12 Miles Below

Book 4. Chapter 3: Never leave two schemers alone together

“Seven point three three seconds.” Lord Atius said, nodding. “Solid improvement, lad. Again.”

From my seated position, I focused my mind on the two fractal plates dangling from my necklace. Small triple plates layered together with a tiny long term energy current set to flow through. Decorative inscriptions on the top layer were filled with religious glyphs from the way of the white, prayers and songs written in to the three gods. From anyone else picking these up, they’d be novelties at best. 'Surface savage' trinkets. Useless to most people down here.

Exactly as planned, of course. The best place to hide anything is in plain sight. The first necklace carried an empty soul fractal hiding inside, which I fit in snuggly. The second was the mirror fractal, which I was tapping into once again. I'd made dozens of these and let the Winterscar knights handle the inscriptions and heraldry.

A fully body specter of myself rose from the seated position, walked forward and began a set of katas for hand to hand combat. It didn’t last long until my focus broke and the image dissolved away into Occult wisps.

“Seven point two seven seconds.” He said, turning to my sister and handing her his stopwatch. “Mark first sign of fatigue at two hours six minutes for today.” A moment later, the Deathless loomed over me, “All right lad, go boil some snow. We’ll start again in ten minutes. Relax your mind in the meantime.”

A quick pat on my shoulder and he was off to another knight nearby also practicing while I took the last gulp of water from my bottle and stood to get it refilled. The entire room was filled with Atius’s elites and the Winterscar knights, all doing their best in pairs, training to use occult powers they were more naturally in tune with, not just the mirror fractal. The rest of the knights were outside, keeping the building locked down from prying eyes.

Kidra handed me her bottle of water, a steel necklace of her own hanging from her neck. She even sported some ornate bracers on both hands, also another project of mine, the fragmented patterns of shield fractals etched over them and mixed in with other random ornate patterns I’d thrown in. The shield fractals were never something I got good at, no matter how much I tried to train with them, they took a different kind of focus and effort. Kidra and some of my knights? Naturals at exerting their willpower past regular limits.

As she was, she could stand a chance against a relic knight even out of armor, if she used her defenses correctly and the winterblossom technique to help predict her enemies - so long as they use surface techniques, which was a flaw down here in the underground since nobody bothered to learn those. She’ll wipe the floor with slavers and raiders on the surface however.

Lord Atius sported only one of my necklace plates, a more fat piece with black mesh wire surrounding the entire thing. As a Deathless, he still hadn’t been able to connect to any kind of fractal, not like the rest of my motley crew could. That didn't bother him a bit, instead he made for an excellent teacher given his centuries of occult use. It was probably a novel experience for him to teach an entire class of knights how to stuff physics into a locker.

Using the occult spells had been the same for both Humans and Deathless, only that he didn’t need to do anything with the soul first and skipped that entire step. Past that, the same techniques and methods were shared.

The size and additions of this necklace plate he wore wasn’t for his benefit however.

“Rate of time is acceptable.” Father’s voice growled out from the speaker embedded inside. He hadn’t taken much time to infiltrate the simple circuits surrounding the soul fractal. The old geezer refused to have any kind of decoration of course, so no heart signs or ribbons for him, despite all the thinly veiled threats from Kidra to do exactly that.josei

Unlike Deathless, machine Feathers had souls and soul fractals, so they had to have some kind of connection between the digital circuitry and ‘them.’ Inside the old imperial bunker, Father had taken over the few working defense turrets and commandeered them.

Conclusion: The digital world could be touched on by a soul inside a soul fractal, the fractal working as a backdoor not just to the Occult. And Father had figured out how to do that while riding inside Winterscar's armor.

Something else on my to-do list. I wanted to learn that. Badly. But keeping my physical self alive took priority, and so far it’s been one blow after another. There was a list of never-ending tasks to complete, and if I was going for power, I'd go for the heavy ticket items first.

"How quick is the boy learning?" Father asked.

