12 Miles Below

He stabbed me through the chest.

No witty lines or talk, nothing cryptic, no message or even a goodbye. Just stabbed me right at where my heart would be after he was done talking.

Admittedly, some people may argue I had that coming for a while now, sure.

My hold over the edges of his soul fractal instantly slipped, dissolving away with my conceptual self. As for how a mental image of myself being stabbed through the heart would make me lose focus on it, I’m not quite sure. It didn’t exist, didn’t have actual blood, and half of it was more a lucid dream.

Still, however it worked, I found myself a bodiless soul floating out in the open air the moment I couldn’t hold onto anything. Reality attacked my essences without a beat, instantly chewing away at the edges. Like a mounting pressure.

Wrath had explained artificial souls couldn’t withstand empty space like this, but organic ones could by willpower. It took practice and deliberate training, which I’d been doing halfway by constantly keeping tendrils connected to fractals outside the soul fractal. This was just keeping the whole soul fortified instead of spare tendrils. It felt easier the closer I was to my actual body, as if body and soul still had some kind of link even while separated.

I could tell by instinct where my body was for one.

It was further off, fighting a losing fight against Father, puppeteered by the old bat and one knight within, the one who’d been eliminated early on. Cathida was an old monster in her own right - skilled, clever, willing to throw every dirty attack in the book if needed - but she was up against Father, a monster among monsters. All she was doing was holding him at bay while he flew from wall to wall, striking at her defenses with each passby. Her only support was one occult ghost cast by the knight, desperately trying to keep the air around saturated with flames.

I stretched a hand out in the empty air, flowing through the void until I snatched a hold onto one of my armor’s spare fractals, then slinked inside like a hermit crab taking shelter. Tendrils reached out to my body, feeding warmth and life through them again.

“I take it you’re back, deary?” Cathida asked over the comms. “Vitals are picking up from the comma. If you would be so kind, wake up a little faster. I need your hocus pocus if we want any chance of beating Tenisent.”

“Not even going to ask how it went?” I asked, digging into my full set of fractals, leaving the armor to pilot itself. The speed Cathida was going at was already at the maximum the armor could reach, she had it all under control.

“Clearly the first part of the plan worked.” Cathida said. “Journey hasn’t detected any overrides sent, and that bastard wouldn’t sit on that kind of advantage. Second guess is that the actual fight didn’t work out?”

“They’re still in there. Fighting him off.”

“If they haven’t won already, they’re not going to.”

“Sounds like pure pessimism to me.” I said, giving a check over the HUD while I had command of my body’s eyes. In a moment I’d be digging deep into the soul fractal and wouldn’t be able to see any kind of HUD anymore.

“Intuition, dear. Everything always goes to shit on a long enough timeline.” She said, clearly making my own point. Internal temperature was at a rosy lukewarm temperature inside the armor, despite the inferno outside. On the other hand, sensors detected that outside temperature steadily decreasing. Soon it would be cold enough to overclock without issue.

Cathida might have a point about her timeline theory.

The clan knight deep inside Journey gathered up his will and a halfway composed mirror image of Journey ripped free from the armor, blade swinging down for Father’s head. He gave it a single glance, before his own blade cleaved through the image’s ankles right as he passed by, continuing with a set of probing attacks Cathida held off with shield and blade.

A moment later, he’d passed right by us, flying straight for a wall, already rearranging himself for the best kick off.

I have much to learn remaining before I master the mirror image. The ghost within spoke, keeping both Journey and myself in the loop.

Single ghost is already making good progress according to Lord Atius. I sent back with a mental thumbs up. Journey said nothing. Indifference at most. There was no danger to the user in this current setup, Father was not registered as an enemy, just a training partner. Cathida, on the other hand, would have seen him as a personal insult if she were still alive, and so Journey was dutifully replicating that emotion.

I am not skilled enough with the occult to match Tenisent here and now. The knight said. I will man the defenses. Take care of the offense.

Father was growing faster. Without the occult ghosts burning the air into something inhospitable, Cathida only had flames on both her hands. And one hand was occupied with her longsword. The knight himself wasn’t able to keep his mirror image out in the world long enough to make a difference, not with Father slapping it down each time it appeared.

