go, my lady, now.”

“And the Feather? What do we do with her?” One of the red knights asked.

Kidra stared down at the ruined shell of the machine. One violet eye looked back at her, still dimly lit, flickering but very must still alive. Somehow this machine had been emulating her Father’s style. That wasn’t possible, he had been left behind at the… at the bunker.

Blue eyes widened. Deep inside the family armor, at the side of her ribs, a backup soul fractal bloomed to life and Kidra dove inside it. She searched through what lay before her with renewed sight, this time focusing her occult vision, searching… and found him.

A dagger whisked into her hand. She dove straight forward, knife cutting through the metal sternum, cutting into the machine, searching for the resonance she felt.

To’Wrathh knew when it was time to cut and run. Eleven miles into the bowels of the earth, a pair of soul fractals blazed to life, connected with the fractal of unity. Her backup. Artificial souls couldn’t move from fractal to fractal. Not like organic souls could. But with the Unity Fractal, anything could be done.

She synced herself with it, feeling an instant connection to her mother, then stepped away from her shell, dragging the chained soul with her, like a puppy on a leash.

Only to be yanked back to a stop. The soul didn't move.

Somehow, Tenisent was holding tight to the gateway, like a boulder stuck against too narrow an entry. He was fighting back. Panic shot through To’Wrathh. The Winterscar Occult knife continued to rip through, right below her throat, unerringly cutting a path as if the girl simply knew where to find Tenisent.

I’ll detonate the shell! To’Wrathh screamed at the stubborn captive, trying and failing to shove the prisoner past the entry, pulling at the chain as hard as she could, only getting inches at a time. She has no helmet! No shields! I could kill her right here, right now!

Relic powered gauntlets dove down and began to peel the metal plating covering, slowly, as if it were made of stubborn tin. “What in the gods are you doing, Winterscar!?” One of the red knights said, horror in his voice as he saw Kidra continue to butcher into the broken machine.

Tenisent faltered. He slipped a few more inches down, willpower being sapped. Surrender this struggle, now, or she dies. To’Wrathh snarled, bypassing through ruined safety locks, manually opening the bits of accessible systems left in the shell and overloading whatever power cells were still connected.

More of her subdermal plating was ripped away and then Kidra unhooked her armored gauntlet from her hand and reached down. Finger and palm touching the glowing plate deep under the mess of broken gold wires and silver metal.

A third presence appeared in To’Wrathh’s panicking mind. The Feather recoiled from the intrusion. Kidra barreled through with single minded intent, a hand reaching out to the old wolf. “Father! Oh gods, it’s really you!” Now connected to the soul fractal, her tired mind raced through ways to save him. “There’s a spare soul fractal on my left side, come with me!”

“What are you babbling about? Are you out of your tiny mind?!” Ankah shouted to the side, while the other knights brought out their swords in response to the sound of footsteps crossing the courtyard. Hundreds of them, moments away from the small huddled group.

Tenisent saw the outstretched hand of his daughter reaching out to him, pleading. A way out. A way home. He held on, fingertips desperately holding tight to whatever purchase he could grip onto with his mind, while his other hand reached out to clasp against Kidra’s.

Connection.

The addition of her willpower surged through him, turning the tides, giving his own exhausted soul the strength to pull against the feather’s grip. Together, they were slowly pulling him out.

I’ll kill her. I can always build a new shell. She can’t. The explosion will kill her, rip that head right off her shoulders. Don’t make me do this.

He turned to look down at the receding void under him. A darkness, leading somewhere deep within the earth, like the jaws of hell itself. A pressure trying to drag him down, sucking him through that horrible fractal attached to his cage. If he fell, the machine would never let him escape again. He’d revealed too much of his discoveries.

I will kill her Tenisent!

Power cells were all supercritical. A single shock would level the ground around them. To’Wrathh’s mind hovered over the command.

Tenisent turned to his daughter, smiling. Proud of you. He said.

Just... proud.

His hand opened, letting go of her arm. The void under yanked him away like an angry stream, ripping him from Kidra’s grasp and dashing him against the rocks. Until there wasn’t a single sign of him left in the dimming fractal.

He felt chains wrap around his arms, neck and chest. Strangling him, pressing down on all sides as he floated down into the abyss. The monster was angry at him. He didn’t fight it, letting himself sink further away. The monster was many things. But she would keep her word. Whether a quirk of her personality, or her unwavering pursuit of direction, the monster always meant what she said. Unless she lied to herself about it. But not this time, he knew.

To’Wrathh breathed a sigh of relief, clutching the cell of her prisoner, burying him under every last bit of security she could get. Deep within the spare soul fractal safely miles away. She’d almost lost him. The thought troubled her far more than she could understand right now. Far more than she wanted to think about. She buried the uncomfortable thoughts deep down, fled from them.

“We’ll meet again. Remember this. Remember me.” She had her body say, one last message distorted from the damage taken, a wide smile left frozen on her face as Kidra stared back in horrified silence. It felt right, it felt fitting.

To’Wrathh input a final set of commands that brought her broken shell back from supercritical to nominal. Power cells faded across her system alerts, safely turning off one after another, all logs showing grey and inert.

She reached the last cell and sent the last set of commands.

The connection cut.

Next chapter - Crafting

Occult weapons for profit and destruction

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