12 Miles Below

The loose power cell rolling around inside had a full charge, and according to Hecate, was likely someone’s reserve cell. Primary cells would have seen some amount of use, while this one looked freshly filled up. If there was any doubt this was some kind of gift from the gods, that answered that. Nothing else but a free power cell when we most needed it?

“Someone’s been watching us.” I said, worried. Looking around the broken treeline and finding nothing. No footprints, no sounds, even the mythical birds had stopped making noises after the drake had beaten a retreat. “Hey, Hecate, you’re the expert on everything underground. Do mysterious ghost sleds usually show up like this now and then?”

“No. This is abnormal. I detect nothing in range of us either.” Hecate said at my side, equally puzzled. She took a few hesitant steps in the direction where the sled had appeared from, vanishing from my point of view into the tree trunks, swords at the ready.

She returned a few moments later, carrying what looked to be a metal trinket of some kind. “This was affixed to a tree trunk at the end of the path the sled took. I found no other tracks, or footprints nearby.”

Getting my hands on it and spinning it around I could tell almost immediately what this was. A rudimentary spring powered push, wound up on a timer. If it was affixed to a tree, the sled was likely pushed forward by this. And given the timer, I'd guess whoever owned the sled was long gone by the time the spring was released. They must have known we’d be stranded at our campsite for some time, likely soon after we'd dealt with Fido and started brainstorming possible ways out given the timer.

"How did this even get that close to us without our notice?" I asked. "We were running around the clearing for a while now setting up traps for Fido. How did we not notice a gods damned hoversled hanging about?"

Hecate seemed even more worried about this than I was. She confirmed she had no idea how this got past our notice, or even when. And she's the one with the feral abilities to sniff out anything within a mile radius. What could hide a hoversled from the occult-granted vision powers of a Deathless?

I gave the old sled a more critical look through, checking for bombs and other nefarious items that would ruin the atmosphere of a nice gift.

The wooden rods inside were likely to be used as a paddle, so that the hoversled could be used like a boat from the older eras, except on land. Very archaic method of moving, but beggars can’t be choosers in this case. Whoever our benefactor was, they’d clearly given us something to work with at the least. Which means they not only know we’re running short on energy, they also know we can’t move much at all right now.

More evidence in the camp that whoever the owner was, they'd been watching over us for some time now.

The sled was wide enough to fit two or three people inside comfortably. However; it didn’t have two seats, or any seats at all. Just a standard cargo hauling sled, except with a lot of paint on it. Odd looking tribal art decorated the sides and interior, more abstract shapes of colors. Painting wasn’t something I see every day, meaning this hoversled was someone’s expensive little toy. A smaller reserve of power cell fluid kept the hoversled afloat, about a fourth of the standard supply in a cell.

And there wasn’t a bomb strapped anywhere inside, or the underside. Reasonably sure of that after poking my nose around for a few minutes and not getting blown up as my evidence.

The scratches on the side and insides were too small to fit the claws of Fido, so it’s unlikely he’s involved in any of this. And besides, his current plans of not doing anything but waiting for us to run out of juice was working out fine. Why complicate it?

Hecate and I had no guesses for what ‘follow the trail’ meant, but this sled opened up a lot of options for the newly minted plan E. Hecate and I split the new power cell in half, with the Deathless keeping the cell for her armor, given she’d donated her spare to help power Journey.

“What’s the plan now?” I asked, “Are we going to continue the search for a fountain using the mysterious spooky sled?”

Talking about the Deathless, she was already climbing aboard and stabilizing said sled using a rod, without a pause even. “Most our energy expenditure is spent on moving our mass. With this hoversled, we can remain stationary and use the longer sticks for propulsion and steering. It will be far more efficient. We may even cover ground faster than walking.” She frowned suddenly, turning to gaze to my side as if I’d said something offensive. “Assuming we coordinate together correctly, I don’t see how this would be a disaster.”

“You underestimate my ability to turn anything into a disaster.” I said and turned my attention back to business, climbing aboard the strange sled myself. If Hecate hadn't exploded, neither would I. “Any idea what follow the trail meant?”

She shook her head. “I am as confused as you are. However, we need to move before the drake returns and we do not have other options to explore.”

“Technically, we do.” I said.

“We do not have any acceptable options.” She corrected, giving me a stern glare before I could remind her about splitting up.

“Fine, you twisted my arm here.” I grabbed a rod and gave an experimental tug against the ground. The sled started gliding across the remains of our campfire.

Hecate and I both made movements at the same time next. She turned the sled to go left while I did the same, except to go right.

The result was us spinning around like a dreidel. Took a more coordinated effort to get the sled back under control.

“Want to draw straws on who leads?” I asked once the spinning stopped, reaching down for a few twigs to work with. “On my honor I’ll accept any result, so long as it’s one where I win.”