Another fly by. This time, right as he reached attack range, a small spasm wracked his shell and both his eyes closed shut. His face twisted in a scowl and Father’s temporary blindness lasted a half second before he ripped control back over his sight. In that time, he’d picked to abort his original attack, twisting it to be more of a spear strike with both blades - the exact countermove to a shield bash from the armguard.

Good guess on his part. Cathida had opted to ram him with the armguard as the very first attack. Being a digital engram running at the speed of computation, she instantly feinted that strike the moment she saw it wouldn’t work.

The feint saved my shield from damage, while Cathida twisted on herself, swinging her blade in a nasty undercut right into his chest. The whiplash motion jerked my body around, and only the near fully relaxed state of my muscles let me off without bruising. Her blade flowed down from his chestplate to hamstring as he passed by. His shields flared out while he turned on himself like a cat, feet kicking down into the ground to rocket him away from our range with a side swipe of two blades, both blocked by our knight’s occult shield.

“Not so smug now, are ya you glorified steel ghoul!?” Cathida called out, blade pointed straight at him in insult. “That’s only a glimmer of what’s coming. Your days of being at the top are over, I’m taking that spot back.”

Of course, in typical Cathida fashion, that the rest of us in the armor were all working together to lift wasn’t factored at all in her boasting.

Father simply scowled, not rising to her bait, already racing across the floor with three heavy strides forward, blades striking forward like a vice. Cathida drew the longsword high up and sprinted forward herself to meet the charge.

It was time for me to get into the action.

I focused. The world faded away as my connections to my body were severed one at a time until nothing was left. Fully immersed in the soul fractal, I opened my mind out to the elements, a deafening silence and calm came over.

The concepts of multiple souls were still inside his shell, fighting over across the many fractals he owned. Holding him off from triggering the shell’s full abilities.

His speed was slower than normal. His mind divided trying to fight on two fronts, while the superheated air around him wasn’t cooling off fast enough to grant him further access to computation speed.

This was as vulnerable as we could make him. He had to be taken out here and now before he recovered.

Occult pulsed from my armor as I rapidly tapped more ghosts than I’d ever summoned before at any one time.

Nine images stepped free of the armor, each leaping different directions before racing to collapse down where he’d be.

Occult pulsed out in response from his own shell, flowing into one of his blades, before he launched it forward in an arc of occult that swept through all my ghosts, making them vanish in a cloud of charged particles.

That would have worked against the knights. But I wasn’t the clan’s occult lead researcher for no reason. The moment the wave hit, the ghosts shimmered, more appearing from each other as the original ones were left behind like molted insect shells, swept away with the occult wind he’d sent.

The new ghosts leaped straight for him from the cloud of past images, and Cathida emerged right behind them like the lead wraith of the army, blade seeking out his weak points. He readjusted his stance with micromovements, boot tips scraping off the ground to give him just enough counterforce to move his shell, other feet slamming down to skid against the ground.

I’d seen Avalis do some insane things with the occult whip, and Father was clearly tapping into whatever that Feather used that let him do acrobatics at that level of mastery.

Cathida collided against him and immediately began to lose.

Right until my occult ghosts finished their surround and descended down on him all at once, blades and armguards flashing out in every direction, flames barreling into him, obscuring everything in molten red.

He was forced to leap straight up, a haze of heated hair following behind him, chased after my ghosts. They reformed faster then he could eliminate them. Each one spawned another ghost from itself right as his blade sliced through.

Occult arcs eradicated multiple ghosts. Thrown swords circled around him, controlled by strings that he manipulated mid-way, using arm, leg and even spare piping around the room which was then cut to free the wrapped up string as he flew by.

I think I was actually pushing him to his real limits, since I’d never seen him pull off this kind of ridiculously complicated dance of precision. He was now truly moving with all the skill and precision of a Feather, like Avalis had when fighting against my army of images on the bridge.

Cathida chased after him, leaping right in his path. When she struck out at him, seven more mirrored arms did at the same time, all from different angles. Some actually hit, eating away at his shields.