Lord Atius chuckled, waving a hand to the other knights inside the training cavern. “You see the other whelps around here, Tenisent?” A few knights had opted to practice the mirror fractal, including Kidra. So far, Captain Sagrius had been the best of them all, able to make it past a half second with a single arm. “That’s the more natural progression. It took me years to get to where the lad is after a day. At this rate, it might take him a week to go through an entire century for myself. The whelp has the right mind for it.”

Atius didn’t seem envious or even annoyed at that. More bemused if anything.

This fractal took creativity, imagination and what felt like a bit of math as the fuel source, three things I turned out to be excellent at. The more I focused on the small intricate parts of the fractal, the easier it got. The puzzle itself wasn’t difficult, just took some fine-tuning. The issue right now was that this is as far as I could get while completely focused on one single image. To be combat ready, I’d need to train until it came like second nature to me. I needed a small army of Keiths all moving in sync. I needed to be as good as Atius was with his own images, able to have a dozen running around doing cartwheels if I wanted them to. One of my major projects counted on that.

“I see.” Father said, almost testily, having clearly gotten gotten some kind of answer he was looking for. “If he's already ahead, there's another item we should take on. I want to speak to him for this, alone.”

That got my hairs on end. I’d heard him say similar things before, in exactly the same angered tone.

Kidra had too, already standing up and asking for a stay of execution here even if neither of us knew what the old man had in store for me. Lord Atius raised an eyebrow, but handed over the necklace speaker to me and left us to it. He recognized family issues and left it to us to resolve.

“You can come with us if you wish,” Father said to Kidra’s requests. “I don’t recommend it. What Keith and I need to discuss is between him and I.” It went unsaid that he knew he had no choice if we wanted to stick together or not. Not like in the past when he could simply brute force compliance.

Kidra looked up, met my eyes and asked the silent question. Whatever had pissed off Father, I’d been noticing it slowly rise up over time as the knights and I trained up in the Occult. It could be something about his current body situation, or pent up anger. But when he said whatever it was had to stay between him and I, that didn’t feel like malice to me. More... a favor. So I trusted that lone voice in my gut and agreed to step out.

The area was well guarded by clan knights, far outside the city gates into the mite no-man’s land. Lord Atius wasn’t about to let the Occult secrets run wild among the world, that would inevitably end with it in the hands of less honorable sort. And as much as he proclaimed to be neutral to the machines inside the city, I could tell they made his hairs stand up each time he caught sight of the lurking machines.

Safe to say it wasn’t difficult to find another nook to slink off into where it was just me and the disappointed disembodied angry voice.

“You didn’t take the stress inhibitor shots.” Father opened up and went right for my throat.

“I did.” I lied, outright on reflex. “We wa-”

“Lies.” Father nearly snarled out. “I know you, boy. I know your tells. I trained you personally for years. I’ve seen all the different emotions that push you forward and how they manifest in your motions. Anywhere from spite to dread. And here, it’s all fear driving you forward. You hide it well, your sister only suspects, not knowing if it’s her protective nature speaking louder or if there really is truth to it all. You can’t hide it from me.”

The jig was up. Cathida had outright pulled a fit about it until I muted her, and made sure she remained muted whenever nearby people she could squeal to. Almost worked out.

“I needed to have my head clear, Father. Those shots stop me from really focusing. Makes everything feel more dreamlike, like I'm walking through a memory instead of the present. I can’t afford that right now. None of us can.”

“The threats are dead and gone. You need the rest more.”

“No,” I hissed back. “I need to be safe. There’s dozens of things I could be working on right now, every bit of it is too important to just put on the sideburners. Three gods above, I still haven’t even examined the link between the digital world and the soul fractals because this is already more important. I don’t know when the machine collective is going to wake up and realize what’s going on, but when that happens, I need to be ready for it. I have to be stronger, and if I can't do that by skill, I'll make myself stronger with tools.”

Father didn’t answer. Not for a moment. I almost thought I’d scared him off, except the man didn’t know the definition of personal fear even if the dictionary entry was smashed through his window.

“It’s too late to fix anything now. The stress has already set in. I’ll teach you personally how to bridge the digital world, and keep you under my wing in that realm so long as you take care of your mind."

