12 Miles Below

“All right, hear me out on this.” I said, hands stretched out to my awaiting audience.

Cathida did nothing but scoff, arms crossed across the chestplate, empty helmet looming down with condescension. Exactly as she requested to be posed.

Wrath tilted her head slightly, more curious about this than anything.

“Occult. Shotguns.” I said, taking care to add just enough dramatic pause between each word. “Father can’t dodge a bullet, but he can dodge aiming. So hit him with bullets that don’t need aiming. It’s genius.”

They stayed quiet. Wrath furrowing her brows and considering the prospect. Cathida got it immediately though, hacking out a laugh. “I’d have said you were going to make some warlocks rich beyond the sunset with each shot deary, and then I remembered you’re the warlock now. And like any good warlock, you got someone else to do the hard part for you.”

“Exactly. Glad someone is cultured around here.” I said, smug. Then I pointed straight to Wrath. She became immediately suspicious. “The real part that’ll make all of this come together is her. I’ve got a factory right here that can mass produce anything I want, with excellent precision.”

“I do not have access to occult formulas as a security measure from Relinquished.” The walking factory said with a raised hand before I could get ahead of myself. “I cannot recreate occult weapons without connecting to the machine database and requesting temporary access. Which will bring attention to myself.”

Something to do with Feathers revolting against Relinquished once in the past and her being a little cranky and paranoid about it happening again. Details. “That’s fine, because I know the equation. Or at least, Journey and I mapped out an equation that fits the image we took. So all you have to do is etch that in tiny metal bits, fill up a buckshot, and then we go and kill Father.”

It’s perfect. He was only deadly up close, so the moment he got right in his comfort zone, bam. Removed his overclocking, found a way to effectively flash-bang him, and now I’m about to remove his strongest point. To keep my hands free, I’d just need to mount the shotgun on my wrist. Journey could easily handle the recoil of that. Easy to design too. I could have Wrath print one out by end of today, go kill Father and then be back in time for dinner.

“Run the numbers Wrath, is this a viable strat?”

Wrath shook her head. “Occult properties are… difficult to calculate. Even with the exact description of the occult pellets and the shotgun base model, I am uncertain the calculation would be correct.”

I gave my minions a regal dismissal clap, standing up and stretching my back. “All right, guess we got to do this the old fashioned way. Let’s go build it. And test it out on Father.”

Anti-Feather prototype weapon, number 01, name pending, was ready for testing within a day of frantic science. Since the pellets were tiny, it took Wrath a short amount of time to make all twelve that would go into a buckshot. Designing those pellets was what took the most time, as we had to go through a few different iterations until we hit something that wouldn’t break apart in the explosive exit, could still power occult edges, had occult edges working in the first place, and all of that in miniature.

It was a cobbled-together desperately-improvised work of art, and I loved every piece of it. Tiny semi-hollow spheres, with seven disk like edges wrapping around. The insides had just enough space to fit in a tiny spec of power cell fluid. Practically just enough to power a small light for a few minutes, but the occult was notoriously energy efficient.

The initial compressed buckshot would fly out of the shotgun barrel, and explode in a conal detonation almost immediately. From there, the inner pellets would be jarred enough to physically rip open a barrier between power and circuits, instantly turning on all the occult edges.

The armcannon was basically a standard pest control shotgun duct taped on my wrist. I could trigger it by making a fist and pressing my ring finger deeper than the other fingers. As if I were already shooting the real thing. Could do it with a hand wrapped around a blade.

Actually building something that could connect to my armor and was robust enough to do the job took a half day.

I’d have tested this out on Wrath out of courtesy since she built the whole thing, only fair she get to try it out. But even she was worried about the damage it would cause her systems. This thing had the potential to actually kill her if a pellet went through her soul fractal by chance.

I’m getting closer to a true feather-murdering weapon if my favorite test dummy was getting more and more worried about being the subject of my tests.

Off to hunt down Father then.

He was at the Winterscar mess hall, eating with Kidra. The two were silent, taking small bites of their food, as if there were some hostility between them. As soon as I walked into the chamber, noise died down everywhere. All the Winterscar staff eating here knew to evacuate, and they did so the moment they saw me walk in armed to the teeth.

To the clan, it was known that I was training with the reclusive ‘Deathless’ on his orders, specifically to fight and kill him. A sort of hardcore challenge, the kind that people would make songs about.

They thought he was getting training on how to wield immortal powers. It was the other way around, I was getting training on how to put down an immortal.