His tactics changed from trying to take hits at me, to trying to survive the onslaught. Ultimately he didn’t have the last-second maneuverability that Wrath did. She could actually fight in mid-air as if it were her domain. Father was a guest pretending at true flight. Using walls, occult arts and conservation of angular momentum to rotate like an eel - but there were limits to that.

Flames now licked almost every part of the room. Metal was growing red hot, and I could see the concepts of brittle snapping beyond the room. Temperature differences were too much for the structure, and the old insulation used by the past clan had decades of decay causing failure across a thousand points.

Is the armor going to handle this kind of heat? I asked, starting to feel genuinely worried at the hellscape that was now warping the empty chamber.

Maximum recommended heat operation rated at five hundred seventy three kelvin.

Maximum safe operation rated at nine hundred seventy three kelvin before total cooling system failure.

Maximum suit integrity rated at three thousand six hundred ninety five kelvin before full structural failure.

I could see images and feelings from the old soul at the heart of the armor. It knew it was built to protect the user. Made to withstand heat that was far above what anyone would have expected the operator to be caught by. That might be the only thing these armors had that was superior to a Feather. They were built to keep a living being alive. A Feather was replaceable and didn’t need that kind of consideration.

I could fill the entire room with fire that could boil a Feather’s electronics, and Journey would be as safe as a prized agrifarmer fish before market day. Father’s overclocks would all stop working at a certain rating, while Journey would continue full regular operation without pause.

He was on a losing streak he knew it. But there was a clock ticking down in his favor.

Even as he flew straight for Cathida for another spar, one of the knights fighting within him was thrown out of the fight, becoming a disembodied soul that fled through the air back to the safety of Journey’s spare fractals.

A tendril of the knight's soul quickly snaked through to tap our own network, rejoining his brother in arms.

It’s bad. He said. Tenisent by himself is slowly beating us down, but the machine code is what’s going to be the end. Once it’s fully healed up, he’s going to have the rest of us out.

How much time do we have? I asked.

A few minutes. Maybe five at most. The knight was already connecting to one of the spare mirror fractals, and summoning a single ghost of his own to assist the fight. No need to assist with defenses at this time. We needed maximum firepower.

We'll win before that time limit. I shot back.

With each knight Father defeated, they would return home and bolster my defense. Which meant his losing fight was going to be tilted even further down the wrong side.

If he tried to get close to me, a few dozen arms and blades would be carving for his head. If he tried to get further away, ghosts of all kinds would never stop chasing him down since I could completely focus on just that. Any attempt to deal damage was equally mitigated by the knights manning all the defenses Journey had inscribed on the plate. And if Father let his guard down at any point, we had weapons that could strip his shields and eat his shell in an eyeblink. All while the entire area was being bathed in flames and heat that could fry anyone outside an armor.

I was a gods-damn walking war-frigate armed with every gun possible and an entire crew all working together at peak efficiency. The sheer power I had on hand finally hit home when I saw Father - who was commanding a Feather - being backed into a corner against me.

In this world of monsters, I’d finally become one myself now.

Cathida continued to stomp forward, inevitable. Father changed tactics. A cloud of black dust flew around him, circling around each of the magnetically stuck pucks on his armor. They'd held strong all this time, built to resist damage from an explosive barrel, extreme heat, and physical trauma. But against a nanoswarm drill, not much to do.

All right, I admit that’s a clever counter. I thought, watching as he fell back down on the ground a moment later, armored boots landing hard on the melting metal ground, leaving an imprint in red.

Fractals were finicky, a single distortion on them would cause the whole thing to fail. He didn’t need to eliminate the whole puck. All Father needed to do was have his nanite swarm eat a small hole into the puck and then mess any part of the fractal.

Back in his domain now, the nearby occult ghosts I’d sent to hunt him down were dispatched in a furious weave of blades.

“Back on land now, yee old wire wraith?” Cathida called out, her longsword slicing through the ground beside her in some kind of primal warrior display. Might be an Imperial thing, but the message was pretty universal. “Quit hiding behind your boots, fight me.” She hissed out.

He scowled further, eyes narrowing, as if preparing himself to lift something heavy. Then he launched himself forward, blades whipping through my army of ghosts, before he reached Cathida.

She met his charge in full.

Holding spiritual hands with all the knights encased in my armor, and Journey's soul fractal, we communicated with each other faster than words. Implicit trust and understanding flowed through our bond.