She answered that with a frown.

“What?” I asked, getting the sticks ready.

“I have just been given advice to flick you on the forehead.” She said, with deadpan delivery, as if completely serious.

“Who’s giving you such shocking and violent advice?” I shot back, lifting up the sticks and offering her to take one. “I want a word with them.”

Hecate faint smile froze, and faded away. As if realizing I could see her, she turned her face away and gazed out to the treeline instead. I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind from this angle, but I had a sinking feeling I’d done something. “I will arrange this.” She said, “Sometime in the future. I owe you that much.” Then, she shook her head. “Soon. Neither of us are ready for that step as of now.” She turned back to me and swiftly plucked out a stick from my hand all in one motion.

I don’t know how she could tell, but she’d drawn the short stick expertly, almost like she’d memorized which stick was which before I could.

“You can lead if you wish.” She mumbled out. More like an apology, and less like a suggestion, while I was still trying to wrap my head around what all of that was about.

Where do I even start to try to unpack that sentence? I don’t understand this girl at all. Not a single bit. To be fair, I'm aware I can be dense at times. Kidra had clued me in already, usually with thrown objects. And if she were here, she'd probably pick something particularly heavy.

Urs help me make sense of this all.

We ended up deciding to let her take the lead. She had better eyesight and was more coordinated. I’d intended on that from the start anyhow, the sticks were for fun from the start.

It was a little rough going. I say that because we nearly ran ourselves into a tree trunk first thing, which made us seriously consider just having us use her wings as propulsion, or kick behind us. Both options Hecate had shot down since they were energy intensive according to her.

But apart from the dented tree trunk, it turned out to be a good thing. We discovered what ‘follow the trail’ meant.

The tree trunk we’d nearly collided with had a cross mark on it. And looking further into the distance, we could see more trees with scratches embedded inside. A mixed blessing. We clearly had someone trying to help us out, except this path could be equally followed just as easily by the drake.

So, Hecate and I decided on the only reasonable course of action. Commit fully to this plan and roll with what happens later. If we were quick enough to follow the trail, we might make it before Fido comes back from his nap or whatever he was doing to pass the time while waiting for us to starve.

Being a Deathless, Hecate could move her own paddle rod quicker than I could and with greater precision. But both of us had to work together to keep the sled moving in the right way. Learning how to work together was… less than ideal. Especially since turns required both of us to work together if we were to take those at any speed faster than walking. She'd often use her wings to help adjust course, but over time the corrections were less needed until we had the hang of it.

A shame really, the wings were really pretty to look at in action.

On the other hand, the hoversled could cruise around at a pretty fast pace if both of us pushed hard enough. Faster than I could run without armor, at least. If we were bold, we probably could make this move faster than a relic-assisted sprint. The issue was all the trees surrounding us, no clear path.

“Who’s sled do you think this is?” I asked as we paddled our way through the red forest. “That’s the part I’m most spooked about. Random sleds in the middle of a mite forest sounds more like something from a horror story, generally.”

“What is your current theory?” Hecate asked by the front, correcting our course with small taps now and then.

“Mites. It’s got to be mites. Anytime there’s something strange going on underground, it’s usually because mites are a thing.”

She nodded. “I could see why you would believe that. Mites could have constructed such a sled in the forges. However, colonies do not move objects. They only create or destroy. If they were around, we would see the full colony in action around us.”

The forest was devoid of any lights, beyond those that came from the stream for ambiance or had been crafted by the mites specifically to light up certain elements. The only thing stirring in the forest were animals going about their business.

“So, what’s your theory?” I asked.

“The scratched sentence was written in a standardized font. Notice how all the letters remain exactly perfect to their counterparts? I believe whatever entity has been watching us is of machine origin. Only they can have this level of precision.”

A… machine helping us? “Don’t think that’s possible, machines are unified together. Giving us a hoversled would go directly against Fido's plans. They wouldn’t work against each other like this.”

Hecate shook her head. “The reality is more complicated. For additional proof, the wooden rods themselves show no sign of rot and the interior is still slightly wet. These were cut from a branch recently, as little as a few hours before we discovered the sled, in these woods. There are no table tools here to work with.”

”Where are you going with that? And what do you mean by 'more complicated'? Don't like those two words, especially put together.” I said, dipping the rod to the other side and matching her pushing speed as we glided through the forest.

”Notice how both rods are uniform to one another, precisely cut. Again, no human craftsman would be able to mimic this degree of precision with a freehand tool such as a standard occult blade.”

Oh. That was a good point. “Maybe a machine malfunctioned and went rogue?” Gods, that was weird to think about. A crazy machine out there, helping us. “Odd that they haven’t shown their face yet. Shy?”

“It could be that their presence isn’t something the drake is aware of, and our helper wishes to remain undercover. I can understand and relate to that.” Hecate said. “Machines that do not conform to the current will, are hunted down and destroyed.”