Kidra saw me barge in and promptly stood up, plate with her. “This isn’t over,” She gave him a crippling staredown. “I will speak to you later tonight. My younger brother’s antics may save you from answering immediately, but you will answer.” She turned, and stared me down. “Dear brother, please succeed this time. Or make it hurt if you cannot.”

“I feel no pain, girl.” Father scoffed. “My answer is the same as before, and I will not change it. Your emotions are out of control.” Then his eyes turned to me. “Boy.”

“Father.” I answered back, “I’ve come to kill you."

He rolled his eyes, then rose from his seat, blades carefully drawn out from his belt. "Melodramatics."

"Is this not a good time? I can come back later if you need a moment before I murder you. Go ahead, finish up your lunch. No rush.”

“No.” Father said, stalking forward, blades already taking position at his sides.

I shrugged, then the whole place went to hell. Flames, fireworks, pizzazz, scraps, scrapshit, and occasional curse words from me.

He ripped through all the ghosts I tried sending his way to slow him down, like he had before, and then got right into my personal space. When the armcannon was aimed in his direction, he recognized a potential unknown threat, could clearly see it was a gun of some kind, and tried to avoid being in the predicted firing line.

If it had been a regular cannon shell that flew straight with one singular shot, he’d have succeeded. Unfortunately for him, it really was undodgeable. I got that part correct.

The part I didn’t get right was the bullet type. Most of the pellets hit their mark. And they worked exactly as they were supposed to, right down to leaving a trail of blue behind each, faster than I could blink and far faster than he could scrapshit his way out of.

A few flew off past his cheek, or outright missed into the air. The rest collided against his true shields, given they moved too fast for him to follow Sagrius’s general defense plan, not while we were surrounded in occult flames and nobody got to overclock anything.

And they did damage all right.

About half a blade’s strike of damage. All put together.

Why?

Because the surface area was simply too tiny. All the pellets were only in contact with his shields for about a millisecond, and of that contact, most of the occult edge was wasted on air, given only a section of a sphere could touch a flat surface.

Wrath pointed out the actual after-image captures. “Here. Notice the pellets force the shields inwards, until their kinetic energy is spent.”

In the slow motion recording, I could see the shields dome inwards to almost cradle the pellets, the occult edge around them biting deeper like angry insects. They didn’t go deep however, the mass behind the pellets was too small.

The next part was the trampoline. “Once the normal forces have equalized, the shield pushes back against the pellets, returning to its original shape. Within the span of about twenty milliseconds, which is why all the shots seemed to bounce off his shields instantly with little damage to show for it.”

And that’s what happened. Shot him right by the top left side of his chest, and every pellet got launched right off, a few hitting Journey and bouncing off its own shields back out. The rest flew off everywhere after that, hitting tables and walls, and bouncing off those too. Leaving giant scratches on everything the occult edges touched. We’d have a hard time even finding all the places those pellets ended up landing in if there wasn’t a trail of destruction wherever they rolled over, and the blue streak of occult behind each.

Plan ruined. And I got yelled at after for the damage I caused, although this one was cheaper to repair than the airspeeder hanger. Just a bunch of ash all over the tables and some cuts that needed some resin to fill in. And a relic knight shaped dent in one of the tables where he'd stomped me down into. Perhaps a little bit more violently than he needed to.

“You two aren't seeing the potential with this.” Cathida said. “Not to inflate the plesh-squire’s ego, but this would be excellent at taking out an unshielded enemy. You had plenty of scraps already where the enemy shields were eaten away, and you lacked the tools for a finishing blow. This would fit exactly where you have that weakpoint.”

“The pellets bounced off tables and walls, despite those being unshielded.” Wrath pointed out, rewinding the footage and tapping the screen with a finger. “The occult edge does impact first and cut furrows through any material. However the shell of the pellet itself would collide with the hard surface and cause rebound forces.”

Like a sword’s hilt would keep the occult blade from sinking deeper into a wall if it’s thrown at it. The edges could cut through anything, but physical parts of it were still subject to physics.

“No, you silver-headed honey trap scrap for brains.” Cathida hissed, “I don’t care about the purple pellets. Occult bullets. That's where the sun's shining. Imagine if you had a spare set of bullets with occult tips, ready to tap-kill some wounded metal devil. They can’t dodge those, and they’d go right through the chassis without being bounced off anything. Like a drill.”

Wrath frowned. Either because of the insults, or because of some physics issue that Cathida wasn't thinking about. “Feathers have high redundancy, it would take several well placed shots at extremely specific locations to eliminate sections of a Feather.”

Physics issue it was.

“Can they survive an entire rifle magazine in the face or through their chest? That's thirty six bullets on average.” Cathida countered. “Because I sure as silver can’t survive thirty six bullets going through my chestplate and come out of it grinning.”