"And how exactly am I going to do that? Get a circle going, sing songs and count beads for a few hours each day? I don’t have the time for that.”

“It’s often in helping others that we find help for ourselves.” He said, in an odd moment of genuine friendly advice. I’d already started falling back into my old habits of verbal sparring with the old man just now, and normally things would get more violent until he either stormed off or punched something at this point. So his soft spoken comment caught me off guard enough to reboot my head.

“What do you mean?”

“To’Wrathh.” As if that one name answered it all. “Have you not noticed she's remained confined in her throne room, away from everyone while she repairs herself? Sound familiar to you? Both of you acting like wounded animals, hiding the hurt, hiding inside your burrows. Obsessive over anything that will make you feel better. Safer. There’s no such thing, the world is too vast to predict and plan for everything.”

“She’s… also like this?” It felt odd to think about. I hadn’t exactly been blind to my bouts of paranoia going through. The undersider city outright made my skin crawl, especially surrounded by machines everywhere you looked. “She’s a Feather though, a machine. How can she be scared of anything like humans are? Do they even go through long term stress?”

“I don’t believe we’re as different as I did before.” Father said. “She was nearly killed by her family, is still hunted by the rest of them, saw to the death of her original mentor and now shoulders the fate of her army and city. Too much responsibility for one person with little experience. I’ve tried to get your sister to help her. Didn't work. There’s still hostility between the two. Tension that hasn’t left. And likely won’t ever leave for months. But the two of you may help pull each other out of that darkness.”

I thought about my own past with Wrath. The person I’d gotten to know, mixed with the spider that had hunted me down ruthlessly prior. Father’s own death at her hands. Frankly, it still seemed surreal to me. Both that she really was that spider machine, and that Father had somehow gone around to wanting to help her. And more so than simple obligation for the debts he’d called in.

I’d been avoiding her this entire time. Maybe we both have. Lurking away in our respective burrows to hide from the world until we’d licked our wounds clean.

I took a breath in and let it out. “All right.” I said, and repeated it a few times to myself until I was really sure of the words.

“I’ll take a break and go see Wrath.”

I hadn’t talked to her since the end of the fight, carrying her back into the city while Kidra dragged our glorified trophy behind her. We’d barely said a word there, neither of us knowing really what to even start with. Also she was in my arms at the time and we were both doing our best to avoid looking at each other to make all of this less awkward.

Since then, I had talked to Wrath exactly once, cordially, with Father and Kidra nearby. Father had to be convinced by all three of us to be extracted from the Feather and given a little necklace to live in while Kidra and I figured out what in the three gods we were going to do to give him a body again.

Wrath’s side of events had been a wild ride to listen to. Hearing from her point of view how she’d hounded after us, and the reasons she did so.

The terrifying spider we’d had to contend with had more in common with an angry six year old who’d had their toy taken away.

That’s what nearly killed us. A murderbot getting upset she didn't get her way.

Since having a more roomy shell to ‘grow’ in, having been a much more basic and unrefined AI, Wrath had grown into someone more mentally stable. It hadn’t been easy, and Father had to slowly steer her in the right direction with choice words here and there.

Cathida also had some choice words, but we quickly learned to mute her when around Wrath. The old bat had an absolute seething hatred for Wrath that bordered on hysterical, and nothing any of us was going to convinced her otherwise.

After that, I had plotted a course straight into the workshop and put it all out of my mind. What I’d built in that time had been great, no regrets there. Plenty of inventions, most didn’t work, but the ones that did will really pay themselves off I think. Eventually I knew I'd get pried out of that safe little room filled with all my glittering hoard of trinkets.

I left Father’s hastily built ‘Phylactery’ with Lord Atius and Kidra - as I’ve come to call my little soul fractal necklaces - and made my way into the undersider city like a man going to the gallows. The wide open streets and colors all over the place were frankly a little terrifying to me in that alien sense, like I was walking through a dream of some kind, with all the building looking wrong. And the wide open space above us - gone unused by anything except the floating rocks. Made little sense me.