"You say that as if it's a known and usual thing. Do machine traitors actually exist?" I asked, a little shocked.

Hecate nodded, keeping her back to me while she steered the sled. "They do." She said softly. "I know one."

More things about Hecate that explained why she was so adamant that there could be peace. I took a moment to really process that revelation, but Hecate wouldn't lie, she was Deathless. Deathless don't lie.

A part of me wanted to believe her implicitly, and it was at war with the part of me that just knew machines were a united faction out to kill all humans.

It was a short and bloody battle of conflicting ideals, with the latter side loosing decisively against the former: Mites were machines, and they weren't allied with Relinquished. Thus the base case is proven that there exists some machines that aren't out to kill humans. Humans had all kinds of factions running around, machines could be similar in their own way, even among Relinquished's army. There were billions of machine soldiers out there lurking about, plenty of chances for some of them to get uppity ideas. Statistically speaking. Assuming they weren't digitally lobotomized to follow orders.

There was one last hiccup to solve here, about the sled itself. “What’s with all the paintings then? That doesn’t look like something machines would do.” Looked a lot like the ad-hoc sort of paintings under the colony, in the paths leading to sealed off sections.

At that, Hecate shook her head. “I am unsure. The paint appears to be old, however, I cannot narrow down the date.” She had an odd look to her features at this, one hand lightly brushing over the painted decorations that lined the different parts of the sled. We continued to glide on a steady course, hardly slowing down. No need to push with rods right now. Every now and then, we’d coordinate a turn or add more speed and then let the whole thing coast. Rather relaxing all said and done. Beats walking for sure.

“Whoever owned this sled had a fully developed personality.” Hecate eventually said in the lull. “That does not appear without time and experience. If the owner is a machine, it must be an older one. And it clearly took great care of this sled in their own way. Only, I can’t understand why.”

We’d reached the end of the mite forest soon enough.

What lay before us… well. It was something. At least the forest had remained within the bounds of regular physics and what I’d seen in archives of the world. A little too picture perfect, but somewhat possible.

Our hoversled silently drifted out of the woods, being directed by occasional prods of our rods. Beyond us was a white sea of silver flowers stretching across miles, dancing softly to the breeze that made shimmering waves of reflected artificial moonlight. As if we were coasting on reflective ice.

While most of the plains was reasonably solid ground under all the flowers, there were parts of it that absolutely were not. Massive stone obelisks of pure black glass jutted up in diagonal directions, scattered around the landscape. A deep pool of murky white mist surrounded each pillar base, bobbing up and down with the breeze passing by. Some of these pillars were about five times as tall as I was. Those were the smaller ones. Mites did not like building things tiny.

Reminded me of the white wastes with their occasional distant ruins, except not as deadly. So long as we did not factor Fido into it. Right now, this wide open terrain made me feel nervous and exposed.

Worse, without tree trunks, the path that had been steadily leading us forward was gone. We were now adrift.

“Think those pillars have the path markings?” I asked Hecate.

She gazed in the direction of the nearest one. “No.” She said. “And we should beware to approach them. The mist under the pillar shows no ground under it. I suspect they are a free fall to the next level, the onyx pillars are hovering in place. If we are careless, the sled can fall through the ground.”

I whistled. “That’s some eyesight you got. Eat a lot of carrots or something?”

“Carrots? Carrots will not improve your eyesight.” She said, confused for a moment. I raised my eyebrows at her, expecting her to clarify the occult sight she had. She got the message perfectly, and launched into a short lecture on exactly why carrots wouldn't do me any good.

“Well, I feel cheated." I said, after she'd wrapped up her quick and oddly informative essay. "Should have suspected those agrifarmers were lying through their teeth about that. But back to the actual issue at hand here, what direction do we pick now captain?”

Hecate stayed seated, the rod resting on her legs. The hoversled was very energy efficient, only a few taps, and the thing would continue to glide forward for at least a good three to four minutes before it slowed. Most of our work had been steering the slippery thing, which never slowed us down too bad since she had wings to use as last resort. “I suggest we remain in the last direction.” She said, keeping a watchful eye ahead of us. “My armor has a compass. I can maintain our path.”

“Time to speed up, then?” I asked, grabbing my rod.

She took hers up as well, and we both dipped the rough tips into the ground, pushing off in a controlled manner. The trick was to constantly compensate. Hecate’s armor let her move at a very linear pace, so all I had to do was increase or decrease my push, depending on if our sled was slipping off a direction. She’d act as the rock that I’d match pace with.

“Do Undersiders sing any songs?” I asked as our sled gained more and more velocity across the plains.

“Music?” She hummed, “We know of it. However, I do not believe my people have made music.”