That seemed to have stumped our Feather. “... it is possible. Thirty six bullet holes going through the superstructure would potentially cause enough damage to reduce combat efficiency to a worrying level, depending on the scatter point location. I acknowledge you have a point, within certain scenarios.”

“Sounds like something to have built and ready to use even if it doesn’t work against Father.” I said. “A set of bullets that can drill through anything unshielded should have been part of my regular arsenal, the only reason it’s not in circulation is because warlocks clearly don’t have the printers to etch things that small. But we do now, and we can.”

And if any of those bullets were recovered by non-warlocks, they’d be that much closer to losing their main source of funding. But where I was going, I couldn’t care less if someone picked up the bullets behind me. We’d be deep enough that I’d wish them nothing but luck to make it back out. If they even recognized random shells left behind and yet uneaten by mites as potential occult bullets.

My arsenal of deadly weapons was slowly expanding out. Soon I’d have a weapon for every situation.

I took out my engineering paper again, tapping the pencil down and jotting notes.

“So the problem with the shotgun strategy is that I can’t deal enough damage to instantly overload a shield like the knightbreakers or the armguard can dish out. Either I find a way to fit in more pellets, or I find a way to maximize the time and surface area those pellets occupy. Am I understanding that right?”

Wrath nodded. Cathida just glowered down. On account of being an empty suit of armor that couldn’t move itself and remained in the same position I’d set her up in.

“So let’s tackle both problems at the same time.”

Fitting in more pellets came with diminishing returns. Smaller they got, the more I could pack together. But the smaller they were, the less surface area and mass they had, which made them less effective. Not to mention occult edges could cut into anything, including the non-occult edges of other shells, too many around could cause them to eat each other up.

A few ways to work around those limits. The first was by completely sidestepping the limits and insulting them on the drive by: Using the occult to make more of them.

The mirror fractal. If I could duplicate all the shells, they’d fly right through and have no mass to them at all, colliding against the shield as a disembodied edge.

Problem was I had no idea how to get mirrors to work with these. Might just boil down to a mental block. If I couldn’t imagine the ghost duplicate doing something plausible, it wouldn’t do my bidding.

Can’t imagine shells flying off for no reason. Machinery also doesn’t work, can’t press down on a mirror of a rifle and expect bullets to fly out of it. No idea why.

Not that it was going to stop me for long. At the start, the occult ghosts couldn’t phase through walls, fly or move faster than I could. Half formed arms could only appear connected from myself.

Now I could make ghosts go through anything I could see in the soul-sight, fly around even, and move faster than I could have. Not Feather-scrapshit faster, but it’s possible I could get there. I’m even able to make the ghosts generate more ghosts from their position, or even half-formed occult arms to swing extra blades and armguards down on the wretches that dare look at me the wrong way, or fail to grovel at my feet. Also those trying to stab me or understandably find other ways of getting me to stop talking.

Point is - there’s still scrapshit left untapped in that fractal, and someday I might even be able to make a rifle shoot a few dozen unconnected occult pellets at an enemy. Might need some more creative thinking in the bath.

“What about flexible metal?” I said, taking a piece of paper and drawing an asterisk on it. “We reuse the material for the fencing foils, and keep the whole thing hollow. The bullet impacts the shields, then flattens out like a pancake, increasing surface area and time. And because they’re hollow, we might be able to stack more of them tightly in the shell, letting them spring back to their regular shape the moment they’re out. Have the sections that power it be flattened across the other edge.”

“Oh, that sounds positively evil.” Cathida cackled. “Much more like it deary.”

And so anti-Feather prototype weapon, number 02, name still pending, was built and used the next day.

This time I tracked down Father in the sanctum, training against Shadowsong of all people. The prime was giving it all he had against Father, but he was simply outclassed in just about every respect.

Father saw me coming, and instantly sweeped Shadowsong off footing and shoulder checked him into the ground, showing just how much he’d been holding back in that fight. Then spun around to face me as his former opponent got back on his feet.

“Boy.” He said, eyes narrowing. I could tell he was rapidly looking over my new equipment. Pistols on my belt, more grenades strapped on my chest, the armguard modified with a single shell emergency shotgun built into it, while a more sturdy traditional one was hooked on my right arm. Along with my typical loadout of occult blades, knives, and one knightbreaker round loaded into a grenade launcher neatly nestled on the small of my back. Only thing I was missing was a rocket launcher strapped to my back, but I hadn’t brought that because it would have been the weakest weapon in my arsenal.

“Father.” I replied, giving him a cordial nod. “I’ve come to kill you.”

The flames started before he could answer.