Oh and there were machines lurking on all the corners if I looked a little closer. Of course, I had to politely ignore them and pretend they weren't there. So more like a nightmare.

The people didn't make it any better, they were all weary of too many new things running around their city. They had too much excitement over the past few months and now wanted to go back to the old days, except that they all knew they couldn't. They gave me glances with everything between fear and anger, which only made me want to get to my destination faster and out of this weird inverse world.

Which inevitably brought me up the steps and directly in front of a Screamer guarding the last set of doors to Wrath’s sanctum. Massive looming thing, with a cut scar across that skull plate, and those dim beady eyes of violet recessed deep inside the sockets. It turned its gaze to me, and lower slowly to eye level. Almost as if worried it would scare me.

Maybe a few months ago I’d have been terrified. But after some time exploring the underground with a crew of Winterscar knights behind my back and turning these models into experiments and practice for our Occult spells, fear wasn’t exactly on my menu. Not to mention the drugs I'd been on during my first meeting with them.

“Oh gold. They hired a bouncer.” Cathida sighed in my helmet. “Well, we tried deary. Let’s turn back and forget all about this little pyrite idea, how does that sound? Nothing good'll come talking to that glorified metal tit-job from hell. Sacred vow, maneater's probably hiding a discount bandsaw down there, cut your eleventh right off she will. I mean-- she’s so dreadfully boring, deary. A bright young man like you shouldn't waste his time on that silly old goosetail like that.” She said, reverting right back to innocent grandma at the end, as if that would fool me.

I dutifully ignored her.

“You are not the Kidra. You. Other Winterscar.” The machine rumbled with a scratchy voice.

“Do I need to get a card out to prove my credentials, bring a friend to vouch for me, or do I slip you a tenner to look the other way? Whatever the Undersider version of a tenner is, I just need to get through those doors.”

“The lady. Sleeping.” It said. “She repair. Quiet needed.”

“Change my mind.” Cathida said. “Let’s go in. We should help anti-repair her while she’s sleeping. It’ll be gre--” The old crusader squawked indignantly the moment she noticed the familiar pattern of menu openings I had basically memorized by heart now. Whatever insult she was about to scream out, cut off as I put her on mute for a minute.

“Scrapshit. Like hell she can’t talk and fix herself at the same time.” I said, turning my attention back to the machine. “I went and had my little boo-hoo moment until I got kicked in the butt to come here. She can do the same. I don’t know if your boss told you this before, but she did try to kill me a few dozen times. I think I deserve some answers, or at least some complementary tea and biscuits while I complain about it.”

The machine tilted its head, thinking. “Exchange. I make biscuits. For you.” It said. “You leave the lady. Rest.”

The convo boggled my head for a bit. “Are you… are you actually bribing me with biscuits to go away?”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the machine was completely serious. A moment later, it confirmed my thoughts.

“Bribing.” The machine stood slightly, looking up, thinking some more. Then it looked back my way, nodding enthusiastically. “Yes. Yes. Bribing. Good word. I bake good. Deal is good. You accept good deal.”

“Who in the three gods taught you how to coo-- no, nope, nuh-uh. I’m not doing this bit.” I raised my arms in outright surrender, and then pointed directly at the gate doors. “I’m walking through those right now to talk smack to your boss, and if you stand in my way, I’ll get violent.”

It hissed. “Violence not allowed. You break law. Bad human.”

I patted the pommel that dangled on my belt. “Why look at that, how'd this cute little thing get here?”

It hissed again and straightened up. “We come with.” It simply said. “Angry man with sword no good. No trust. We protect lady.”

“Who’s ‘we’ in thi..” And then got cut off as the armor pinged my attention, announcing additional signals behind me. I turned my head and noticed a large group of the machines were gathering, all glaring at me, lights flashing in those skulls.

The bugger had called for help.

There were a lot of them, and they could quickly dogpile me into submission. It wouldn’t stop me given I had the occult and knew how to swing it, but it would draw a crowd and probably end up with me getting yelled at by someone or something for destroyed property and being a public nuisance. “Fine. Come with if you want. Your funeral, if you machines even do those.”