“That’s a little odd.” Dip the rod, push off against the ground, increase speed. Smooth sailing. “Everyone has some kind of culture. Food, music, architecture, games, fashion and art. I’ve never been to the Undersider cities yet, but they’d have to have something. Were you more of a shut-in?”

Hecate stayed quiet. Her rod once more dipped into the sea of flowers, and began to push at the steady constant rate I’d grown used to. “Something of the kind.” She said, looking up to the distant ceiling. “I have been questioning why I’ve enjoyed my time among the undersider city so much. I think it was because of the culture. It was something that my people don’t have yet.”

Were imperials different from Undersiders? Cathida had explained all kinds of rituals and quirks of being a crusader. They had their own entire little world. Where did Hecate come from that she never noticed that? Or maybe her sect was something far more closed off to the world? The armor remained stubbornly quiet, the helmet still missing. No way to ask Cathida about anything until we got to the mite fountain and had the time to regrow a new helmet.

“Not sure I follow,” I said, matching the speed and sending our sled going across the wide plains faster. Small hills had started to form, which made our sled climb up and down softly as we passed ground. “Were you part of some garrison that did nothing but run around and pick fights with people?”

“Yes.” She said without a pause, “Some of us had more to do in between fights. However, others like myself only went to sleep in between battles.”

What sort of life did these Imperial elites live? Fight, sleep, repeat? Was the regiment she was part of something that she was born into? Like a child soldier of some kind? Explains why she’s so desperate to make peace work, even between machine and humanity. How'd she end up being tied to To'Aaccar, the Chosen, a machine traitor she knew, imperials, and mites? And she knew all kinds of odd trivia, like carrots and crime statistics, all while being a feral hermit-witch that ate wood skewers and rocks, if they looked tasty enough.

Just what sort of person had I run into?

I was missing something key, and I knew it. The more I learned about her past, the stranger it got. The contradictions were piling up like crazy. Starting to make me feel crazy just by proximity.

Hecate's hand brushed over the painted tribal decorations around the sled absentmindedly. The part near her armored hand looked like a giant shark with a crazed purple eye chasing after a pack of blue wolves, except they had far too long legs to be wolves. The entire sled was filled with pictograms like this, all flowing from every direction. There was no text, but I was sure some kind of story was written down here if I spent a few hours trying to put everything together.

“You know, surface clans all have hundreds of songs for different moments. Some to pass the time. Others to tell a story. All of our scriptures are made to be sung for example.” I said, trying to lighten up the mood. "Sort of like this sled here keeps a history of some kind written out, surface clans do the same with songs."

She didn’t seem to have any opinion on that right now, keeping a blank face.

”We spend a lot of time traveling across giant empty stretches of land, usually sitting on the side of an airspeeder for hours, so we figure out ways to keep busy over our comms. We’ve got word games and rhyme dances too. Want to learn some?”

“I am unsure I would be very good at singing.” Hecate said.

“You’ll never know if you never try.” The sled had reached maximum speed we could get to with rods. It was a good enough pace to make anyone worried about tripping, but nowhere near what Teed’s ship could get to. Under us, the silver flowers passed by so quickly they blurred together. It was like a shimmering wave of reflected light was following right behind us, keeping pace. And the plains here stretched for miles before we’d reach the distant mountainside. We had at least a good half hour. Good thing we had a sled, walking all this would have been impossible.

Hecate drew her rod back over her legs and folded her hands over it as we waited for the sled to slow down enough to use the rods again. “Very well.” She finally said. “Teach me a song.”

I made another discovery about my traveling companion - she could remember everything explained to her. Not in the normal way either. Over the half hour of sailing, I never needed to repeat lyrics a single time. She’d pick them up as if she’d had the sheet music slate in front of her to read from. Ridiculous, but somehow not surprising. This wasn't even close to the weirdest thing about her.

Completely tone deaf without some practice though, but she improved that part rapidly.

Mostly I picked fun lighthearted tunes and stories to go over, to keep the morale up. Great time all in all, until we reached closer to the mountainside. That’s when Hecate’s gaze snapped off to the side, as if she’d spotted something dangerous far ahead. I gave a look myself to see what had prompted the change in plan and got an immediate answer.

There was something in the distance by the mountainside. A light, glowing blue. It vanished from view a moment later.

“Did you see that?” I asked, pointing.

Hecate nodded, and look properly spooked for the first time since I’d known her. “Yes."

"What was it? I can't see that far off, it looked just like a wink of blue light to me."

"The profile I could detect from this distance matches closest to that of a Runner model.”

”A what?”

”A machine, the ones you call a Screamer.”

Undersiders and their jargon again. Or maybe that was Imperial jargon, since Father had told me Undersiders called them Screamers too. There was one issue with all this though. “I thought machines all had violet lights?” I asked.

“They do.” She seemed almost stunned at the news. “This one... does not.”

Next chapter - Numbers in the dirt

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