Cathida attacked without a care for defense. I propped her assault up with dozens of additional hands and nearby images, striking from any direction she had left exposed. And the knights all single-mindedly focused on Father’s few possible return attacks, warding them off with expert accuracy.

He was a maelstrom of movement, a tempest of blade and calculated fury. And it wasn’t enough.

He took damage. He actually took damage to his shield in a one-on-one fight. Cathida was ruthless, any sutter or pause in his movements caused by the inner fight was abused. I certainly followed right behind her movements, dogpiling on the attack.

We forced him back. His shields dropped past the halfway mark - which was far past what a regular relic armor could have sustained.

And then the last of the souls inside his armor were beaten down halfway through our rampage.

The digital code had been restored in the span of the fight. And he’d used it to defeat, capture and contain the remaining knights, keeping them from returning to bolster my own defenses further. That's why everything seemed to go wrong all at once without warning - they’d been shoved into the spare soul fractals on his network, locked in the same jail cell he’d once been a prisoner of, never being able to alert us of the current battleground state.

We knew he'd beaten them because Journey detected the override codes, beamed directly over the wireless channels. Deep-rooted hardwired safety protocols within the armor kept an open signal, always broadcasting the user’s vitals and health on an encrypted channel, communicating with some long gone command and control system that wasn't there to hear.

Through that old network, Father’s viral connection request was received and approved, data flowing in, neatly folding itself into the already activated overrides.

Journey instantly froze in place. Power was cut across the armor. The soul fractals containing myself and the knights remained active, running on a seperate power source independent from the armor, a little extra safeguard I'd left for exactly this kind of problem, so at least that turned out to work. The rest of the fractals were not, which meant we lost access to every shield and mirror fractal on the armor. Minor oversight there on my part, going to have to shore that up on the next iteration.

Cathida screeched like a banshee, turning the scream into a string of curse words, beyond upset that her fun had been cut short. To the point Father outright muted her a moment later.

Silence came down on the battlefield.

“Enough.” He said, landing hard on the ground before slowly standing back up. Metal around him was warping from the ambient heat, and he strode across it like a demon from hell. “I acknowledge you, boy. This attempt has merit. It’s clear to me the only thing lacking is your mastery of the blade.”

Well, he had a semi-point there. Cathida’s skills in the blade weren’t what made everything click together, just a part of it. The other half was being able to actually focus on only the occult and nothing else.

Details. I still had a match to win. “Come closer Father, don’t think I heard that right.”

Journey’s response was to force me down on one knee, head bowed just low enough I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the old man. He watched me, a note of caution flashing across his face.

“You are defeated.” He said.

"Not until my armor's shields are gone. And they're not." Same words I’d used in the soul fractal fight. This time, I saw real caution dig into his face, eyes narrowing down. Calculation flashing through his eyes on what I could possibly have up my sleeve this time.

Journey's arms lifted up, beyond my control, then unstrapped my armguard and threw it far away, letting it slide across the ground. That was the only other source of independent fractals running on separate power. That was a pretty good guess on his part, I could use the mirror fractals embedded inside there for a quick surprise attack.

Then he threw away my sword next.

"Well, that was rude." I said.

"Was that all you had planned?"

"Eat snow." I answered back. "You junked my favorite sword."

He shook his head, walking up. "... So be it." Blade rising up, ready to descend down and lop my head off. Journey's shields turned off on his unworded command, meaning that mock killing blow would be the official end of the fight. “If you have any last tricks remaining, now is the time to use them.”

“Naw, I got nothing left.” I said.

He took one more step forward, holding just out of range. He could tell truth from lies and I technically had nothing left to throw at him, so he knew I was speaking the truth.

He still didn't trust that. “What plan could you possibly have now?” Suspicion laced through his words.

“Got this far by working with a team. I said I came here to kill you Father, and that’s how I’ll do it. With a team.”

He looked over my armor, noting down all the soul fractals that held the clan knights, all of them looking right back, waiting. Then shook his head, taking one last step forward, blade flipping in his hand up for the kill stroke.

“You have no one left, boy.”

“He has me.” Wrath said through the comms.