The machine moved out of the way, and I heard the rest of its ilk follow silently behind. The doors were easily opened against my relic armor. Inside was gloom, an empty palace filled with only one occupant.

Wrath sat on a concrete throne, an uncomfortable looking block of squares with little else as decoration. Since it didn’t match the rest of the architecture here, I assumed it had been constructed by her.

Here she looked nothing like Hecate anymore, skin bleach white as if a corpse, hair the same color flowing behind her instead of the platinum color I had grown used to. And above her, a floating silver halo of metal, idly spinning. This was who Wrath really was. Like a centerpoint between Hecate the Deathless and To’Wrathh the murderous spider. Eyes closed, head lulled and resting on a closed fist, legs crossed as if she were waiting for news to be brought before her.

I walked into the chamber, footsteps sounding loud in the silence, with the skittering noise of the machines trailing behind me. She didn’t stir from her sleep until I spoke.

“Wrath.” I said, taking my helmet off to get a clear view on the Feather.

Eyes opened, violet and glowing like To’Aacar’s had. My heart began to beat hard, adrenaline spiking, nerves in my head flashing out warnings of an enemy. Ah, this might have been why they kept insisting I take the damn shots, in hindsight. The rest of my head smothered those feelings over. This was different. And Father had vouched for her, which meant something.

He traditionally didn’t like anyone or anything. Especially if it was a machine with six legs that killed him once already. Didn’t like those one bit, if I remember right. I’d ask him to blink twice if he was being held hostage when I’d met him soul to soul, but it was pretty clear he had co-opted command. His presence in the soul sight had felt more like he could stomp on Kidra, Wrath and I trying together.

“Keith.” The unholy looking Feather said, and I took some comfort in finding that at least her voice had remained the same. That part hadn’t been fabricated, or it was too expensive to change.

We stared at each other for a good few seconds, before my mouth started running off on its own. “Were you really that upset about me yanking a few of your legs off when you were a spider? How bad could it have been, I mean really. We’re talking a leg or two here, tops. You had fucking six.”

The machines behind me hissed and started to circle around. Wrath shifted her glance to them, frowned and waved them off. “Yes, but they were my legs and I was very cross about losing them.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You seem to be taking the accusation rather well. I thought you’d start to pout and sulk about it.”

She gave a dignified humph and pointed her nose up at me. “Your sister had taught me about taunting over the days when she's come to visit. This does nothing to upset me. And neither does your armor’s construct.” A marble white hand extended and pointed at my helmet dangling from my free hand.

Oh. Right about the time for Cathida’s mute to have ended come to think of it.

“What’s she done this time?” I asked, hearing the squeaking tinny voice coming from the helmet now that I paid it more attention.

“She’s currently insulted me twenty seve- twenty eight times, and seems to be going through a thesaurus in alphabetical order for all the different ways to call me a working night lady.” Wrath paused for a moment, as if listening to something. “She wants to clarify that she means the poorly paid and unskilled ones, since you aren’t in hearing range and it’s important to her that you know.”

“She’s rather creative, isn’t she?” I said, patting the helmet, where I could hear a tiny voice from the inner speakers continue her squeaky tirade. “Hope it doesn’t upset you too much, she’s just cranky today.”

“Your construct continually uses words that are not used to insult, strings them in manners that should not fit, and somehow does so in a way even I can understand as clear insults. I am inclined to be more impressed rather than upset. No, what truly upset me was losing to you and your tricks the first time.”

“Tricks? I waved a pistol cheaper than snow who’s rounds couldn’t possibly do worse than tickle you - and you freaked out about it. How’d someone get tricked by that in the first place? I’ve played more complicated tricks on kids back home and they saw right through it. Must have rightfully pissed you off something good. That why you chased Father and I halfway across the world?”

Violet eyes glowed and stared me down. “It was among the more upsetting parts on meeting you. But no, pride was why I chased you down. I had won against my nest sisters and marked the two of you as mine, which was very difficult in our edicate and culture. Having them all seen me fail to catch either of you was mortifying. However, I believe what set me off the most was that you used the same trick twice, and that I fell for it twice.”

“Sounds more like a you problem. Get that fixed up yet?” I shot back, arms crossed, adrenaline fading away from my system as old habits made me feel safer. Like I wasn’t staring down a murderbot and instead bickering with an old friend.

She waved a sweeping hand from foot to head, motioning to her body as if it was the answer to everything. Then her eyes narrowed, like she’d come up with an idea. “I did ‘fix’ my problem. Now I don’t have impulses to defend above all else. Not so far as to be suicidal of course. I don’t jump off cliffs.”

“It was one time!” I shouted back, pacing around. “And I got shoved off by an asshole too, so technically not me jumping off.”

She brought a hand up to her mouth, a more shocked expression. “Forgive me. Let me amed that. At least I don’t fall off cliffs.”

The machines surrounding us stared in intervals between Wrath and I, as if watching a ball in play at a hangar tournament.

“All right, fair. But you got a leg cut off by a door. A door.” I accused, factually correct.

“It was a very sturdy door.” She defended with a huff.

“Still a door.”

Wrath shook her head, then stretched out on the throne like a cat, as if moving again for the first time in days. For all I knew that really was the case. Her hand reached out and pinched in my direction. “You do realize I could crush you as easily as a crab shell right now.” She said. “If you’re attempting to prove that you’re not someone who jumps off cliffs for fun, this is a very poor example.”

“Crab shells are hard to crush.” I noted. “For the record.”

“They are?” She seemed genuinely surprised at that.

“Kidra brought me one to eat a few day ago. It took me a while to figure out how to eat it, but yes - they’re hard to break. Very tasty, only it took a while to eat. I mean the meat, not the shell. I'll take a wild guess you eat the shell of course, you glutton.”

“I had thought humans disliked the taste of shell fragments in the meat and that’s why they didn’t crush the things while eating.” She said, carefully not answering my jab.

“That’s all besides the point, I’ve seen you eat wood skewers already, and I’m half convinced I could con you into chewing up a rock if I tried hard enough. How hard could it be? A peashooter fooled you before. I could sell you a box of snow, no problem.”

“You ate the wood skewers too!” She hissed back. “And you humans eat rocks all the time!”

“Wel-- wait, we do?” That got a genuine bit of confusion out of me. “How?”

Wrath rolled her eyes and stared up, exasperated. “You call it salt. You put it on everything you eat. Do you not even know what go into your food?”

Oh. Well she got me there.

The machine behind gave what sounded like a mechanical snort. “Salt everywhere. Even use in sweet things. Too much, bad. Too little, bad. Very confusing.” The other machines had the audacity to nod in agreement, as if it was communally decided.

The Feather pointed at the Screamer. “Yrob is more invested in learning how to cook than I am. I trust his opinions on the subject.”

"The one who tried to bribe me with biscuits?"

"His pastries are of high quality." Wrath said. Clearly it was a well known fact. "And salt is not the only rock you humans consume on a daily basis."

As if given permission to speak, this Screamer, named Yrob apparently, started an entire animated explanation on charcoal and all the strange rules about it. Can’t cook it into soup, but it’s acceptable to leave some of it on burnt food. Not all food, only specific foods. Cake wasn’t in the exceptions, pizza and meat were. And the smoke created by charcoal could also be used, but charcoal shavings or dust couldn’t. The machine was clearly upset at this too, given it was practically venting all the woes caused by this one rock humans both liked and disliked.

I turned to Wrath, as if she could solve this.

“He’s correct.” She said instead, doubling down and joining his rant. “It’s incredibly confusing. You humans are constantly mixing up your rules with exceptions. The only consistent rule is how inconsistent you all are. Even your languages all behave irregularly with no understandable pattern. I've seen records of artifical languages made - and then intentionally ruined with exceptions. The more I learn about humans, the more things grow strange and unhinged.”

“Is interesting. Very confusing still.” Yrob said, and his minions all concurred, nodding to each other in deep sympathetic understanding, again.

“Yeah well, we wouldn’t so charming if we all acted the same.” I said, with little heat. I was outgunned in this topic and knew it. “Some of us are more charming than others of course, mostly me I mean. Everyone else isn’t as charming. Just to be clear.”

She paused for a moment, about to continue to vent, and then glared down at me, eyes narrowing, realizing what I’d said. “You stabbed me with a sword at the end. That isn’t charming at all.”

“Yeah, well you were also trying to stab me at the time, I just outstabbed you before you could stab me. All’s fair in war and stabbing. And now you’re being a sore loser about it all. Literally too angry to die. You should work on that, go get some therapy.”

She rose off her throne, wings reassembling behind her, halo shifting lazily around, index finger pointed straight at me as if scolding. “I saved you after you got yourself stabbed.”

“Exactly my point here, I thought we had something Wrath, that our mutual stabbings were special and meant something. But you let some other random asshole kill me first. Quit toying with my heart, you heartless wench.”

The machines were clearly confused, while Wrath had stalked up straight to me, glaring me eye to eye. She tapped my chestplate a few times with her finger, as if driving in a point, wings angrily flared out. “What exactly did you expect would happen after you taunted a Feather? And you haven’t even learned a lesson from that, clearly. Humans.” She hissed, as if that one single word would explain everything wrong with the world.

“Quit trying to bar me from the few joys I have left in life.” I said, batting her finger away and poking right back at her neckline. “If I can’t taunt and gloat to weapons of mass destruction in their face and get away with it, what point is there to living? Machines.”

We both paused, staring down the other. A flicker of a smile crossed my face and my act cracked and crumbled first, forcing me to look away.

Wrath seemed to outright preen at that, as if knowing she’d won.

“How are you holding up to it all, so far?” I asked, walking past her and flopping down on her throne. My throne, I mean.

“I’ve mostly repaired all my critical systems.” She lifted a leg up a few inches and wiggled her toes. All of them marble white with no variation, making her look more like a walking golem. Inhumanly pretty, but also clearly a statue moving around with violet lights. “All limbs are functional. Combat integrity shows ninety three percent, with the remaining seven percent being fine tuned items. I’ll need to calibrate and retest movements to mark the remaining sections as complete.”

“You know what I mean.” I said, waving a hand around the building. “I mean what comes next. This whole mess we’re in. When’s the machine army coming here? How are you handling it all? Do you need a second opinion on some of these schemes? I happen to be very good at tricking enemies.”

Wrath rolled her eyes at that, that earlier smug smile wiped out. “She doesn’t know I’ve changed allegiances as of yet. Relinquished."

"You know that for sure?"

“I’ve sent small programs to probe and report back to me movements and where her attention might be. The result isn’t completely reliable, since I’ve prioritized discretion. All signs I could find point to her too occupied with other tasks. She hasn’t yet contacted me, nor sent a contact request to To’Aacar either. There is still time to come up with a plan.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have a plan?”

Arms crossed now, she gave me the sort of look reserved for a petulant kid that you weren’t allowed to shush. “I have been considering several possible plans to keep up the deception. The highest chance of success is if I fragment the city into the surrounding pillars, there’s a strong possibility she will not have the tools to detect and notice. So long as she leaves me command of this area and that all the Chosen remain behind.”

“That's a lot of if's. Are you really trying to keep all of this under her nose?” I asked, in the way that made it clear I thought this was the worst idea possible - and she should take my advice on this, I’m very experienced in that domain.

Her nervous look told me everything. She was absolutely not sure that it would work.

“I think the city’s doomed and you should be thinking about packing up shop." I said. "If you ask me. Which you didn’t, but I was planning to say it anyhow. She’s Relinquished, the machine goddess who’s been slowly destroying humanity bit by bit for as long as we’ve known her. You really think we could fool something like that? Maybe a few weeks, tops. You need to start mobilizing for an exodus and come with us.

To the surface.”

Next chapter - A dive through history (T)